The Crown

It’s a hat…a party hat!

An exquisite designer hat

A unique, priceless gem of a hat

Not really a very practical hat

No protection against Nature’s petulance

Neither a warm, woolly hat

Nor a windproof, waterproof hat

Nevertheless, it is a hat…

What then is its purpose?

Symbol of simultaneous belonging

Also proclamation of exclusivity

Requiring the ritual of conformity

The metaphoric sizzle of branding

Or testing trial of tattooing…

Football shirts…old school ties

Medals, badges, fluttering flags

Emblazoned with macho images…

Creatures of ferocity or fairytale

Lions, bears, dragons, griffins

Creations of brush, pen, furnace, chisel

All silently saluting segregation…

What of the hat’s traditional wearers?

Leaders chosen by chance or choice

Or created by courage, cruelty, cunning

Now merely a nation’s treasured token

A poster-girl of dated communication

A pin-up of patriotism, power and privilege…

Display of regal pomp and pageantry

Centre of the nation’s sound and light show

Gleaming still but flickering…faltering

Connection with its ancient power source

Becoming steadily more tenuous…

This remains a very special hat

Woven threads of history and legend

But let us not forget…

It is merely a hat!

Queen's 61st year on throne 

        ©Peter Flint

If Ukip Want To ... This Guy's Not A Kipper!

We couldn’t bear to get pally
With those awful plebs in the valley
We’re sure that they’re simply not nice
Because we read every grim tale
In our grail Daily Mail
Of course we all pay our taxes
While each of them just relaxes
And lives off the fat of the land
They’re all lounging and scrounging
In free houses and flats
With more kids than Family Planning had planned
This is only just one of their perks
Scarcely one of them works
I wish that someone would please explain
It just doesn’t make sense
That while we mugs pay their rents
Our savings disappear down the drain
With each large benefit hand-out
Surely no-one possibly can doubt
That something’s gone terribly wrong
They’ve over-sized tellies
Plus over-sized bellies
And excuses just drip off their tongue
While we’ve scrimped and saved
Been discreet, well-behaved
They have been having a ball
Soon we'll have our backs to the wall
Now I don’t want to scare ya
But all the folks in Bulgaria
Will soon pour over here in their droves
We’ll just have to give up our car,
Champagne, caviar
Queue at Sainsbury’s food-bank for loaves
Yes the outlook seems bleak
But we won’t whinge or shriek
We won’t riot or even complain
We’ll keep a stiff upper-lip
Take a very firm grip
Then move to one of our villas in Spain!

© Peter Flint

Des Lynam endorses Ukip ... in song!

Peter is 77, belongs to Rossington Writers' Group, Doncaster, and writes short stories and poems  for his grandchildren. He taught for forty years...mainly English.

Catwalking in Catastrophe

She wore a borrowed dress
Nor did her crown belong to her
Still, she looked beautiful
Stalking between vassal ranks
Of fawning, enchanted courtiers
Breathing a miasma of greed, lust, envy…
She spurned them all
At once a predator and a prey
Prowling zombie-eyed
Face a corpse-like mask,
Lips swollen as if gorged with blood…
Regal she turned, oblivious of her disciples,
Down the wolf-whistle, sighing walk
Back to the paint, powder and chaos
Of the real world…
Shedding her borrowed finery
Which would be catalogued and copied
To be sold for a pittance
In High-Street temples of commerce…
Laden with bags with escutcheons
Much more familiar…much more affordable
Than this unique Dolce-Gabbana creation
A bargain at a mere £32,000!
I doubt if the Saturday night revellers
Preening in their day’s purchases
Would give a moment’s thought to…
The price of the original…nor…
The nine hundred souls crushed under concrete
Erected carelessly by inefficiency and greed
Working fourteen hours for coppers
Making cheap copies of such ‘borrowed’ dresses
Nor of the starving Syrian child
Staring at us in fear and bewilderment
Sharing the page with this icon of consumerism.

