Said The Clown To The Cow - Gerard Benson New!!!
Night Boy - Matthew Sweeney
Skin Magic - Wes Magee
Parrot - Gerard Benson Exciting!
In The Daytime - Michael Rosen
If - Rudyard Kipling
In The Garden Sat A Hat - John Rice
Grandma's Jigsaw Puzzle - Roger Stevens
The Doomed Spaceman - Ted Walker
Dog People - Brian Moses
Dan Malone & His Mobile Phone - Gerard Benson Exciting!
Drink A Glass of Lemonade - Wes Magee
The Moon In The Man - Otis Microlight
Storing Time - Chrissie Gittins
The Stick Insects in the Museum - John Rice
Instructions for Growing Poetry - Tony Mitton
The Jumblies - Edward Lear
The Busker - Gerard Benson
The Pedlar's Caravan - William Brighty Rands
Views From The Train - Michael Rosen
The Mobile Library - Martina Evans
A Song To Annoy Parents When Visiting A Museum - Rachel Rooney
In A Winter Landscape - Jeremy Page
The Metamorphosis of Mr MacArthur - Catherine Smith
Sulky In St Ives - James Carter
River - Victoria Buckley-Jennings
Said The Clown To The Cow
Said the clown to the cow
"It's curious how
You jump right over the moon.
With my trampoline
I have only been
As far as the second of June.
When you leap with such ease,
Don't your milk turn to cheese?
Does the altitude not bother you?
It puts me in fits
Just doing the splits."
The cow replied, "Moo, moo, moo."
© Gerard Benson
Night Boy
After the cat went out
and the moon sat on the hill
and the sea drowned a lorry
that broke down
stealing sand,
little, skinny George awoke.
He was little, because he hardly grew.
He hardly grew, because he ate
scraps of chicken, leftover rice, dry bread,
what was left on the dog's plate,
handfuls of cornflakes, jam.
That may sound a lot
but it left George little and skinny.
What about mealtimes? I hear you ask.
Mealtimes, for George, were sleep times
most of the year. That's right,
he slept all day,
got up at night.
What about school? You're saying.
I know, I know what you're like.
What do you know about stars?
Does the sea glow at night
like a green watch-dial?
Ask George, he'll tell you.
He'll even write it down
and read it to you, by torchlight,
and then he'll count stars.
Blame the holidays, his Gran said,
they're too long.
George lived with his Gran,
George, the sleeper-in
who'd slept in so long, so often,
that he now woke at night
when Gran was asleep.
What did he do at night?
He went to the beach,
lit driftwood fires,
stood in a cave and waited
for spies in submarines
to land.
He climbed hills
and aeroplane-spotted,
especially small ones
landing in fields.
He hid in ditches
and eavesdropped on strangers.
He woke the neigbour's donkey
and galloped round the field.
He lay on a haystack
and watched the dawn.
Then he yawned
and went to bed.
And if he met Gran on the stairs,
Good day, was what he said.
© Matthew Sweeney
(From 'Up On The Roof', Faber and Faber)
(Reproduced with permission from the publisher)
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Skin Magic
That cooling hand placed on your hot brow….
Your toes when they're tickled by fingers….
When someone you love just touches your arm….
Ah, skin magic
that lingers and lingers….
The time when you walked hand in hand on a beach….
That hug when you felt, oh, so tragic….
The brush of lips on your tear-stained cheek….
Ah, pure moments of magic,
skin magic …..
© Wes Magee
(Reproduced with kind permission from the author)
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Parrot
Parrot flames on his branch;
his beak is a battle axe.
His encircled eye
pierces what it sees.
He screams like a soprano;
moves among the leaves like a rock climber.
He dazzles the forest canopy
with primary colours. A celebration.
© Gerard Benson
(From Omba Bolomba, Smiths Doorstop)
(Reproduced with kind permission from the author)
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In The Daytime
In the daytime I am Rob Roy and a tiger
in the daytime I am Marco Polo
I chase bears in Bricket Wood
in the daytime I am the Tower of London
nothing gets past me
when it's my turn
in Harrybo's hedge
in the daytime I am Henry V and Ulysses
and I tell stories
that go on for a whole week
if I want.
At night in the dark
when I've shut the front room door
I try and
get up the stairs across the landing
into bed and under the pillow
without breathing once.
