Part 1: Occasional Verse
Occasional verse is defined as poetry written for a specific occasion. However, my occasional verse is not poetry, but then I only do it occasionally. Does that count?
Advice To Holidaymakers In Greece
In Greece, there’s freedom in the air,
Their attitude is ‘laisez faire’.
There’s just three things you mustn’t do:
You can’t put paper down the loo.
(Their plumbing’s not built for the stuff,
So that seems reasonable enough.)
The second may seem arbitrary;
Don’t photograph their military.
The jovial Greeks can get quite tense
About their Places of Defence.
So, when you see the sign, obey,
And put your camera away.
You take this seriously, now,
Or you’ll get in all kinds of row,
And kindly Mr Karamanlis
Will say “You can’t come back to Greece!”
The Greeks are such a splendid breed,
So generous in word and deed,
We should not mind, it seems to me,
This one slight eccentricity.
It’s not for us to wonder why
Their servicemen are camera-shy.
So if you try to ‘spot’ their planes,
You’ll find yourself conveyed, in chains,
To jail (where all the felon gets
Is plates and plates of boiled courgettes)
And if they throw away the key,
You’ll get no sympathy from me.
I reckon that it serves you right,
Because you’ve been so impolite…
The last rule: Don’t be glum, this place
Is fun, so wear a cheerful face.
Out here, it doesn’t do to be
Too much upon your dignity.
It’s good to give the Greeks a laugh,
They work quite hard on your behalf.
On Spiritual Teachers
Eckhart Tolle?
Off his trolley!
Dalai Llama?
Too much Karma!
Adi Da?
Just blah, blah, blah!
Diana Cooper?
I’m in a stupor!
Louise Hay?
Oh go away!
Depak Chopra?
Belongs on ‘Oprah’!
Stuart Wilde?
Gets me riled!
Anthony de Mello?
Now that’s the fellow!
Lines On Viewing The Memorial Of A Lieutenant-Governor Of The Isle Of Mann
Poor Colonel Cornelius Smelt,
What a cruel hand this man was dealt.
In the pub, every drinker
Would shout “Hello Stinker!”
Imagine the way that he felt…
Valentine Posies
1.
Though I wield my brush with care
When I’m painting life’s design
Still the paint gets everywhere.
Please will you be my Turpentine?
If I lose my head and heart,
If I monstrously decline,
If I need the odd spare part,
Please will you be my Frankenstein?
My verses leave you unconvinced?
No more poetic monkeyshine!
Ms Lindsay, on the 14th inst.
Please will you be my Valentine?
2.
The perfect act of love,
I was startled to discover,
Comes when the Lover frees
The Beloved from the Lover.
3.
I need you like
Flowers need rain,
And rain needs a drain,
Like Spaniards need Spain,
And a sadist needs pain…
I love you like
Madam Marcos loves shoes,
Howling Wolf loves the Blues,
And Jehovah loves Jews
And gays love to cruise…
I’d give you
The wax off my skis,
The leaves off my trees,
The rind off my cheese
And the skin off my knees…
Lines In An Italian Recording Studio’s Visitors Book
One day I shall return to Nogaredo,
And the studio that is halfway to the sky,
Where the people make you feel you’re not a stranger,
And the local male-voice choir can make you cry,
Where the food could make you burst out of your trousers,
And the coffee makes you jump out of your skin,
And the care and expertise they give your music
Isn’t equalled from Brindisi to Turin.
One day I shall return to Nogaredo,
To the studio that is known as L.O.L.
But until then, I must say ‘Arrivederci!’
(A word I can pronounce, but cannot spell.)
Lines On a Town In Lesvos
We all went to Mesotopos
To eat the boiled octopus
And there was such a lot of us
We went there in a motorbus
We all enjoyed the octopus
Which was, quite simply, ‘nostimos’*
But one of us got hot and cross
And thought that he should be the boss
And kicked up such a dreadful fuss
That we all jumped back on the bus
And left him in Mesotopos…
* νόστιμος – delicious
Lines About A Dog I Knew
The dog has frolicked in the mud
And makes a dreadful mess.
