POEMS - With Tongue In Cheek

[Rob H]

Keith, That's my only Limerick, I'm afraid! I was educated on English Classics....my school having strong links with The Bronte Sisters! My Prep School being: Bronte House School in Yorkshire.

[keithgood838]

Hi Rob, I confess to not being enamoured of
the Bronte sisters poetry; their stuff always
seems to me to reflect, perhaps inevitably,
the bleak beauty of the West Yorkshire pennines.
Eg:

Speak of the North! A lonely Moor

Speak of the North! A lonely moor
Silent and dark and tractless swells.
The waves of some wild streamlet pour
Hurriedly through its ferny dells.

Profoundly still the twilight air,
Lifeless the landscape; so we deem
Till like a phantom gliding near
A stag bends down to drink the stream.

And far away a mountain zone,
A cold, white waste of snow-drifts lies,
And one star. large and soft and lone,
Silently lights the unclouded skies.

Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)

[keithgood838]

BORN FREE
(And buffeted but unbowed)

The iconic libertarian of the vast Monro fraternity
prevails, despite the slights and salutes of a storied past:
pulled unforewarnedly from film premiere participation,
which was set-in-stone cast;
buoyed by the boost of an Oscar 'best song'
then denied by life's fickle reputation
in ruling out a performance gong,
and recently caricatured at the behest of Mammon
in a presumptuous, euphony-distorting perversion.
Like King Arthur's indestructible Excalibur,
the anthem rises above such man-made murk,
reaffirming a recorded work of apex-high calibre.

Keith Good

[keithgood838]

QE

Like a well-meaning but misguided mother,
The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street
plans to inject into the British economy another,
this time £50bn, tranche of quantitative easing
(it will languish in banks's vaults offsetting credit defaults)
with not a penny reaching the cash-strapped nation.

Here's a proposal for guaranteed population pleasing:
The Old Lady should instead gift £200 to every family,
thereby jump-starting stalled economic activity
while intensifying her QE establishment counterpart's
joyous diamond jubilee celebration.

Keith Good (March 2012)

[keithgood838]

FLAMES FANNING

Sir Winston will be spinning in his grave
on learning that the tax relief he gave
to pensioners has been removed by stealth
to finance a tax cut for folk with wealth.
It is playing with political fire
to stoke the powerful grey-vote's ire.

Keith Good

[keithgood838]

DISPLACED DOG DAYS

Temperatures daily rise
to acclaim bright blue skies
as the sun's rays pitilessly parch;
flora fights for survival
soon after its arrival,
proving we should 'beware the Ides of March'.

Keith Good

[keithgood838]

ACROSTIC

What a plentiful,
And free
Thanks to our Creator,
Essential to life
Renewable resource.

Keith Good

[keithgood838]

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Should you fancy a succulent pasty
but do not like the VAT that is due,
the trick is, don't be hasty,
for a deal that is tasty
do not wait at the front of the queue.

Keith Good

[Gray]

Love it, Keith

I have another plan, forget fuel, we should all be stockpiling pasties and sausage rolls

[keithgood838]

More food for thought there, Gray.
I, too, am partial to a bit of tasty satire:

OIL ON TROUBLED WATERS

While forecourt supplies were still flowing,
Whitehall wiseacres were all-knowing:
'Top up,' urged that Maude man,
'and fill your jerry can,'
despite Acas moves still ongoing.

Keith Good

[keithgood838]

APPRECIATION

Should Francis Ledwidge be one whit like me,
he will beam with modest satisfaction
(albeit in his celestial eyrie)
knowing his verses gained approving traction
with this kind, cultured fraternity.

A RAINY DAY IN APRIL

When the clouds shake their hyssops, and the rain
Like holy water falls upon the plain,
'Tis sweet to gaze upon the springing grain
And see your harvest born.

And sweet the little breeze of melody
The blackbird puffs upon the budding tree,
While the wild poppy lights upon the lea
And blazes 'mid the corn.

The skylark soars the freshening shower to hail,
And the meek daisy holds aloft her pail,
And Spring all radiant by the wayside pale
Sets up her rock and reel.

See how she weaves her mantle fold on fold,
Hemming the woods and carpeting the wold.
Her warp is of the green, her wool the gold,
The spinning world her wheel.

Francis Ledwidge (1887-1917)

[keithgood838]

The centenary of the Titanic sinking, in 1912, has spawned
a plethora of media coverage, yet it is my contention that the
torpedoing of her White Star Line sister ship, the Lusitania,
three years later, off the south-west coast of Ireland, makes for
an infinitely more compelling story.
The Titanic tragedy was a desperately sad but straightforward
natural disaster. The Lusitania debacle, incurring the loss
of 1198 lives (785 passengers and 413 crew) was man made
and occurred against a wartime background replete with political
intrigue and human interest.
In an echo of Titanic the fatalities of the Lusitania were taken
to Queenstown (whence the former departed for America)
where they were laid out in three temporary morgues set up
in the Town Hall.
It was my great privilege to proof-read my friend, Paddy O'Sullivan's,
definitive book on the subject: The LUSITANIA - Unravelling the Mysteries,
published in 1998.
The experience brought forth some verses, which I am content to
reproduce here:

AUTHOR-SHIP

From the stricture the Muse imposes
on most of us,
she made Patrick O'Sullivan exempt;
he wrote his Lusitania magnum opus
at his first publishing attempt.
The sapid, soul-searching chapter
he titled, The Town of the Dead,
stands as the pinnacle of poignant literature
one feels privileged to have read.

WINTER-WARMER

On cold-snap days awaiting
their chance to chill the bones,
it will be lenitive to look
back and bask in the glow
of crew membership on the fascinating
voyage of Paddy O'Sullivan's
enlightening Lusitania book
all those year ago ...

Paddy did me the great honour of letting me have
the last word in his book, featuring the following
beneath a cartoon of mother Civilisation weeping
on a beach for the souls lost from the Lusitania:

Nature is cruel but understood
in starving beast or storm-roused sea,
but how can man, in ice-cold blood,
much more malevolent be.

[keithgood838]

WORDS AND MUSIC MAGIC

Rapt, I hear that a paean by a likable, extrovert,
maestro music producer was a booster thrust
that propelled Matt's skyward, Michelangelo-invoked,
path-finding climber into the stratosphere of the charts;
his name: Jack Good. I am blessed with a likable,
extrovert, eight-year-old grandson, his name - Jack Good.

Enraptured, I hear, twice over
like Browning's April thrush,
my mavourneen Matt Monro renditions
crafted in the music Happy Valley called Hoagland
which, if they would not warm the coldest hearts,
then no other ear-ecstasying sounds ever could.

Keith Good

[Eman]

Love your stuff Keith! Ever think of having them printed as a book?

[keithgood838]

Hi Eman
Thanks for your kind words of commendation.
They mean a lot to me because, with a few notable
exceptions, I am never sure that a poem has worked;
only when it still appears fresh and appealing on being
re-read, a year or so later, am I convinced of its literary
merit. Ultimately, I would be proud to publish a book
of Matt Monro poems (now numbering 35), however
currently I am content to spend days on cloud nine
in the knowledge that my fellow forumites have enjoyed
(as you have) my tributes to our marvellous Matt.