Sylvia’s Verse; Right Thinking; A Nearly Ballade of Poetic Misery

Sylvia’s Verse

She never should have married him, she never should have wed.

She should’ve stayed a single girl and kept her single bed.

For pity’s sake, her big mistake was saying yes to Ted.

He was hairy, he was handsome, he had dreamy bedroom eyes.

Let me feel your pain and take the strain. I deeply sympathise

He could knock them down like ninepins, it was really no surprise.

A handsome man with bedroom eyes, a poet and a scholar.

A diamond geezer, made to please, a hundred cents a dollar,

An English gent and Heaven sent to rescue girls from squalor.

And yet, do not forget, too many poets in a house is

Just an overplus of verse that leads to quarrels and to grouses.

Yes, the bard life is a hard life, that’s unless you wear the trousers.

Oh, she should’ve been a saga not a single, sad novella,

For she wasn’t patient Grizel and she wasn’t Cinderella

And she should have done a runner with another sort of feller,

Say a fancy sort of feller with a fashion in frivolity,

A jokey sort of bloke who spun a line in jazz and jollity,

A Yankee Doodle dandy with a Technicolor quality.

But eerie, dark and dreary, Ted was lacking in romance,

Just a sombre sort of hombre who had never learned to dance.

Yup! she should’ve upped and buggered off the time she had the chance.

Right Thinking

Little Lefties lurk in cupboards,

Or they skulk beneath the stairs.

You will never see them singly

For they congregate in pairs

As they talk about affairs:

Chatter-chatter, mutter-mutter,

Waffle-waffle, mumble-mumble,

Every little lefty nutter

With his little lefty grumble.

They will bite you if it’s prudent,

They will screw you if they’re able,

Every little lefty rodent

With his little lefty label.

Makes a little lefty Babel:

Pinch it, prod it, scrape it, scratch it,

Moan and maunder, drone and drivel

Every little lefty rat-shit

With his little lefty snivel.

With his soul sold down the river

And his honour commandeered,

What a hapless, helpless, hopeless

Woozy windbag little weird

With his ratty little beard!

Natter-natter, rabbit-rabbit,

Scribble-scribble in the margin

(Nasty little lefty habit).

You will find him in The Guardian.

A Nearly Ballade of Poetic Misery

(The chorus is lifted from Dennis O’Driscoll’s

Bloodaxe Book of Poetry Quotations.)

We’re the poets stuck up on our pillars.

We’re the poets sat down in the dumps.

One or two are as sweet as chinchillas

But we’re most of us terrible grumps.

I’m composing out here in the dunny

With sweet bugger all to bequeath,

For there’s not much chinking of money,

But plenty of grinding of teeth.

While the novelists lounge in their villas,

We squat in our greasy old tumps

Where we scratch at our fleas like gorillas

And hug our camelious humps.

It’s the land of sour milk and no honey,

It’s the land of the sad laurel wreath.

Lord, there’s not much chinking of money,

But plenty of grinding of teeth.

We’re the fag-smoking, balding beer-swillers

Whose hearts never get to be trumps.

We would love to be young lady-killers

But we know we are lardy old lumps,

Our existence is stale and unsunny

In our bard-ridden burrows beneath,

Where there’s not much chinking of money,

But plenty of grinding of teeth.

Prince, it’s futile to try to be funny,

Or to howl like the hags on the heath.

No, there’s not much chinking of money,

But plenty of grinding of teeth.