© Michael Rosen
(Reproduced with kind permission from the author)
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If
If you can keep your head when all about you
are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
but make allowance for their doubting too;
if you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
and yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream- and not make dreams your master;
if you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
if you can meet with triumph and disaster
and treat those two imposters just the same;
if you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
and stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;
if you can make one heap of all your winnings
and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
and lose, and start again at your beginnings
and never breathe a word about your loss;
if you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
to serve your turn long after they are gone,
and so hold on when there is nothing in you
except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on';
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
if all men count with you, but none too much;
if you can fill the unforgiving minute
with sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
and - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
© Rudyard Kipling
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In The Garden Sat A Hat
I looked out of the bedroom window.
Cloud, rain, wind and no-one about
on this blustery Sunday morning.
But, in the middle of the garden
sat a hat, a gentleman's hat, a Trilby hat.
And it was not mine, not mine indeed.
It sat there like a cowering animal;
lonely, afraid, with rain lashing down on it
and the wind lifting its rim so slightly.
Perhaps it fell from an angel's head as it
swooped over our house in the middle night.
Maybe it was left there by a fairy gardener.
Then again the wind might have been blown it
off the white head of a very well dressed ghost.
The owner murdered and buried in my garden?
I dressed and went downstairs to fetch the hat.
It was soaked through but it felt light as air.
Nowadays I wear it when I go to the Post Office.
People say:
"It suits you, that hat. Where did you get it?"
"Oh, it's just an old hat I've had for years;
it was a present from old Jack Strawberry."
© John Rice
(Reproduced with kind permission from the author)
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Grandma's Jig-saw Puzzle
Grandma wanted to find the house
where she lived as a child
at the beginning of time
when grass was greener
when light was brighter
when sound was sharper
and a pound
was worth twenty shillings
Dad took us round factories
and schools and new houses
where there were once fields
and footpaths and allotments.
We gazed at signs and brick walls
trying to piece together clues
And grandma said It was so long ago.
She said, It was so long ago
And in the end,
the jig-saw puzzle in grandma's head
was just too difficult to solve
© Roger Stevens
(From 'The Monster That Ate the Universe')
(Reproduced with kind permission from the author)
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The Doomed Spaceman
I remember one winter-night meadow
of sky-black grass
that lay beyond my childhood window
of pearly glass
when I learned what it was to be lonely,
packed off to bed
and lit by a glimmer that wanly
the frostfall shed.
The pane wiped clear, my crying over,
darkness would yeild
its long cluster of summer-white clover
in a vast field;
sleepless I stared for yearning hours,
and I began
wanting to wander those infinite flowers
when a grown man.
And now I am lost in the heavens.
My meanderings
further immeasurably flung than Saturn's
exquisite rings
into space that's unutterably lovely
with misted light
and every dusk is a dawn and every
day is as night.
Straight my broken instruments steer:
I have no choice
but to bear silence in which I can hear
no human voice
save mine at the capsule's clear window
when galaxies pass -
no dandelion Sun in no meadow
of day-blue grass.
Weightless, helpless, I'm locked on a track
I can't reverse;
for one glimpse of home, I would give back
the universe.
Constellation by constellation
like baby's breath
I journey through, my destination
nowhere but Death.
© Ted Walker
(Reproduced with kind permission from the author's representative)
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Dog People
Some people are people people,
other people are dog people.
You can recognise them by the way they walk,
elegantly, like a neatly manicured poodle,
proudly, like a satisfied sheep dog,
spiritedly, like a playful spaniel.
You can recognise them by the way they look,
sorrowfully, like an out-of-sorts bloodhound,
belligerently, like a boisterous bulldog,
guiltily, like a bone-stealing mongrel.
You can recognise them by the way they talk,
yappily, like a privileged Pekinese,
howlingly, like a lovesick Dobermann,
moaningly, like a left-at-home Labrador.
You can recognise them by the way they look at you,
hungrily, like a lean Alsatian,
knowingly, like an aloof lapdog,
scarily, like a territorial terrier.
You can recognise them by what they talk about,
different sizes of dog basket,
where to buy the crunchiest biscuits,
the best places to take exercise.
Yes, some people are dog people
but I am not.
I am a rabbit person.
Let me hop across and tell you
all I know about carrots.
