Dr. Seuss I've never read -
No cat of mine has hat on head!
On childrens' poems that casts no pall
I love to hear from Roald Dahl!

From tales of wolf and pigs we see
that 'rely on self' will keep you free.
Rely on others' moral sense
can oftentimes be kind of dense.

Even little girls so nice -
reported made of sugar and spice -
can sometimes be a little cruel
that little pig was just a fool.

When wolf came, pig called for her aid,
but didn't think she'd need be paid.
"The small girl smiles, her eyelid flickers
She whips a pistol from her knickers

She aims it at the creature's head
and BANG! BANG! BANG! she shoots him ... dead."
Besides the wolfskin coat she got,
a pigskin case is now her lot.

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Wyrd bið ful aræd - bull!

I realise that this thread was intended for work of our own pen, but I couldn't resist including this gem.

The poet has a little trouble sometimes with the number of syllabubbles in each line - but you have to admit that his sense of rhyme is fine.



If you wish to see more - here are his complete works.

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Wyrd bið ful aræd - bull!

It's a treasure-trove for weirdoes like me.

Probably why I like it.

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Wyrd bið ful aræd - bull!

The vagaries of English spelling
Leave many baffled students yelling.
Likewise, the quirks of pronunciation
Cause them to cry out in frustration.
The basic rules are bad enough,
For they include some illogical stuff.
Ee and oo are not E and O pronounced long;
If you said them like that, you would be quite wrong.
In the late Middle Ages they began to drift,
Like other sounds in the Great Vowel Shift,
Towards a uniquely English form
Which native speakers accept as the norm.
Eu sounds like 'oo' – I don't know why –
And ai isn't said like the letter I.
When we move on to some irregular word,
The learner is tempted to shout "That's absurd!"
Most tongues in which words change their sound over history
Alter their spelling; but what is a mystery
Is why many English words keep their old orthography –
Maybe it's to do with British geography.
Silent or fickle letters abound,
And then, of course, there's the famous ough sound.
Anomalous place names are often still worse,
But they're beyond the scope of this present verse.

I usually only read, but wait - I feel the need to participate

I love this forum with all its decorum

its posters delight almost every night

and fill me with needing to just keep on reading

whatever you write leaves me feeling quite bright.

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I'm not lost for I know where I am. But however, where I am may be lost. Winnie-the-Pooh

We complain of the weather when we need a warm hat,
but Britain's not really as bad as all that.
When here the raindrops are almost hard ice,
In Berlin frozen diesel's not nice.
We have a wind - blows down a few fences,
but Florida's hurricanes leave them defenseless.

"How you doing?" - "Oh, can't complain.
But I'd rather have sun than this awful rain."
"Oh, the sun's not too good, with my delicate skin,
a lobster can't beat the red state I'm in."
The Wintersmith tries to please everyone
By changing it hourly - and that's no fun.

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Wyrd bið ful aræd - bull!

Muses come and go.
As they please, they flow.
inside our dreams, subconcious mind,
they leave gifts, treasures we can find.

This verse
Is terse,
But I've been
Off the scene
To write
On another site
The odd bit
Of poetic wit,
Devising rhyme
In my spare time,
And making it scan
If I possibly can.
But now I'm back
To have a crack
At RPG
On TFD.

Now Christmas is near,
We should be of good cheer.
Just three days remain
And it's windy with rain,
So it's hard to keep dry
Though the temperature's high,
And Santa – poor fella –
Will need an umbrella
And boots for the mud
In case of a flood.
His presents may get
A little bit wet,
But there's no need to weep
As they're probably cheap.
He doesn't like greed
Because people in need
Would not think it funny
If those with the money
Were blessed by St Nick
Instead of the sick.
The relief of the poor
Is what Christmas is for,
So don't fill your bellies
But put on your wellies
And offer some charity
And festive hilarity.

We tend to think there's such a thing as absolute morality –
Some basic precepts that transcend particular locality,
Which, far from being products of historical contingency,
Persist through every period with undiminished stringency.

