swansong of the month

 

half baked/half burnt

Fried Bread on Toast

The Sock Puppet: Welcome to the show! We've brought in two classical scholars to find out just which of them – a grand pair of old Oxbridge lags - is the jolliest good fellow.

Fried Bread: I say, this is a bloody cheek. Oxbridge? What the HELL is an Oxbridge when it's at home?

Toast: Quite. I could happily go to the foot of our marble staircase!

Fried Bread: Well put, old chap!

The Sock Puppet: So, are you denying being graduates of the two snobbiest educational cliques in the country?

Toast: Certainly not!

Fried Bread: Now you're hitting the spade on the head!

The Sock Puppet: Are you both from filthy rich backgrounds?

Fried Bread: There's nothing dirty about ours.

Toast: And there's nothing background about mine.

The Sock Puppet: Which of you is the greatest polymarf?

Toast: 'Tis said abroad my friend here holds that distinction.

Fried Bread: (bowing) I thank you.

Toast: As a frequent ex-cyclist, I believe in giving credit where it is due. But don't worry, I shan't be offering you a couple of grand on decent terms.

Fried Bread: Then you also acknowledge my superior earning capacity?

Toast: For those of us in public service, the only true rewards are free accommodation and the occasional ear of Her Royal Maj.

Fried Bread: What about doing the odd line in the royal lavs?

Toast: As a son-of-John, I do apologise. You must be mixing me up with someone else. ELTON John, perhaps?

Fried Bread: Perish the thought. Elton and I go a long way back...

Toast: ...as the choirboy said to the bishop.

Fried Bread: Now, now!

The Sock Puppet: Let's discuss your uncanny resemblance to Pericles, the secret tyrant who rescued Athens from the clutches of revolutionary democrats.

Toast: You have me there.

The Socket Puppet: What would you have for your Last Brexit?

Toast: Smoked Haddock with a lightly poached egg on top.

The Sock Puppet: Fried Bread?

Fried Bread: Very funny indeed.

The Sock Puppet: Turning to your reputations as authors, which of you holds the record for forests obliterated?

Fried Bread: I believe my environmental credentials are pari qua non.

Hovis Bunsen: Don't you mean, pari non qua?

Jesus F. Christ: Well, it's like the Judgement of Paris.

Sonny Bon Jove: They all look the same from behind.

Huge Lorry Driver's Mate: Pull over, I need to get out for a minute.

Toast: FFS, just fill a plastic water bottle and drop it on the hard shoulder!

Fried Bread: As I said, my views on digital pollution are without equal...

The Sock Puppet: And we'd like to assure the public that no keyboards were soiled during the production of this broadcast. I declare the contest a draw!

Toast: I demand a recount!

Fried Bread: And I demand a rebate on my income tax.

Toast: You will see me afterwards.

Fried Bread: Famous last words.

swansong of the month

turning water into cheese has been

public target number one for him

he has always woven thick from thin

bet himself a million times to win

fame’s a lottery the zip code kid

now's the time to hedge his fund again

give the plate a final dozy spin

the alternative's a near run thing

meet at Waterloo the Chunnel train

break déjeuner in the lion's den

pardon my French but what’s eating them

frogs is envy you gotta choose one

side or other sit down & talk plain

horse sense anything else keep the plan

secret get the kids to dance & sing

***

he's his own philosophy you dig

selfish giant from the Nibelung

rides a donkey wears an amber ring

taken for the saviour bless his shlong

always hungry at the supper gong

rarely comes in late & never wrong

spent the war on furlough Mr Big

organised a Wagner tribute gig

selling tickets in a powdered wig

Rolling Stones refused to play or sing

he & Mick had words so called The King

do some cover versions kinder thing

Jesus on the line he said he'd ring

tell Him when The Grateful Dead have sung

He can warm them up for Stick The Pig

***

here I'm making a prediction on

China was & is a Neverland

oh my gosh they fucken stole my wind

tell you what to make amends let's sing

20,000 light years from what d'you

mean the metre doesn’t scan it rhymes

showbiz ain't the game it was back then

I'd a been a star for certain can

anyone deny I had the skin

God's my witness paid His limousine

so who's missing from this final scene

bring the whole caboodle bang the bong

only gonna say this once again

China is a kindergarten Son

OK now we’ll do just one more song

...from the chapbook:

Click here to purchase

Not Again!

How-To-Write... a Cheque

...or: cheque this art...

Americans will flinch at the "que" on the tail of this old literary curio. Notwithstanding "diner’s checks” scribbled on napkin by aspiring waiters, or those national-stereotype “Czechs” whose Lightness of Being is Unbearably Not Slovakian, the grand Olde English Promissorie Note has lost much of its currency - and not a few of its currants.

