POETRY?

In my lectures on Latin elegy to some cardboard-cutout students

    loath to probe the bold and complex Propertius

the literal translation of a couplet left the point unclear,

    so I asked them what the poet actually meant.

Himalayas of indifference. I pressed them for the distich’s meaning,

    provoking one of them to respond from on high.

He snorted and spoke in withering italics for the philistine’s benefit:

    ‘It’s poetry: it’s not supposed to mean anything.’

SWINGING SIXTIES

A short back and sides with grey school trousers,

Keith crept through college in Hush Puppies,

plainly one of life’s librarians.

His room was next to mine, so I tried.

I held out my hand to shake – he recoiled.

My girlfriend said Hiya – his glasses steamed up.

He fled from others who sought him too

and spent his first term largely lurking.

Next term someone found out that during

the Christmas vac he’d boldly gone

and done a Dale Carnegie course

on how to make friends and influence people.

He actually accepted an invite to a do

in the Music Room. We all arrived early,

eager to see the suave new Keith.

At 7 he came, he saw, he faltered.

But then he strode across and enquired:

‘Is there a piano in the room?’

Told there wasn’t, he murmured: ‘Pity.

I happen to play uncommonly well.’

After that he said no more,

just downed lots of punch with a stick-on smile.

Later on he was found in the cloakroom,

hanging bat-like from a coat-hook

and howling: ‘Why does nobody love me?’

AN EVEN LOWER LIMBO

Kids – braindead doomscrollers under the influence.

That’s entertainment now.

The opium of the masses – apps.

Thank god when we were growing up, we weren’t addicted, exploited,

gobbling insipid, sinister garbage hour after hour. 

Coronation Street.       Mr Pastry.    Danger Man.     Billy Two Rivers.     Fancy Smith. 

Here we go Looby Loo, with a hearty hi-o Silver.

USS Enterprise Captain’s Log stardate 1329.2:

Trill makes your budgie bounce with health, meep meep.

Maid Marion, made to make your mouth water.

Dutch egg yolk, good for folk, Warninks Advocaat;

eveninks and morninks I drink Warninks, duh, flobbadob, shobbalob.

The Good Old Days:

Amos ‘n’ Andy, The Black and White Minstrel Show.

Efrem Zimbalist Junior,

for your throat’s sake, smoke Craven A.

From the immortal pen of James Fenimore Cooper: yabba-dabba-doo!

And tonight’s star prize is

a can of Spam, full of eastern promise.          Ooooh!

The Benny hill Show…dodgy.

Avaunt, Sir Lancelot: the Daz White Knights are coming your way.

Sssch, you know who: Jimmy Savile. Exterminate! Exterminate!

Skippy, Skippy, Skippy the bush kangaroo,

you’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.

My goodness, my Guinness is dreaming of shoes and rice.

Ivanhoe, Ivanhoe, roses grow on you,

softly, softly,

your life in their hands.