Scourge the Bastard

Scourge the bastard till he starts to bleed
(they cry, with righteous anger and disdain)
for advocating legalising weed.

Elected democratically, indeed!
Drugs have caused such misery and pain,
so scourge the bastard till he starts to bleed.

Protect our children from this evil creed
and cut the tongues from those who won’t refrain
from advocating legalising weed.

You say that hash is harmless? I concede
that alcohol is much more of a stain.
Still, scourge the bastard till he starts to bleed.

And cigarettes may feed a dying breed
but string him up, I tell you once again,
for advocating legalising weed.

You might as well say pushers should be freed
to kill our kids with acid and cocaine!
So, scourge the bastard till he starts to bleed.
for advocating legalising weed.

© Peter Goulding

Time for debate on cannabis says 'Ming.'

Peter Goulding rails at life from the comfort of his Dublin armchair. Lured into poetry by the promise of untold wealth, his work has been rejected by editors in four continents.

Sunday Review and Royal Supplement - with boobs!

• Review
• Crikey, It's Keyhole Kate Giving Cheer by Philip Johnson
• Keeping Abreast of the Royals by Peter Goulding

We started and ended this week with excavations - from the welcome return of Marilyn Brindley with These Bones on the possible unearthing of Richard III's remains under a Leicester car park (with plenty of snippets of the bard buried in the poem!) to L.S.Bassen's Excavation at Clitor which capered nimbly in a lady's chamber on the release of a new biography of the vagina reviewed in the NYT.

Jim Bennett gave us a moment's silence with his simple, moving reading the report as the truth finally comes to light of multiple cover-ups and injustices in the wake of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.

Also this week, Phillip Challinor took time off from acerbic observations of dodgy politicians to wax lyrical about Edward Lear in his bicentenary year - Seriously Pleasant. Anthony Baverstock's unsettling After the typhoon haiku was strong words, softly spoken - and a visual treat and Vala Hafstad had us window-shopping for men in a Paris boutique in The Selection. As she describes it the process is similar to how we receive your poems: We look at them all, one by one. / It gives us such pleasure and fun.

We round off the week below with two poems regarding 'those' pictures of Kate Middleton - a subject some of our male contributors couldn't wait to get their hands on and have a titter over.

Have a good week

Clare (& Martin)


Crikey, It's Keyhole Kate Giving Cheer

ATOS continue to tip the disabled out of their wheelchairs
post Olympics, they are the new cash cow

capable of some work, it is said.

And compensation for unfair dismissal is to be cut
too many guilty consciences in the coalition

too many TUC members raring to dance on Thatcher's grave,

more-like?  While one pair o' tits make so many shameful Acts
of Parliament making mock of honest toil

another pair are practically blooming for Britain all over Europe

(0)(0)                                           (.)(.)                                           (o)(o)
                          (-)(-)                                            (+)(+)

                                           (*)(*)              (")(")
© Philip Johnson

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19615475

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19594879

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19560284

Keeping abreast of the Royals

Personally I don’t understand what all the kerfuffle and the clamour is
To line up to vilify and to scourge the photographer who snapped (and the magazine that published)   pictures  of the royal mammaries.
It seems that issues like social injustice, homelessness and poor education standards stir up far fewer ripples
than publication of blue-blooded nipples.
And it appears that when Sharon Stone or Kerry Katona or Princess Whatever of Monaco are photographed topless, the great British public don’t give a sea-
Turtle’s left nadger for the principles of personal privacy,
But become apoplectic when the displayed boobies
are adorned by House of Windsor diamonds and rubies.
(Though I suspect that most young men and even older ones, sons, husbands and dads
Would not be seriously offended if she got her tits out a bit more often for the lads.)
I am somewhat surprised also that the special advisor to the royal chest,
(Who should know best)
Did not advise the future queen that wearing a bra instead of going topless
Will make them flop less
Though, judging by the pictures in the Irish Daily Star that I accidentally leafed through the other day
while in my local shop,
There’s not a whole lot there to flop
And, although I hold my hand up and admit I’m not really one to snigger
At someone else’s figure,
I think Will’s are bigger.
Suffice to say, I go along with Spike Milligan’s dictum that people who live in glass houses
Should pull the curtains before removing their trousers.

