The Poetry Marathon

Crawling all over the trees all day
Making nature documentarians frown
And amazingly, doing the whole thing
While hanging upside down

This paragon of slow and steady
Has recently sped up
And now it’s felt the need for speed
I doubt it’ll ever stop

Its devouring all the choicest fruits
Its swift grasping claws can find
And not just its limbs are fast,
It can also move its mind

It’s learnt to read, begun War and Peace
It found Dickens a bit to dreary
In Academia its halfway there
To finding a way to solve string theory.

Its now the fastest herbivore on land
And its mastery of climbing
Means that its got the height advantage
And its got the monkeys whining

Now its fast enough to get there first
And grab the choicest dinner
There’s not enough left for the other chaps
The chimpanzees are getting thinner

We’re close to an ecological collapse
The cascade is on the edge
We have one chance to stop this now
So everyone must make this pledge

I know you thought it would be funny
I don’t want to be a pain
But for the love of God you guys
Stop giving Sloths Cocaine!!!

I remember when I was a young lad
So innocent and a bit of a twit
I was between 4 or 5, maybe 7
When I really fell in the shit

My mother was serving us dinner
Burgers, served with chips of course
When I, not paying attention
Rashly reached for the sauce

For what child of indeterminate age
Would want a ketchup-less burger
It would be like having spaghetti without bolognaise
I caution, dear reader, no further

For in my haste I had made the assumption
That probably doesn’t need to be said
That ketchup, so patently awesome
Is basically anything red

So I made an obvious error
I grabbed the first red thing I saw
And then when I tasted my burger
My forehead quickly hit the floor

For I had never tasted Tabasco
That Hot sauce from far off Latin shore
Imagine my mothers surprise when she
Heard a high pitched scream no-one could ignore

So that is the story dear reader
And hopefully realise my stance
On the time I had a bottle of hot sauce
And burned a hole in the back of my pants…

So here is my first attempt
A Gigan from my brain shall be rent

I’ve never heard of this form before
And I must admit, perhaps I’m a bore
This prompt seems like a fucking chore

Whoever came up with this prompt I swear
Will rue the day they wrote it there

On the site for us flail against
And leaving me feeling incensed

I don’t quite know in what spirit its meant
So here is my first attempt

Whoever came up with this prompt I swear
I’ll make them eat their underwear
Make an example so big that crowds will stare

Oh, look the end, anger got me through
Hey Editor, enough of a twist for you?

Why, why, why?
Why did you make me look at my phone
Why dredge up the memories
That chill me to the bone

There’s a reason I never
Check back on my pics
The stuff I get up to
Would make even the most depraved sick

It wasn’t intentional
I didn’t mean to cause harm
Why did I start drinking
On a trip to that petting zoo farm

Is there a sight more depressing
A vision more bleak
Than a 20 year old something
Having a fight with a sheep

And the poor little donkey!
Can’t believe its true
If I look again at that picture
I’m certain to spew

So I won’t look at those photos
I don’t know why they’re saved!
Its not like anyone’s clamouring
To see an Alpaca shaved…

Dear All

I know its been a while since we last spoke
Out of all the people, I’m sure that I’m the last bloke
To which you want to speak,
I admit that after our break up
It’d be hard to make up
Even if I apologised all week

I just wanted to say, I was probably to blame
I know, every time, its always the same
I admit I made mistakes
But can I say, in my defence
I swear with no hint of pretence
I’m not the one who cut the line on your brakes

But no matter how hard I try
I can’t figure out why
I couldn’t make these relationships work
Could it be as I feared
That I’m incredibly weird
Or maybe you’re jealous about how good I can twerk?

Never again I quietly weep

As I wake up from drunken sleep

And get struck full force in the face

With the free gift in every beer case

Never again I softly cry

As I lie there and wait to die

With head splitting and stomach churning

A brutal lesson in need of learning

Never again I weakly moan

As I lie soaked in vomit I hopes my own

My mouth feel like I’ve been chewing metal

With whisky man should never meddle

Never again I wearily groan

As I stumble reaching for my phone

To silence that fucking alarm

As its ringtone does infernal harm

Never again I solemnly swear

As I am staggering down the stairs

And puke while heading for the cars

My mouth tastes like a badgers arse

Never again I promise myself

This can’t be good for my long term health

Though I sure by noon as I start to munch

I know I’ll have a pint for lunch.

In one hundred years
We’ll have flying cars
While we live on Mars
Explore the stars
If Elon gets his act together.

In one hundred years
We’ll have equal rights
Won’t that be a sight?
Give the bigots such a fright!
Or am I being optimistic?

In one hundred years
We’ll be free of getting sick
Medical science, that’s the trick
Lets hope scientists get there quick
Cos I’m not going back to lockdown!

In one hundred years
From bunkers we’ll poke out our heads
As we laugh at all the fools who said
That there was no need to fear the thing we dread
That fallout shelters were for idiots

In one hundred years
I’ll not be here
Not that I’m much of a seer
Is there really all that much to fear
I can’t be the first to think it

In one hundred years
Will they remember me?
Will there even be a memory?
More to the point will there even be
Any humans left to do it?

In one hundred years
Will we still fear each other
And condemn all those we should name brother
Or are we doomed to kill one another?
But I live in hope.

Because in the last hundred years
And further back
The human race has an unbeaten track
Of taking a punch and getting right back.
So I guess, I’m not that worried…

Grand, far too grand
For a person such as me
Uncultured and ill formed
And a sense of inferiority

This music flows through silence
Like a melodic golden river
Echoing from buttressed halls
And making my spine quiver

It sings of strength, direct and poised
Sings of elegant grand homes
But behind it all, I detect a whiff
Of a slight regretful tone

Perhaps its mournful voice
Recalls that times are moving fast
From a time when people truly lived
In moments, not glories past

When the bar had yet to fall
Before what was written for one is now for all
I hear perhaps a mournful recall
Of when somethings were still on a pedestal

For times change, and we must change with them
Tis the curse of living
But I can’t help feeling we leave behind
Some special part, now missing

I hear these notes and feel that maybe
We don’t have to abandon all
Its the shoulders of so many others
That allow us all now to stand tall

It’s tough, writing something
When a prompt doesn’t speak to you
When nothing seems to spark
What’s a writer supposed to do

I have no experience of hanging from a ledge
Because I don’t have a death wish
And I don’t like using others work
Like Old Man and the Sea, I’ll catch my own fish

So in effect I have to create something completely new
No safety rail of prompts to guide me
I’ll make it up, I’ll bluff it out
And hope no-one calls for an enquiry

I believe its called the Boris Johnson method
Satire!!

Lashing down, round hard droplets
Searing, biting cold
Streak from the skies
Into half closed eyes
And soak me head to toe

Beating down, icy pebbles
Bludgeoning my brow
Each step is done
To the sound of drums
On the roadside and my forehead

My clothes have become an ocean
My filled boots become a sea
This weather is
Starting to take the piss
Its reaching biblical proportions

When rivers burst their banks
When roads get closed
Wreckage is strewn
From this northern monsoon
I can only think one thing…

Summer in Scotland Sucks!