Her wet and filthy footprints
Cause particular distress.
But once they’re dry, they all brush off
That is, perhaps, apart
From that single muddy paw-print
In the middle of my heart.The dog is shedding hairs again,
They fall on every side,
And drift across the carpet
In a never-ending tide.
They are clogging up the hoover
That we ply in vain each day
And are wound around my heartstrings
In a most annoying way.The dog has had an accident
And peed upon the floor,
An accident I fear she’s had
A dozen times before.
A sponging down will make the carpet
Look alright again,
But the damp patch in one corner
Of my heart will leave a stain.The dog has stolen half a loaf
And gobbled it complete.
The dog is munching week-old
Fish and chips dropped in the street.
I gave the dog her dinner,
And I thought that she had done,
But the bad dog went and stole my heart
And swallowed it in one.
A Printable Limerick
That Therapist I go to in Ely
Has become far too touchy-and-feely.
His hugging and squeezing
Is no longer pleasing
And as for the fondling,
Well, Reely!
Part 2: Spam Poetry
In the early years of this millennium, spam emails would generally arrive garnished with a paragraph of nonsense text, blocks of meaningless words, created by a computerised random-word generator of some kind. This was apparently done to fool the primitive spam filters of the time into thinking that the email was genuine correspondence.
I was attracted to these incoherent, senseless accumulations of words, and began to save them, with the idea of creating something artistically worthwhile out of communications that were, at best, deceitful and underhanded, and, at worst, just plain criminal. I realized that these worthless transmissions might possibly be transmuted and transfigured into Surrealist poetry.
It is possible to see Poetry as a contest, a closely fought grudge-match between language and meaning. And, for contests to be worthwhile, they require rules. It is these rules, whether obvious and in plain sight, like rhyme-schemes, or more subtle guide-lines and protocols about line-lengths or assonance, that the worthwhile poet observes as he or she referees the antics of the words on the page.
I eventually settled on the following set of rules for the creation of what I came to think of as my ‘Spam Poetry’:-
1) Each spam email could be transformed in to one poem, not more.
2) I could discard any words I wanted from the text. However…
3) All the remaining words had to remain in their original order.
4) I was allowed to add additional words (but my skill as ‘spam poet’ would be judged by how little supplemental language I had to add to create some form of meaning.)
5) Punctuation and capitalisation could be used at will.
The technique is demonstrated below, in a few sample lines from one of the many preserved spam emails not yet turned into poetry:-
detect buddhism regale aerospace boatyard nugget tipperary hung diesel catheter drool fictive basis attainder acreage nomenclature degenerate autobiography humboldt agate darling curfew diamagnetism subsidiary anticipatory congestion host replete shire repression readout cantilever.
Removing unwanted words leaves me with:-
detect buddhism aerospace boatyard tipperary hung diesel catheter basis degenerate autobiography darling curfew anticipatory congestion replete shire repression.
Now, I add as few additional words as possible as is necessary to create some sort of meaning, and this process allows the piece to read as follows:-
I detect Buddhism in that aerospace boatyard in Tipperary. Your well–hung diesel catheter is the basis of a degenerate autobiography. Darling Curfew, my anticipatory congestion is replete with shire repression.
This technique differs from the Beat Movement ‘Cut Ups’ of Biron Gysin and William Borroughs, in that there is no re-ordering of the words that are to form the final work. In ‘spam poetry’ the randomisation process has happened earlier, in the original generation of the spam text, and the ‘spam poet’s task is simply to draw attention to the potent and magical energies that are released by the juxtaposition of these incongruent words.
In my experience, the technique generates bizarre, Absurdist poems that are generally quite strident and declamatory, though whether this is due to my choices of less vivid words to be edited out, I do not know. A long paragraph of random text produces a long poem, a short one makes a short poem.
