Bad News

Today you said that you wished you were dead
and told me you just could not bare to face
today at school or any other place,
insisted you would stay moping in bed.
Then I found the crumpled letter you’d read;
I could see how this cloud of an ink stain
hid everything but the arrows that rained
down from the sky on your kind-hearted head.
At last I understood your hopelessness
in the harsh, curtained-off, late autumn gloom
but knew that you’d come to your senses soon
reminding yourself of your new pink dress:
then gusts of sea air would clear out your head,
you’d know from your tears you could not be dead.


Peter Keeble

There But For...

It wasn’t Winnie the Pooh
humming quietly to himself,
just a fragmented childhood
simpering to the surface.
He maybe didn’t know
the Inca words he mumbled
with their sprigs of hope
and splashes of gold,
tumbling down his Mayan steps
straight out of Raiders…

He listened
though to what we didn’t find out,
he looked pin-sharp
definitely not one slice short.
His grey gushing moustache
dazzled with Santa Claus charm.
In fact, almost every angle
tainted him Mr proper bloke,
king of the normals,
yet still he shuffled
some micro-waltz for one,
spinning and spinning,
a lone dervish,
on the crowded
pavement of life.

Jerry Pike

Novembere Rain

November rain came slanting down upon
the streets of Harrow town,
and very probably it fell
upon the Pinner streets as well.,
and, maybe, - how was 1 to know?
on Paddington and Pimlico
or even all the country over
from John 0' Groats' House
down to Dover,
But anyhow in Station Road
the drains and gutters overflowed.
A river flooded down the street,
and 1 was soaked from head to feet.
And now I'm shivering and sneezing,
and sometimes hot, and sometimes freezing.
My handkerchief is soaked right through.
A-tish A-tish! A-tish! Atchoo!

John Waddell