Poetry
APLE
I stood
Melancholy and mystified
Clutching the polished piano
As other children played about me.
No play for me:
My spelling was wrong -
At least she said it was.
I was content
That a-p-l-e spelt 'apple'
As well as I wanted.
But she, a teacher
Thought she knew better.
With all the authority
Of my full five years
I fought back my tears,
Prepared again
To hold my shaky ground.
Mike Wood
Christopher Robin Bids Goodbye To Pooh Bear!
They won't let me ever do nothing again
Not now that I'm going to school;
They tell me there's maths,
With equations and graphs,
And things that sound horribly cruel!
They won't let me swear,
Or choose what to wear,
Or choose when I'm eating my lunch;
In fact I can see, I'll never be free
And here's where we come to the crunch -
They say that it's good
And every child should
Be eager to suffer this pain.
But I'm not so sure
I'm eagerly for
To never do nothing again!
Mike Wood
Fourteen
There we stood,
The four of us,
Under the satin sky
On a North Downs slope.
Two boys, two girls,
First love, new world.
Estelle, beautiful, standoffish,
My choice, no chance.
We had pushed
Through the encroaching bushes
Up the cloying chalk path
On somebody's way home -
By an indirect route!
Awestruck by the sky
Somebody said,
"The silence of eternity"
From a hymn we all knew.
"Interpreted by love,"
Sprang to mind,
Thinking of Estelle.
But she stood
Three feet off from my dreams
And cooler than the stars above us.
Mike Wood
Grammaring
i can't be doing with verbs
and nouns just aren't the thing
i can't describe all things adjectival
and pronouns just aren't it
adverbs i'm doing badly
conjunctions are split apart
in fact my grammaring
just takes a hammering
i really haven't the heart
Mike Wood
Hang on to Your Dad
Written on seeing a young child clinging to her dad on the back of a pushbike
Hang on to your dad
They don't last long -
Some just copulate
Then they're gone;
Some hang on longer
Till the terrible twos
Then they move on.
They've nothing to lose
By moving out for a bit of peace.
Living on their own's
A merciful release!
Hang on to your dad
They don't last long.
Hang on to your dad
They don't last long:
Primary homework -
Getting it wrong
May hurt their pride
And send them off
To do their own thing
Where it's not so rough.
'Managing kids is women's work
Peace and quiet
Is a father's perk'.
Hang on to your dad
They don't last long.
Hang on to your dad
They don't last long:
Teenage tantrums -
A real ding-dong
May send them running
To another's arms
To a younger model
With younger charms.
Daughters' boyfriends
They just can't cope
Or love-lorn daughters
Who sit and mope.
Hang on to your dad
They don't last long
Hang on to your dad
You need him there
Parents of your family - You need a pair
Hold him tight
So he'll know you care -
And hang on...
Mike Wood
Summer Purpose Prayer
Let me laze my languid Summer
Don't disturb my distant dreams;
Open up my richer vistas
Life is never what it seems.
Tame my monkey-mind's persistence,
Still my heart and quiet my mind.
I would see a greater distance
And learn from what I've left behind.
But leaving then those two dimensions
Help me ponder where I am.
Not to senseless seek sensation
But to open wider eyes,
Attenuate a keener hearing,
Tame my heart and bare my soul,
Let me feel my maker nearer
Moulding me a fuller whole.
Let me only move when bidden,
May I only speak when told -
Some of this is Summer's purpose,
Summoning Summer's purer gold.
Mike Wood
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