© Brian Moses
(From 'Taking Out The Tigers', Macmillan)
(Reproduced with kind permission from the author)
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Dan Malone & His Mobile Phone
th grtest joy v Dn Malone
wz txtng on iz mbl fone
hed txt on trains or at the pool
hed sit n txt al day at schl
IT or Inglsh Mths or Gym
it made no dffrnce to him
hed txt awA thn 4 a jke
he startd txting unknwn fk
hooz numbuz he hd slyly got
wth inslts n I don't know wot
sch as Hlo o1 smelly feet
n thngs id rthr not rpt
o alrt thn if U insist
Hi monkEbum Ur round th twst
1 day he txtd by mstake
th Yr 9 bully Evl Jake
calling im donkybrane. Wots more
ths Jake ws in th Rm nex dor
n wen E got the txt saw red
n jst about went off iz hed
so whn th buzza went E ran
to ware E new Ed find poor Dan
n tried to grb im by th throat
bt Dan escped leaving iz coat
n made off like a strk of litning
(th idea of a fite wz fritning)
Jke chsd im 3 X round the yrd
n wen E cort um thmpd im hrd
then wen the pr were separ8ed
thr mbl fnz wer confisc8ed
(wich didnt teach em not 2 QuarrL)
bt tales lk this shd hav a moral
the MORAL is obA th rul
don't Uz yr mbl fne in skl
[:- ( (-:]
© Gerard Benson
(From 'Omba Bolomba', Smiths Doorstop
(Reproduced with kind permission from the author)
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Drink A Glass of Lemonade
Drink a glass of lemonade.
Gurgle,
gurgle,
glug.
Second glass of lemonade.
Gurgle,
gurgle,
glug.
Third glass of lemonade.
Now you'd better stop.
One more glass of lemonade
and
you'll
go
POP!
© Wes Magee
(From 'Who likes Pancakes?', Quarto Publications)
(reproduced with kind permission from the author)
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The Moon In The Man
Sometimes the moon
she sings a song
so old and sad
she makes me mad
She sings a song
so old and sad
sometimes the moon
she makes me mad
So old and sad
she sings a song
she makes me mad
sometimes, the moon
© Otis Microlight
(Reproduced with kind permission from the author)
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Storing Time
In answer to the question 'What happens to time after it is spent?'
All last year's nights
are in black bags
at Euston.
Paddington houses Lost Time
in rows of sieves
beyond Lost Property.
Bright sparkling mornings
are in clear plastic pockets
lining each horizon.
Birthdays are the grains
of gunpowder cracking fire
from Roman Candles.
Moments of supreme happiness
are held in bubbles
rising from the mouths of guppies.
Sadness lives in cinders
waiting to be steamrollered
beneath the road.
Each and every
touch and hug and kiss and smile and sneeze
is dancing with the dragonflies, up and down the breeze.
© Chrissie Gittins
(Reproduced with kind permission from the author)
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The Stick Insects in the Museum
Saturday evening, just on 5pm.
The Library & Museum
are about to close.
Most of us are at home,
football scores on the television,
tea on the table.
The museum curator secures the strong lid
on the glass case containing the stick insects
in their never-blue world.
Everyone will be busy tomorrow,
only six more shopping days
before Christmas.
The stick insects won't be busy.
They will remain motionless in their
greeny-brown camouflage - all night, all day.
On Saturday night
families will go to the local pantomime,
grandparents to carol concerts, teenagers to parties.
During the drowsiness of Sunday,
one stick insect might, just might,
twist her twiglike body one single centimetre.
By Monday it's up early again,
back to work, back to school
for just a few more days before the holiday.
At 8.30am, the museum curator unlocks
the door to the Library & Museum
and walks through the still, hushed foyer.
She finds one stick insect, in the shape of
an exclamation mark, crawling downstairs
… heading for the exit.
© John Rice
(Reproduced with kind permission from the author)
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Instructions For Growing Poetry
(found on the back of a packet)
Shut your eyes.
Open your mind.
Look inside.
What do you find?
Something funny?
Something sad?
Something beautiful,
mysterious, mad?
Open your ears.
Listen well.
A word or a phrase
begins to swell?
Catch its rhythm.
Hold its sound.
Gently, slowly
roll it around.
Does it please you?
Does it tease you?
Does it ask
to grow and spread?
Now those little
words are sprouting
poetry
inside your head.
© Tony Mitton 1998
(From 'Plum')
(Reproduced with permission from the author's representative)
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The Jumblies
They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
in a Sieve they went to sea:
in spite of all their friends could say,
on a winter's morn, on a stormy day,
in a Sieve they went to sea!
And when the Sieve turned round and round,
and everyone cried, 'You'll all be drowned!'
they called aloud, 'Our Sieve ain't big,
but we don't care a button! We don't care a fig!
In a Sieve we'll go to sea!'
Far and few, far and few,
are the lands where the Jumblies live;
their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
and they went to sea in a Sieve.