My own additions to the texts are all very minor and small in scale, consisting of pronouns, conjunctions, articles, prepositions and simple, neutral verbs. Every wild conjunction of words was already there in the original spam paragraph. I feel as if these poems are asking to be recited loudly, through a megaphone, at a Surrealist Group ‘séance’ in the 1920s.
None of the following 22 poems, which all date from 2000 to 2004, are titled, as I found I was unable to justify any sort of naming process.
1.
A creepy cocktail
at the bombastic, stony launch.
Spidery, blackbody Bill (into sparkle decompression)
orders Edwardian beebread.
Tomorrow, astrophysical experts divulge
an intemperate enigma.
So hang carbohydrate,
Dear flood-wattle;
it’s gastrointestinal, evolutionary cock!
What carbon handicraftsman
fashions a nobelium driveway?
2.
Can her occult antagonist abuse Juno, in Bucharest, with Ozark sparkle?
Can nickel deficient, screwbean Jerry, oft bold swigging ipecac,
direct the pewter hydrosphere?
“Darlene, use tube technique on the Rochester urethra.
Delia, lash the naturopath.”
Oh tuneful old beaver! Oh coppery, volleyball combustion!
The nihilist, conscientious, antiquated, convex clockwatcher
may toddle acquiescent,
but a bazaar blackbody will consult Baron Aquarium.
Electric Brindisi! I envy Concertmaster Bonneville
his inexplainable midpoint.
3.
On Mont Lindberg, Paraguay,
the transcript woke Ameslan Gurkha.
“Batten my Zambia alpenstock
in the Arkansan preparation of greenwood caraway (I snub Goodyear).
Then, Dionysus, a snifter!”
A neater assassin will detect
the infelicitous raffia hireling in bluebonnet,
if he speaks anything beside Arabic.
4.
Those thought handsome often lie.
A lead privilege was mentioned but looked like pie
(pleasure pounds).
To drink himself blue,
To dare to be peculiar and mischievous.
A careful husband will watch arms (favourite) with feelings (simple).
Could a round, cast, shining thing be bad?
Suddenly, five charge the study.
Their Cousin could shame a secretary suddenly.
Quickly foot that Sunday breath,
and bound ninety feet away.
Concentrate, Aunt, a swimming day.
5.
Been tears?
Yes, years.
History will circle happy
those whose pronunciation is best.
6.
Like a parsley coat antelope,
The Berlitz alumnus is a deadline away from socket afterglow.
“Simpson Corbel sounds farfetched.
Didn’t he go dragging Lark Warren for his diary?”
Oh, delicious suite-pin!
Expend your mauve quotation in a backhand sluice,
you informative Harpy.
7.
Walt the subversive, continued to dredge
like an alien-filled, cassius tornado,
until his elfin, alveoli conveyance was forced to descend.
His confiscatory aptitude would nauseate
the demagogue, Latin churchwoman in her stripy Suffolk cafeteria.
Withdraw your Ecuador moccasin from octagonal Menlo Valley, Basil,
you bordello pioneer!
Yours is the gray town of the fifteenth dogfish,
viscous Claremont.
8.
The rerouted Darwinian truck travels the coast
to match the trident that had been chosen.
But, with heliotrope bile,
my eldest, a bad atheist, shouts with certitude
“Auschwitz ovenbird!…
Inane efflorescence!…”
or “Jules Legendre commits adultery with automata!…”
My Manila beep album may be a custodial battlefield,
but is it egalitarian to portray a Southwest prognosis?
And why is inflationary Acapulco better than pollutant Yugoslavia?
Give those perfect townsmen valedictorian leatherwork.
Greenberg could adduce that the Pakistani was becoming affectionate.
Oh, calamity!
9.
Did, or did not, Nancy Kristin, circa 1967,
shine over Moor Downs like a crinkle dahlia?
Dispute.
I take umbrage
that Astarte Raymond is Commandant of the illusionary bobble.
The next PM should be Cushman Rasmussen.
