Poems – Songs, Sonnets, and the Reveries of a Reject

#4 Thanks To You

This is a thanks to you for existing
Terrified I’d never find such womankind
But someone was listening
Gratitude to whoever sent me you
My peace of mind
Diamond in the rough
Can’t help but stand and admire
Watch you glisten
Thanks to you

Happy Valentine’s Day baby

Lots of Love

xoxo

As we have reached Valentine’s Day I felt it was appropriate to share a poem I wrote, a year or two ago, for my partner on this “day of romance”. I attached the poem above to a bouquet of flowers I’ve since forgotten, nevertheless it went down rather well.

I’ve never been too keen on the concept of Valentine’s Day. Not that I am against going out of your way to show your love for your significant other, but I am a bit of a scrooge when it comes to the 14th of February. The tradition of buying flowers, chocolate and a card is certainly as pointed and particular as Cupid’s bow, and to me a little disingenuous and perhaps a little removed from it’s Greek beginnings. When you look around at the marketing which is shoved in your face at every opportunity it very much feels nothing more than a ploy to boost profits in supermarkets.

The tradition of buying flowers, chocolate and a card is certainly as pointed and particular as Cupid’s bow, and to me a little disingenuous…

Raphael, ‘The Voyage of Galatea,’ 1511 from “The History of Cupid in Art: How the God of Love Has Inspired Artists for Centuries” https://mymodernmet.com/art-history-of-cupid/2/

If you look at the history of Valentine’s Day, much like Christmas Day and other similar events (the religious origins aside), the rise of media, marketing, and large commercial corporations across the modern western landscape, are the true driving forces in instilling a sense of necessity when it comes to these periods of “giving”: the people at the top of these corporate hierarchies are the only real winners in my eyes. It has reached a point whereby you are seen as some mad scientist or grouchy hermit if you don’t buy into them. That assessment is probably accurate though.

Humans on a whole, I would say, much more readily remember, and value, experiences, over material goods. Sure, you could organise a romantic weekend getaway in some niche UK location for the price of a week all-inclusive holiday in Cancun, but you could do that on any other weekend of the year and likely save a few quid and avoid the inevitable Valentine’s price hike.

Bar humbug!

If you are one of those lovely chaps half-cut in a pub the night before, rambling on about the scam of Valentine’s Day, I would find it very hard to disagree with you, but I would recommend nipping to the corner shop on your way home anyway: it’s just a scam us men can’t avoid.

What definitely isn’t a scam however, is the love I feel for my partner, and like 99.9% of women out there, would be greatly aggrieved if I failed to engage in the frivolous festivities of this fateful fayre.

After all, the onous is all on the man in this department, but I say “where are our flowers and pampering?!”. Or if that’s not for him, maybe just let your fella hit the pub after your slap-up meal. My other half will have to wait for any such treats as I’m away working, but I’m confident she’ll enjoy this moan filled post: the memory of a gift from a bygone Valentine’s will have to satiate her appetite for now.

#2 Twins

I wrote these poems for my sister after she gave birth to twins.

Twins; what a marvellous gift of nature they truly are.

They have always fascinated me, and when I found out my big sister was adding to her collection with twins, I was super excited. When I found out that they weren’t identical, however, I was thoroughly disappointed. The disappointment, of course, was quickly replaced by adoration for such beautiful dainty beings: that woman is one good baby-maker. Her psychology doctorate will surely come in handy with all those offspring running amuck. And so, I threw these together in celebration of the arrival:

Little sweet bundle of joy

Be brave, be happy, not shy, nor coy

A warm welcome to the world

Be strong, be smart, be yourself, beautiful girl



A wonderful gift you'll surely be

To the world, to us, and any eyes that see

Don't be afraid, be loud, make noise

For the world is your oyster, beautiful boy

If I remember correctly, I was met with the incredulous response of “Did you write these?!”… I’ll take that as a compliment, sis.