They sailed away in a Sieve, they did,
in a Sieve they sailed so fast,
with only a beautiful pea-green veil
tied with a riband by way of a sail,
to a small tobacco-pipe mast;
and everyone said, who saw them go,
'O won't they be soon upset, you know!
For the sky is dark and the voyage is long,
and happen what may, it's extremely wrong
in a Sieve to sail so fast!'
Far and few, far and few,
are the lands where the Jumblies live;
their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
and they went to sea in a Sieve.
The water it soon came in, it did,
the water it soon came in;
so to keep them dry, they wrapped their feet
in a pinky paper all folded neat,
and they fastened it down with a pin.
And they passed the night in a crockery-jar,
and each of them said, 'How wise we are!
Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long,
yet we never can think we were rash or wrong,
while round in our Sieve we spin!'
Far and few, far and few,
are the lands where the Jumblies live;
their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
and they went to sea in a Sieve.
And all night long they sailed away;
and when the sun went down,
they whistled and warbled a moony song
to the echoing sound of a coppery gong,
in the shade of the mountains brown.
'O Timballoo! How happy we are,
when we live in a Sieve and a crockery-jar,
and all night long in the moonlight pale,
we sail away with a pea-green sail,
in the shade of the mountains brown!'
Far and few, far and few,
are the lands where the Jumblies live;
their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
and they went to sea in a Sieve.
They sailed to the Western Sea,they did,
to a land all covered with trees,
and they bought an Owl, and a useful Cart,
and a pound of Rice and a Cranberry Tart,
and a hive of silvery Bees.
And they bought a Pig, and some green Jackdaws,
and a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws,
and forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree,
and no end of Stilton Cheese.
Far and few, far and few,
are the lands where the Jumblics live;
their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
and they went to sea in a Sieve.
And in twenty years they all came back,
in twenty years or more,
and everyone said, 'How tall they've grown!
For they've been to the lakes, and the Torrible Zone,
And the hills of the Chankly Bore';
and they drank their health, and gave them a feast
of dumplings made of beautiful yeast;
and everyone said, 'If only we live,
we too will go to sea in a Sieve,
to the hills of the Chankly Bore!'
Far and few, far and few,
are the lands where the Jumblies live;
their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
and they went to sea in a Sieve.
© Edward Lear
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The Busker
His elbow jerks, an old mechanical toy.
Feet planted astride, knees flexed, one instep
arched over the cobbles, he scratches a tune
from a bony violin, grating the spine.
His left hand, a dancing spider, performs
its polka on the taut web strings, his right,
daintier than a lady taking tea,
guides the thin bow in dangerous little stabs,
littering the yard with snips and snaps of sound,
sharper than pins. Coins drop into his hat,
but sparingly, and pigeons on pink unhurried feet
waddle, chatting by; refuse, point-blank, to dance.
© Gerard Benson
(Reproduced with kind permission from the author)
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The Pedlar's Caravan
I wish I lived in a caravan,
with a horse to drive like the pedlar-man!
Where he comes from nobody knows,
Or where he goes to, but on he goes!
His caravan has windows two,
and a chimney of tin, that the smoke comes through;
he has a wife, with a baby brown,
and they go riding from town to town.
Chairs to mend, and delf to sell!
He clashes the basins like a bell;
tea-trays, baskets ranged in order,
plates with the alphabet round the border!
The roads are brown, and the sea is green,
but his house is just like a bathing-machine;
the world is round, and he can ride,
rumble and splash, to the other side!
With the pedlar-man I should like to roam,
and write a book when I came home;
all the people who would read my book,
just like the Travels of Captain Cook.
© William Brighty Rands
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Views From The Train
When you go on the train
and the line goes past the backs of houses
in a town
you can see there's thousands and thousands
of things going on:
someone's washing up,
a baby's crying,
someone's shaving,
Someone said, 'Rubbish, I blame
the government.'
Someone tickled a dog
someone looked out the window
and saw this this train
and saw me looking at her
and she thought
'There's someone looking out of the window
looking at me.'
But I'm only someone
looking out the window
looking at someone
looking out the window
looking at someone.
Then it's all gone.
© Michael Rosen
(Reproduced with kind permission from the author)
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The Mobile Library
It came once a fortnight
and I went under the beds,
scrabbling for overdue books,
balls of fluff as big as mice
skating across the linoleum.
It parked at the cross
for I don't know how long
and sometimes if I wasn't ready
with the books, I'd look out
and it would be gone.
Why didn't you warn me sooner?
I'd run out breathing anxious breaths
that tasted like frozen lemonade.