© Peter Flint

Refugees Fleeing Syria are ‘Mostly Kids’
Woman rescued after 17 days in Bangladesh rubble
$32,000 Dolce & Gabbana Dress

The poem arose out of the juxtaposition of a Dolce-Gabbana dress which sold for $32,000 with the image of a starving Syrian child.  In the same newspaper it was reported that the death toll in the collapse of a clothing factory in Pakistan had risen to five hundred and that the designer had been arrested and charged.  He had allegedly added several floors to the original plan at the owner’s request.

The Many Faces of Christmas

Christmas has many faces.                
First the avaricious smirk of commerce
toy shops, supermarkets, the internet,
suspicious buy one get one free bonhomie
begins months before the turning of the year.
Next, the stern features of duty,        
cards, cooking, parties, presents,
inspiration, invitation, perspiration.
Then the flickering face of friendship.
The warming worth of lasting communion.
Guilty ghosts of folk fast fading into oblivion,
the commanding countenance of conformity,
rituals of observance and obligation.
The grinning mask of Dickensian mythology,
trees and trimmings, mistletoe and mince pies,
smiling Saint Nicholas beam of benevolence,
santas, sledges, stockings.
The glowing visage of giving and caring,
the ruddy, bellowing laughter of revelry,
golden serenity of holiness and sacrifice.
All turned to immutable truth and hope
Of life's renewal and rebirth.

© Peter Flint

Abandon hope all ye who enter here: on the trail of the fabled Christmas Furby

Education Goves From Bard to Verse

Belt up Bob the Builder
Pipe down Postman Pat
Thomas...a talking engine!
We've had quite enough of that
Time for you to realise
You're oiks...you're poor...you're thick!
Each day you'll chant some poetry
That should do the trick...
Yellow car...hat with a bell
Won't break your plebian coma
You will repeat a Noddy, see!
The one that was penned by Homer
Can't tell a Verb from a Conjunction?
Despite the lessons which you sat in
You'll never get to Eton
If you don't know your Latin
Forget Three Bears or Jack and Jill
And every childish story
You must rehearse this noble verse...
'Dulce et Decorum est, Pro Patria Mori'
'The Charge of the Light Brigade'
British lads rode to death or glory
No limbs blown off or screams of pain
That would be just too gory
You are now five...you're far too old
To be goggling at the telly
So sit up straight...repeat after Miss
As she recites from Keats and Shelley
Time to get your coats and trot off home
To your Daddy and your Mummy
But, as Larkin said, "They fuck you up..."
So you end up just a dummy
The Gove's Train just goes clattering on
As the Night Mail crossed the border
Issuing clouds of stale hot air
With every silly order
If, like that train, it brought ideas
Steaming from its funnel
Instead of gazing resolutely backwards
As it reverses up its own anal tunnel!

© Peter Flint

Schools poetry plan in national curriculum shake-up

Quiz: how much poetry do you know by heart?
 
Peter is 77, belongs to Rossington Writers' Group, Doncaster and writes short stories and poems for his grandkids. He taught for forty years...mainly English.

Olympic Ring-a-Roses

Fight or flight reaction
We all know what it means
Nor do you need to be a genius
To know it's in our genes
No fangs or claws or poison-stings
We were set up to be beaten
We had to think of other ways
To eat and not be eaten
So we started throwing stuff
Like pointed sticks and stones
Running fast and jumping things
Until such skills were in our bones...
Ancestor sat in his mud hut
Or perhaps a cosy cave
With his prehistoric remote-control
Watching episodes of 'Dave'
Mrs Ancestor looked scornful
As she surveyed her mate,
"Since you discovered seeds and ploughing
You've been piling on the weight...
You need to get some exercise!"
He sighed, "Perhaps I ought..."
Hence the: running...jumping...throwing things
Developed into sport
Thus, chasing food or self-defence
The most primeval of Man's aims
Spawned a commercially-sponsored circus
That's called...'The Olympic Games'!
We've still got: running...jumping...throwing things
To boost each nation's pride
But behind the medals, flags and torches
There is a darker side...
Masked cops with machine-guns
T.V. appeals for blood
Wall-to-wall surveillance
To nip trouble in the bud
Gunboats on the River Thames
Aircraft in the sky
Snipers...hi-tech missiles
On roof-tops way up high...
Like Olympic Rings we've come round
Showing we have learned to fight
If passport checks at airports weren't so long
I think I'd prefer the flight!