A great many things come in pairs: left and right, knife and fork, matter and anti-matter (ignore the dark stuff), peanut butter and chocolate, peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and peanut butter…and the list goes on… sausage and mash, salt and vinegar, Penn and Teller, Batman and Robin, Tom and Jerry, Mario and Luigi, Bill and Ben the flowerpot men, and apparently, babies too. You gotta love a set of twins. You may not point and exclaim “TWINS!” every single time you spot them in public like I do, but I do think there exists a collective fascination for the phenomenon.

If you’d like to see an example of how excited I get when I see twins, enjoy this almost identical video of the late Queen excited by cows.

My mind used to race with fantasies of having a twin brother and all the fun and mischief we could have achieved together. I think the idea of having a twin, a genetically identical best friend for life, was very appealing to me, having struggled to make meaningful connections as a child and have that brotherly best friend figure help me through. A good example of that twin-like bond comes in the form of the 1988 film “Twins”. Despite their rocky start, eventually, their bond shines through.

Featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito, whose style of acting, I feel, really helped to offset the wooden Schwarzenegger. Great little comedy this, certainly worth a look.

#1 Nothing Much to Do

I’ve been deliberating for some time about starting a blog altogether. Further rumination came regarding my first post, with a breakthrough arriving in the form of an oppurtunistic sifting session of old school books during a house move.

Finally, I settled on the idea of sharing one of my earliest pieces of writing. It seemed to amuse my teachers at the time, and I must say, was thoroughly amusing to write at the time, too.

The year is 1998; Monica Lewinsky had Bill Clinton in her mouth, with Tony Blair not too far behind her; Titanic won everything, including the dumbest death ever; Lauryn Hill completed music, whilst Robbie Williams ended it by leaving Take That; something pretty big happened in Ireland, with something else big brewing in the middle-east and the US not too far behind; Arsenal won the league by a point vs Beckham’s United, that same Number 7 not only lost the title but lost his head and got sent off at the World Cup in France, and all the while I was two days away from my 7th birthday in a classroom in Cheshunt crafting my literary legacy.

I must have been in good spirits, as a large portion of the content in this book, particularly the solely creative endeavours, often ended rather violently. This one, however, ended considerably lighter.

Early in the morning, dog and me
Looking out the window, nothing much to see
Day's getting older, sun's up high
Nothing much to do
But sit on the loo

Clearly a big dreamer as a kid. I just wanted to sit on the toilet with my doggo by my side. I can only assume I’ve returned to pen this poem in ink as I’d remembered it and wanted to increase it’s permanence due to anxiety, as if some Russian spy would infiltrate the attic and furiously rub out this masterpiece and it would be lost forever. And now I have gone a few steps further and increased its permanence to, well, forever.

Pencil, pen, eternity.

“Good work. You really have been trying so hard. Also, enjoy this sticker of a clown.”

I would say the cultural significance of a clown has changed a little since then. Once heralded as a pioneer in youthful entertainment, a joyous gift of laughter, now reduced to being the butt of a joke in a tragedy, or a comedy for that matter, or conversely the petrifying villain in a horror flick.

Hollywood still seems to enjoy sticking them in the background of Judd Apatow and Marvel films, despite clown being such a prevalent insult, light-hearted or otherwise, certainly here in the UK and indeed the US; I’m not confident the clown sticker would be well received in today’s climate. I think it’s too often preceded by the f word, for instance, when someone cuts in front of you.

I will often go off on tangents, such as the cultural significance of clowns. Don’t be alarmed, I’m just a bit mad… but it does beg the question…

…what do you think of when you see a clown?

For me it’s the scene in the 1989 film Uncle Buck when John Candy’s character, the aforementioned Buck, punches a party hire clown for turning up to his nephew’s birthday drunk (Uncle Buck – Clown). Iconic. That, and cheeseburgers.

I would like to say the following works are of a higher quality, but I may well have peaked in 1998.