Alas, such anthropology turns out to be erroneous,
For what one age and place applauds, another deems felonious.
Are gladiators savages, or paragons of bravery?
What basis had good men of yore for justifying slavery?

The British law had never banned the hanging of a criminal,
Then suddenly the Zeitgeist changed – I think it was subliminal.
Well-mannered English jurists claimed the Rope was a barbarity.
('Twas different in the States, for there the unrefined have parity.)

The fierce, capricious Yahweh, venerated in antiquity,
Grew mellow and impartial, which befitted his ubiquity.
We now expect our Lord to stress the virtue of equality,
And (unlike Scottish Puritans) to smile on human jollity.

Our forebears baited animals, and tamed young boys by beating them;
Some cultures pleased their gods by killing children and then eating them.
The fascists praise brute strength as being vital to society,
But others find such violence at odds with Christian piety.

Since vice and virtue are perforce interpreted subjectively,
No scientific formula can capture them effectively.
We may invoke religion, whether active or residual,
But moral intuitions are entirely individual.

Some grammarians
Say we are antiquarians
Because we use established terminology
Without apology,
Often citing etymology.
Our narrow definition
Of 'clause' and 'preposition'
Is opposed by experts in linguistics
Armed with academic papers and statistics.
They classify words, without compunction,
By form rather than function,
Which some of us find risible,
As their form is already visible,
Whereas foreign learners want some clue
As to what the words actually do.

Yeah, words are fun
- it's good to pun.
Antonyms and synonyms
and maybe even homonyms.

But fun and play
are just that day.
Meanings may change,
as through years we range,
but you can't just decide
to resist the tide.

"All things are fluid"
sounds like a druid
incanting spells
as history tells.

"That phrase is a clause"
Well, it doesn't sound plaus-
ible. Where's its subject;
where's its predicate?
Definitions are not
really delicate.

A spade is a spade,
a shovel's a shovel.
Call one as the other
and you give yourself trouble.

My apologies for the awful rhymes - the rhythm isn't too good either !

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Wyrd bið ful aræd - bull!

So Quirk et al can go to hell,
And H & P, thrice damned be ye!
I knows I can rely on me
Far more than on ye dons from hell.
Your many years of work and toil
Mean nowt against my schooldays lore.
I'll stick to things that I adore,
Your plots to change things I will foil.
Your books and papers I won't read
'Cos I know better - there's no need!

Philosophers have pointed out
That meanings are beset with doubt.
Great thinkers such as Wittgenstein
And Russell, Kripke, Moore and Quine
Have cogitated day and night
On all the words we speak and write.
They show that glib semantic rules,
As taught in colleges and schools,
Are quite inadequate to frame
The features of the language game;
The range of things a word can span
Confounds a simple whiteboard plan.
To cite an instance, I would show
A thread we had some years ago
About the varied sense of 'bank'
(A vain discussion, to be frank).
No synonym we could produce
Would match the ambit of its use.
As synonyms are all we've got
To show the uninformed what's what,
It could in theory be the case
That meaning lacks a solid base,
So use of words by you and me
May not, in point of fact, agree,
And their apparent public sense
May rest on pure coincidence.
When I aver "The sky is blue",
It may mean "Grass is green" to you,
And when you tell me God is great,
I may conclude your bus is late.
(If this hypothesis sounds stretched,
I must admit it's quite far-fetched.)

The Worker and the Businessman
(with apologies to Lewis Carroll)

In April, on the thirty-first,
One afternoon at ten,
The news was full of EU talk:
Would Britain leave, and when?
And this was very odd, because
We should have quit by then.

The Worker and the Businessman
Were walking close at hand.
"This Brexit mess", the Worker said,
"Is hard to understand".
The Businessman unlocked a safe
And took out twenty grand.

The capitalist turned and said:
"Permit me to explain.
This money represents the wealth
Our citizens can gain
From Britain's European trade -
To lose it is insane".