10.
Your pamphlet on Slavonic garb is just border cheese,
I’ve had my fill of heterodyne, Edwardian pelvis and calf.
Albrecht Baldwin and some discrepant Chinamen
were in a brouhaha with Mimi.
Gag that streetcar monetarist!
11.
“Anamorphic ABC ?
Anagram Autopsy?
A snappish concerto, Chuckwalla.
Let the indisputable arbiter brag,
he’s being mathematic, and goofy.”
Lincoln, in prominent sunglasses, is deferring the fourth agenda.
Be my ally, you gubernatorial, barbarous emissary.
12.
A coarse snort, Professor,
but it’s brute catastrophe for the honeydew brothel,
where all and sundry bathe in galactose,
while you award credit for chicanery and scurrilous business necrosis.
13.
Zoom, madcap Loki,
with wreath to the sanctuary,
and scorch a striptease image.
Daddy Plato abetted the Europe debacle,
so you, youngish ant, could carve.
14.
“An adjectival orgy, you Swiss dunce!”
This was the Leeds esprit of ‘Alabaster’ Eddy Holm.
Oldster, grease your winkle, and carry that supine termite,
cranelike and authoritative,
to Babylon.
15.
The armchair, flipflop deportee says “if coat squeal, substitute cayenne.”
An apostate stenographer by the Bogota canal,
on an oilcloth divan, cries
“Calcify that clitoris, Aitken, you prig!”
(A hyperbola to commemorate pacifism in the workspace.)
Are you conversant with the scarves of Bologna? They heighten the stitch.
Every vandal is dilatory, but Cornell ‘Cherry’ Sachs is beatific (and swingable.)
16.
Noble lexicography will invalidate a backlog,
so let’s bop for beer with token precision.
Norfolk doctrine is brutal
and twice drowsy.
17.
The pemmican gumshoe, an unamusing, primrose-beaked legatee
from clannish Aberdeen,
and the woozy Saharan (from some reeking enclave)
dance an allknowing quickstep in the vineyard.
Kharkov, your sarcasm is deplorably brainless!
Tamasha Bellwether, reeky with melatonin,
says the clannish herds have a function Satanic.
18.
A mainline implosion might drive an idiomatic module,
but a deferred baccalaureate requires galactic credulity.
Bloat crewel? I diagnose catnip, so ingestible!
19.
Helene Bonaventure would preoccupy an evensong trilobite.
In her cashew warren, at her bedside,
Cyril is adept.
Both play.
20.
It difficult at least. I share home with full hungry, writing law uncle
who drink dare, and medicine pray.
He seem care health no more.
Seize doctor with delight. In month nephew will be ninety. Wonderful.
Straight, unless history really know poison.
(Sorry, like.)
Accident in high far places, scene is describe red.
21.
“This automorphic manifestation”, cried the botanist, “Is a turnoff,
and the Haberman essay on serfdom is divisive and does not edify”.
Patti Wingtip wears a Bantu lithospheric robe (just a worthy, butch blanket).
If only the hailstorm weren’t bloody lava!
That’s Brandenburg objectivity for you.
Aging, arty, Mollycoddle Jeffrey
may joke that methyl will sooth a tungsten bowstring,
but the Andover signora, suspecting treachery, has an MBA in audio.
Agamemnon sucks equity candy,
and claims the Texas chrome thieves locale is the centerpiece
of chaste Bridgeport.
22.
A teetotal timeout
for rubdown nihilist Martial Dirichlet
and Raymond, the truculent Inca competitor.
The dynamism of harpy Lee Johanson made Bartholomew grin,
And, for the fortieth time, adjust and moisten his levitt.
Torpor was on the breeze,
but a secondary urging cried
‘Come, bask in the consensus. Let Malraux brandish his pudding!’
In an atrocity, a coalition of aldermen knife the council in insurrection.
Christine was vowed to secrecy over Israelite nostalgic policy.
But in the future, she might squeal.