And that was the best thing,
when I was sure that it was still there,
my feet pressing into the deep steps.
© Martina Evans
Reproduced with kind permission from the author
from 'All Alcoholics are Charmers' by Martina Evans
published by Anvil Press Poetry in 1998
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A Song To Annoy Parents When Visiting A Museum
(To the tune of 'Oh I do Like To Be Beside The Seaside')
Oh I do want to be inside the gift shop.
I do want to be inside the shop.
I do want to wander down the aisles, aisles, aisles
where the toys mount up in colourful piles, piles, piles.
I'll behave when I get inside the gift shop.
When I'm inside, this stupid song will stop.
If you let me join the queue
for a souvenir or two
inside the gift shop, inside the shop.
© Rachel Rooney
Reproduced with kind permission from the author
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In A Winter Landscape
Walking into a flame-red sunset
whose ribbons litter
a steely winter sky,
I sense the worlds
of many seasons past
come flying by -
feel, in the air
that bites my cheek
an in the special tone
of blue that threatens snow;
and in the moulded trees
and lonely inauspicious crow -
feel something
of every winter gone:
the long walk home
of a twelve-year old
in the dusk
of a December afternoon
and always a new star
guiding, on.
© Jeremy Page
Reproduced with kind permission from the author
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The Metamorphosis of Mr MacArthur
Nine o'clock, he took the register, as usual.
But instead of sitting up straight and glaring,
hissing out names in strict alphabetical order
he leapt onto the desk and screeched each name
so loud, our eardrums sang. By nine fifteen
we hadn't even started Literacy Hour.
He threw our books at us
and went off into a corner to scratch.
By ten o'clock - we didn't like to say, but
man! He was hairy! Great dark tufts of it
all over his hands and face and neck.
He ripped open his shirt and his chest
was furrier than our dog.
His lips ballooned, his nostrils
stretched like entrances to two dark caves.
His eyes shone black as briefcases
and a tail trailed out of his trouser leg.
At break time, he hogged the climbing frame,
pushed everyone else off
and shoved his bum in Mrs. Andrews' face
when she tugged his sleeve.
I must admit, his ability to hang
by one long clawed hand, and swing
was something we hadn't realized
about Mr. MacArthur.
That day we did no spelling, art, maths
or science. He climbed out of the window,
beckoned us to follow him,
and we jumped from ledge to ledge,
shrieking, and beating our chests. It was fun,
and only three people went to hospital.
Mr. MacArthur waved them off,
jumping up and down, and eating a banana.
Mr. MacArthur doesn't teach us any more.
Our new teacher, Miss Price, has skin
as smooth and clammy as a fish and shows
no interest in scaling the building.
She gives us extra homework and tells us
we're not taking school seriously enough.
Mr. MacArthur giggles as we pass him at home-time,
hanging off the school gates, upside down.
© Catherine Smith
Reproduced with kind permission from the author
Winner of the Belmont Poetry Prize
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Sulky In St Ives
I must have been seven
when we went
to St Ives
for a holiday
and I nearly
drowned in the sea
Early afternoon
the tide was out
and I walked
on and on
till I finally got to
the sea
I kept going
till the water
came up
to my middle when suddenly
woosh
the bottom of the sea
disappeared
and I went
down in the water
down with the bubble
And I kept coming up
kept seeing them all
back on the beach
waving at me
And I kept going down
until one of them
came for me
And I cried
all the way back
to the beach
where everyone laughed
and laughed
at me
And I sulked
for the rest of the day
and I still get sulky
when I think
about it now
© James Carter
Reproduced with kind permission from the author
CARS STARS ELECTRIC GUITARS by James Carter
(c) 2002 James Carter
Reproduced by permission of Walker Books Ltd, London, SE11 5HJ
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River
There were boulders shiny as jet
in that river,
bulging whales some of them,
others dinosaur eggs,
stitched tight,
asleep for centuries.
The grit of the riverbed
brittled under rubber boots
as we traversed the Amazon,
trapped conger eels,
spied natives on the bank.
You brought nets
patched with string,
the wet webbing on the sticks
rubbing blisters on your hands.
I carried emergency supplies;
vaccines, bandages, and needles
in case we were bitten
by the squads of piranhas
swirling our ankles like fog.
Under the bridge
a storm caused a cascade
of water to swell the dam,
but we shrugged,
neglected thunder overhead,
and launched our makeshift fleet -
seven bobbing eggshell boats
with apple pips for passengers
and unfurled clumps of olive moss for sails.
© Victoria Buckley-Jennings
(Reproduced with kind permission from the author)
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