OUR REVELS ARE OVER

OUR REVELS ARE OVER

The very essence of
Nostalgic disappointment
Is wishing that

A "big" bag of Revels
Lasted for longer than
A minute and a half

And still contained
The coconut ones as well as
The peanut ones

MAWH, Nov 2017

CAKE LIMERICKS

There was a young lad name of Henry
On his birthday fell out of a tree
They cancelled his bash
The cake's in the trash
Life's full of such sad tragedy

‪There once was a young lad called Jake‬
Whose grandma baked his birthday cake
On the theme of football
Which he didn't like at all
So that cake felt like such a mistake

‪Proud grandma baked her Henry a treat‬
Making it right knocked her off her feet
When she took it around
Can you guess what she found
They'd just had one from Asda to eat

‪There once was a young lad called Jake‬
‪Whose grandma baked his birthday cake‬
‪On the theme of football‬
‪Which he didn't like at all‬
‪And icing the wrong name was a mistake ‬

PERSONAL DIAMOND COLLECTION

PERSONAL DIAMOND COLLECTION
Harry and Meghan

Meghan and Harry

Announced to the world

Their decision to marry

Markle and Windsor
Windsor and Markle
Show off a bloody big ring
With a ruddy great sparkle

The Prince and the Actress
The Actress and the Prince
Two diamonds from his mother’s
Personal collection of precious things

The plebs and the oiks
The oiks and the plebs
Will forget all of their problems
Where there's a marriage with celebs

The cynics and the grumblers
The grumblers and the cynics
Wonder what the fuss is for
When there's a country to be fixed

The nobodies and non-stars

The non-stars and nobodies

Keep on lapping up this most

Tiresome of human follies

Meghan and Harry
Harry and Meghan
Seems the most important thing
Since the universe began

Windsor and Markle
Markle and Windsor
The most eligible bloke
Is the one who wins her

The actress and the prince
The prince and the actress
Hiding other great big stories
Of a government in distress

The oiks and the plebs
The plebs and the oiks

Waving flags at the gates

Of the big house with the spikes

The grumblers and the cynics

The cynics and the grumblers
Wonder if we've a personal

Diamond collection among us

The non-stars and nobodies

The nobodies and non-stars

Wonder if they might suggest

Their diamonds are really ours

MAWH, November 27th 2017

(That reminds me, I must see how my own personal diamond collection is getting on... Oh...)

LEAVING WITH CAPALDI (ARTWORK)

BOREDCHURCH

BOREDCHURCH

I noticed on the cover
of the
Broadchurch
DVD set it says:

"This is about as good
As TV drama gets"

and I thought

"That's a shame..."

MAWH, Nov 2017

WHEN I WAS EIGHT

WHEN I WAS EIGHT

When I was eight

The back door of the house

We lived in back then

Was at the side of the house

So I could look straight inside

The back door of the next house

If the door was open

When I was eight

When I was eight

In between our two houses

There was a driveway running

Through the semi-detached gap

And a pair of tall wooden gates

With lattices that made

The sunlight square

When I was eight

When I was eight

Uncle Clifford’s half had flagstones

Ours had crazy paving

My Dad would lie down

On warm summer evenings

Cleaning out moss

With his penknife

When I was eight

When I was eight

I sat on the doorstep

One warm square-lit evening

Deciding my lucky number

Would always be eight

And my unlucky one

Was going to be nine

When I was eight

Martin A W Holmes, November 2017

ONE STREET OVER

ONE STREET OVER

Those not-so-mean streets one street over

Once I loitered rejected around the corner

As they all party played on without me

Russell and Simon and Michael

And Paddy and Tracy and Gill

Names from the past I never saw again

Once we uniformed up to big school

Childhood and friendships flickered out

One by one as we grew up and moved away

Not so much a lost childhood as one mislaid

The smell of Michael’s back garden tent

Deep blue on a hot summer’s afternoon

Corgi cars crashed in vices and collisions

Toys in flames as bonfires smouldered

The leather seats of an old Morris Minor

That suddenly leapt into life one afternoon

Above a precarious garden plummet

Next to Russell’s soon-to-be lost dad’s

Green Bedford van with the sliding doors

All those other dads that died or went away

I don’t remember childhood much

Time’s blind has it blinkered and buried

Some memories improve forgotten

Apart from on those sleepless nights

When the midnight ghouls want to bite

Fragments prod me awake to recall

The writing on the bed head

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea in biro

Bath time games and other funless fun

Keys on chains growing up too young

Swinging golf clubs catching bloody noses

Endlessly bicycled dark nights and summer days

Secret Patrol clubs; lost darts in the long grass

Endless hours on the Bonks building dens

Muddy streams oranged by scrapyard rust

The telling off after the games in the cellar

A dark incident that got out of hand

I never see them now except in dreams

Those sometimes mean streets one street over

Maybe other children play there now

Martin A W Holmes, November 2017

THE OWL BOTHERER (ARTWORK)

I thought it might be a good idea to try combining one of my poems with one of my paintings... So I did :-)