Wednesday, 29 March 2017

Backwards Bucket List




















I'm fifty eight years old right now
Just two years short of sixty
I've done an awful lot of stuff
Some of it kinda nifty
And so I thought I'd have a try
to put it all on record
Like a sort of Bucket List
but coming at it backward

So

I ran right up Ben Nevis
and back down it in the rain
I ran thirty half marathons
and don't have to again
I reached the top one hundred
in a British martial art
I put a clock together
after first taking it apart (and it worked)

I wrote a load of poems
and published my own book
Still available from Amazon
Why don't you take a look
I once crossed the Atlantic
in a propeller driven plane
Then they invented jet aircraft
to bring me home again

In forty years of driving
I have done one million miles
There're few roads I've not been along
in these our British Isles
Last year I went to Istanbul
alone by motorbike
And earlier this year
I spun my car into a dyke

I have dodged a terror bomb
and avoided two train crashes
I've been on a sinking ferry
but avoided all the splashes
I've helped a baby being born
and seen an old man die
And learned that there are many things
that make this old man cry

All these things that I have done
I've few ambitions left
I've fired a machine gun
I've flown a fighter jet
I've got children and grandchildren
and a tattoo on my chest
But out of all the things I've done
the children are the best





Sunday, 12 March 2017

Witty city Ditty














Today I went down
to the centre of town
to drink coffee, to see and be seen
and, as I can't draw
all the things that I saw
I will sit here and type on this screen

I saw big bulging tums
on the expectant mums
the poor darlings just can't see their feet
I saw pigeons, like bums
all alert for the crumbs
that we drop from the fast food we eat

I saw traders lick thumbs
to help counting the sums
that they make from flogging their gear
I saw kids from the slums
knicking peaches and plums
and them making themselves disappear

All the life in this city
some sweet and some gritty
you will miss if you don't take look
So I'll try to be witty
while writing this ditty
and then publish it in my next book.