Wednesday's the day for our wheelie bin.
I wheel the thing out and then push it back in.
Hang out the washing, take it down,
Wander slowly with some letters into town,
Return hours later; the washing's dry,
Emptily hanging against the sky
Like a Margaret Tempest picture in a children's book -
The Little Grey Rabbit series - the ones I took
Up to the attic just the other day -
My children's kids will read them when they're tired of play.
Today I used a tennis sock to clean the top
Of the spin-drier and the old machine
That I bought many years ago in a shop
And still it chunters on, a literal routine
Just like the dryer. When I wash my vest
Out after running, spin it till it's dry
Or more or less dry, hang it with the rest,
The other stuff that I put out before.
A phrase, they're drying out, just like
An alcoholic who's fallen off his bike
And is advised for his own body's good
To give the booze up, concentrate on food
Washed down with water, orange juice, and tea
Which will top up his own fluidity
And keep him on the strait and narrow path,
Not let him have to take an early bath
Like some daft footballer who's bleached his hair
And think being macho means to curse and swear
'S OK behaviour, beating up your wife
Or girlfriend's a normal part of life.
Don't worry, pal - they'll get you in the end,
Cigarettes and whisky, you'll find that you depend
Much more on friendship to sweeten your existence.
However, one must admire the sheer persistence -
Well, not admire it, note it in one's mind -
With which some people determinedly ignore
Their nicer side, and keep on being unkind
To others, to themselves. These buggers haven't got
Hold of the idea: we only get one shot
(Or so it seems to be) at life
So might as well try harder, avoid strife
And generally miss out on all that stuff.
(I'd have to say, it took me long enough
To cotton on and stop feeling so bad,
Up and down all the time, it was so sad
In all the senses of that little word:
Miserable, pointless, totally absurd,
Ridiculous, illogical, pathetic,
Static, not moving, not at all kinetic -
Happily for me Fate put me in the know
(Or was it Chance again) about Bioflow,
That little magnet strapped around my wrist,
That makes me vital. Now I can resist
All but temptation (just like Oscar Wilde
But not a homosexual or a child-
Molester - not that he was) and declare
My talent to be a constituent of air,
Oxygen namely, that invades my mind
And drives the words around, as in the wind
(A common usage, long ago accepted
Is that poets can sometimes do things not expected,
Like rhyming 'wind' and 'kind') dry leaves whirl
And patterned cloudlets in the heavens curl
(Note there again a deliberate example
Of duff rhymes; no doubt I've written ample
Without observing them, so that some dull
Pedant can write complaining, strike out, cull
Line upon line where insufficient care
Has caused commotion in his Brylcreemed hair
So that he groans and puts aside
My verses, to lie there till petrified
Just like the fish in tranquil Dura Den
I mentioned further up: evidence then
That I am not that (non-existent) rarity -
Someone divorced from nature's circularity.