The Worker told the Businessman:
"I'm wholly unimpressed.
The migrants snaffle half the dosh,
And Brussels takes the rest.
So let's respect the People's vote,
Or else I will protest".

The rich man bade the feisty prole:
"Attend while I correct you.
The terms we face if we secede
Will grievously affect you".
The Worker laughed: "If you were my
MP, I'd deselect you!"

The street was full of mendicants
Who plied their hackneyed spiel.
The Businessman cried out: "Remain!"
The Worker barked: "No deal!"
"It's no good asking twice", they said;
"You folk have no appeal."

The Businessman resumed his theme:
"It's not just In or Out.
You've heard of compromises which
The pundits talk about -
A customs union, or else
A 'Norway' deal, no doubt?"

"The Ulster backstop", he went on,
"Is one more fraught addendum
To all the snags arising from
That wretched referendum.
They're still no nearer solving this
Particular agendum."

"To hell with Irish politics!"
The rough-skinned Worker jeered.
"There's lots of Englishmen like me
Who find 'Abroad' quite weird,
Including many Tory toffs
And bourgeois types", he sneered.

They passed a herd of unicorns,
While pigs flew overhead.
"Abroad?" exclaimed the Businessman;
"The whole world's mad", he said.
"Not least our Press and Parliament,
From Blue to deepest Red."

The Worker pondered, then concurred,
And said: "I'll drink to that!"
He raised his cap; the Businessman
Benignly doffed his hat.
For if mankind is rational,
The Earth must needs be flat.

The Businessman caressed the cash,
Then put it back in store;
They vowed to shun the Brexit news
And talk of it no more.
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd heard it all before.

Heavenly Dream

I dreamed I went to paradise and walked among the saints;
It seemed a rather dull milieu, but none expressed complaints.
They understood that sinners like myself would find it odd
That purest pleasure should consist in contemplating God.
They chided me for liking hymns with chords they found profane;
Their chants used only fourths and fifths, which sounded rather plain.
Some haloed folk had been there almost since the time of Adam;
These venerable souls were all addressed as 'Sir' or 'Madam'.
I asked if Scripture told events exactly as they were;
"Of course not", they replied, "for mortal copyists can err".
I wondered if they felt some pity for the damned in Hell;
"Oh no", they said, "those villains had it coming, so all's well".
In short, they took a highly sanctimonious position;
But such an attitude, perhaps, is theirs by definition.

Some angels hurried past, with urgent missives of some kind;
Their robes were fluorescent white, their features ill-defined.
The angelologists were wrong, with all the grades they listed;
Archangels flew, and seraphim, but no more ranks existed.
One told me that the messages they laboured to disperse
Would be received by Christian worlds around the universe.
He said: "Although the Lord made heaven and earth in six days flat,
Your ancient scribes were unaware he made more after that.
To reach these planets, we perform much interstellar flight,
With wings designed to operate beyond the speed of light".
I saw no harps or trumpets, but some angels carried flutes,
And one or two, off duty, played exotic riffs on lutes.
They undertook no guardian duties: they were born to travel.
Alas! my long-held preconceptions started to unravel.

I reached the inner sanctum, whither Jesus Christ ascended –
A scene so overwhelming that my dream abruptly ended.
I dreamed another night about God's transcendental glory;
The things he told me blew my mind – but that's another story.

There's them as blame the rich and say
"They've got a lot so they should pay."
There's others feel it's all your fault
if you were born with little or nowt.

Neither of them seem to cut it -
government fails howe'er you put it.
Rule of the rich, it makes you sob.
Rule by 'the people' - what a mob!

What's th'answer? Well I'll tell you plain.
I've an idea that all may gain.
It's been said again and again,
by Muslim, Christian, Buddhist and Jain.

How would you want "those others" to act?
Do that yourself - yes it's a fact.
Do as you would want them to do
and they might up and do it too.

You want "the rich" to help you win? -
help them, it isn't such a sin.
You want "the poor" to let you gain? -
help them, you'll find it is no pain.

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Wyrd bið ful aræd - bull!