© Peter Flint

The high-rise homes turned into Olympics missile base

Peter is 77, belongs to Rossington Writers' Group, Doncaster, and writes short stories and poems  for his grandchildren. He taught for forty years...mainly English. 

Invaders

They are here...the invaders
Cresting the moors...breasting the waves
They stand in ranks
Metal...pinnacles of gleaming grandeur
Sails, etched sharp against sky's blue,
Turn gently like sci-fi sycamore seeds
Their mission? Domination? Destruction?
Peacefully, serenely, they harness the wind
Energising our homes...lighting our lives

Why then are they mistrusted?
Maligned, ugly, wasteful, inefficient...
They must be banned, banished, toppled!
Sign this petition...support their overthrow...
While I have your attention,
Please make a small donation
To save our historic windmill
Faithfully creaking out our daily bread
These past four hundred years.

© Peter Flint

Why Tory MPs opposition to wind power will put your energy bill up
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Peter is 77, belongs to Rossington Writers' Group, Doncaster, and writes short stories and poems  for his grandchildren. He taught for forty years...mainly English. 

The Picture

When I was given a gun
And trained to kill people,
I tried hard to imagine
Why anyone would want to kill me...
Or I them!
This memory surfaced when I saw...
The picture...
He didn't look like a monster
More like a Grattan's catalogue model
Air-brushed, posed, not quite 'cool'
With a sort of gloss...smooth, glazed
A carapace of self-righteous arrogance.
I thought of the other pictures...
Smiling, cheeky, open young faces
Life spread before them like a summer picnic
Again, I tried to enter his mind...his soul...
Like many before him, he saw himself a Messiah,
A crusader, rallying the faithful
To combat the forces of evil...
Throughout man's history his ilk are reviled
Or sanctified and lauded by their fellows...
When I was given a gun and trained to kill
My future too, lay before me
Like a summer picnic...but
Like him, I was to kill strangers
To contain the spreading of their creed
Like him, my leaders had no faith
That their own beliefs were unassailable.

© Peter Flint

Experts want Breivik hospitalised
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Peter is 77, belongs to Rossington Writers' Group, Doncaster and writes short stories and poems  for his grandkids. He taught for forty years...mainly English. 

Peter says: 'I did my National Service in the infantry immediately after the Korean War but I had been in the Civil Service and they needed a clerk in the Base Company Office so I spent a year in a rat-infested barrack-room in Kure, Japan...at least I didn't have to face folk who were trying to kill me!'

Small World

It's not far to the wheely-bin
Almost full...
The half-eaten turkey
That pork-pie...lurking at the back of the fridge
Long past its eat-by date...
It's not far to the corner-shop
The loaf of bread...the chocolate
To munch while watching the telly
It' s not far to the supermarket
With siren ranks of goodies
Each with its low-fat absolution
It's not far to that little pub
Lovely village...great food...atmosphere
Only an hour down the motorway
It's not far to...Florida...Thailand...Tenerife
Superb hotel...five restaurants...all-day service
It's not far to the dusty, sun-cursed square
Where swollen-bellied babies
Scrabble in the dirt for grains of corn...
Small world!

© Peter Flint

Minister tells us to give more money to charity... 
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Peter is 77, belongs to Rossington Writers' Group, Doncaster and writes short stories and poems  for his grandkids. He taught for forty years...mainly English and says: 'I'm not J.K. Rowling.'