© Peter Goulding

Irish Daily Star Editor Michael O'Kane suspended over Kate Middleton photos 

Peter Goulding rails at life from the comfort of his armchair on the outskirts of Dublin. He would love to find a lot of money in a hedge

Liberation

They said he was a murderous dictator
on whose command the desert sands ran red;
who would not tolerate the agitator
and many took their families and fled;
whose rule of thumb was not designed to cater
for those who craved democracy instead.
Manhandled by the frenzied agitator

~ liberation was a bullet in the head ~

admitted the new government commentator,
explaining how they’d severed his life’s thread.
And now they proclaim praise to the Creator
on seeing the body stretched out in a shed.
But to the international spectator,
the way this haggard tyrant wound up dead
does not bode well for hopes of justice later.

© Peter Goulding

Qaddafi’s Death Places Focus on Arab Spring’s ‘Hard Road’
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Goulding works in a warehouse in co. Kildare, Ireland and has bribed editors in four continents to accept his poetry. He has no practical talents whatsoever.

From the Tee to the Green

for Seve

From the tee to the forest
to the bunker to the green,
you blasted your way around the course,
throwing golfballs to the finger-licked wind
like a gambler gleefully hurling die
down the smooth baize.

‘Seve has found himself deep in the rough,
This really is most riveting stuff,’
                                said Peter Alliss

and in tightly-packed Sunday afternoon homes,
will willed you on as you lurched from the carpark
to the heavy rough; we, who wouldn’t know
a putter from a sand-wedge, or a claret jug,
if it jumped up and bit us on the arse.
We jerked with every flamboyant stroke
and mimicked your outrageous Spanish accent,
so different from the usual clipped tones.

From the tee to the forest
to the bunker...

© Peter Goulding

Seve Ballesteros: Spain mourns 'father of Spanish golf'
------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Goulding works in a warehouse in co. Kildare, Ireland and has bribed editors in four continents to accept his poetry. He has no practical talents whatsoever.

An Invite to the Wedding

I didn’t get an invite to the wedding
and, frankly, it is hard to mask the hurt.
I suppose there isn’t any point in threading
this button on my Marks and Spencer’s shirt.
My present lies beneath the stairs, inert,
(newlyweds cannot have too much bedding)
but, feck them, it’ll stay there gathering dirt
‘cos I didn’t get an invite to the wedding.

The postman brought no invite to the wedding.
Apparently I amn’t on the list.
This was the very thing that I’d been dreading –
being callously and royally dismissed.
Frustration at my absence from their tryst,
like poison, through my psyche has been spreading.
I’m sure my august presence will be missed
by those that got an invite to the wedding.

It seems that I’ve no invite to the wedding.
My diary is empty for that date.
I’d booked a B and B in downtown Reading
beside a nice industrial estate.
The yellow men behind me indicate
the salty trail of tears that I’ve been shedding.
Snubbed, not just by William, but by Kate,
I never got an invite to the wedding.

Did I mention I’ve no invite to the wedding?
But Ryanair will recompense my flight.
My Gatwick ticket’s only fit for shredding
but the airline’s sympathetic to my plight.
Thanks to this right royal oversight,
it isn’t down to London I’ll be heading.
When I get married, they can go and shite
if they think they’ll get an invite to my wedding.

© Peter Goulding

Riffraff at the Royal Wedding but no Tony Blair
----------------------------------------------------------
Peter Goulding works in a warehouse in co. Kildare, Ireland and has bribed editors in four continents to accept his poetry. He has no practical talents whatsoever.