Biro on Bog Roll

A flashed wad of cheques is a rare sight indeed these days of Stephen Fry-by-night, elf-publishing and other stabs of pen. Whether copper-plated on mock vellum or crudely tattooed across the arse of water-buffalo, the original cheque is nothing less than a literary means of conveying value between parties. Except on bank holidays, it may be seen hovering over pools of stagnant syntax, or drowning in the phlegm of newspaper touts.

Echo! Echo!

Letraset on tin foil, Biroed on bog roll, Chinese woodblock printed, iced in cochineal on retirement cake or scratched with blue-black ink from the dregs of Bob Cratchit’s well, all that really matters is latex plays no part in its manufacture. Beware the crossed words “Acc. Payee Only”, which deal a severe blow to a cheque’s social mobility; as do frankings of less than fifty smackeroos by your Flexible Friend. A truly great cheque will have digits running into seven figures proclaiming, for Pity’s sake, the latest Lottoman Empress. In addition to its face value, such a cheque, cleared by the banks, may be framed and flogged off at Sodabuy’s in aid of the smiling polio victim.

Letraset on Tin Foil

Even a cheque contaminated with derivatives of hevea brasiliensis (rubber tree) may have intrinsic value; when, for example, its dodgy payer is a household name. Again, any bone-fed auction house may be contacted to assess the potential. Other examples of unkind payment: shiploads of rotten spuds delivered our way under the Marshall Plan, Confederate Dollars, fake chocolate money, misspelt innuendoes (“earos” for “euros”, “ponce” for “pence” & etc.) and the absolute vanishing of inks.

Tattoo on Buffalo 

Let us leave, buy the bye, the How-To-Writes of "cheque's-in-the-post", "Travellers' Cheques" and "chequebook journalism" for other, more fastidious correspondents to sign off on.

Chinese Wood-Blocked

And proceed, not before meantime, to the "post-dated cheque" so beloved of impoverished students and the absolute bane of slum landlords. Do be careful when passing these delicate notes, if Referred to Drawer they may easily turn to Cack-in-the-Attic.

Never Sign!

poetry republic
3 members
welcome readers/writers/critics

Books we've read

The Society Of The Poem
by Jonathan Raban

Literary Theory: An Introduction
by Terry Eagleton

View this group on Goodreads »

Fried Bread - Appellation d'origine contrôlée

The Sock Puppet: Mr Bread, it's said you mean all things to all men...

Fried Bread: Hi, how're ya doin? Sadly no. It's only true to say I have meant few things to several men.

Fried Bread's on the radio again!

TSP: So what do you mean to women?

FB: Even fewer things and to far less of them, but I am widely loved by the fairer sex... more often as a secret passion. Indeed a good many women have been warned to avoid me at all costs.

TSP: How would you describe yourself?

FB: Light, crisp, and laden with woof.

TSP: What is your secret?

FB: That would be telling, wouldn't it? Let us just say, I succeed in being thoroughly buttery by remaining utterly stale to the core.

TSP: How would you like to be remembered?

FB: As a pleasant after dinner taste, dear boy. My imitators leave a lardy smear on the tongue.

TSP: When was your finest hour?

FB: Serving my sovereign, I think, or guesting at a posh nosh.

TSP: How should you be prepared?

FB: Natural gas. Swear by it!

TSP: Straight out the pan?

FB: And into the cake-hole! With a brace of tinned tomatoes, of course

TSP: Who would play you in the film of your life?

FB: Erm, Huge... whathisname?

TSP: Huge Lorry?

FB: No, not that oaf! He couldn't play housey-housey! Huge Grant, I mean. Or Nigel Kennedy could have a stab at the old cackass. Next question!

TSP: What is your greatest fear?

FB: Of being taken for toast.

TSP: It's been said, you are - what used to be called - “middle brow”...

FB: Oh, I know, I know! Another one is “half-baked”, then there's “the sugar-loafer” and “dough-boy” These are all mere clichés, of course.

TSP: Really?

FB: Devoid of all meaning. The truth is even plainer: I am as mealy-mouthed as any self-respecting lump of carbohydrate.

Fried Bread is a member of Equity

TSP: How do you envisage your end?

FB: As crotons sprinkled over French onion soup? Lapped up by someone equally scrumptious as myself - a Carla Bruni, for example, or a Justin Bieber?

TSP: That's not very patriotic of you!

FB: Well, it's one better than some snot-nosed Brummie kid sopping up his bacon fat with me!

TSP: There's talk of awarding you heritage status... are you rye or wry?

FB: Very funny words indeed, coming from your mouth!

TSP: At least I have a mouth!

FB: More like a foot and mouth!

TSP: Do us a poem, then!

FB: If you insist! This one's called “crumbs in the bed”

crumbs in the bed

a breakfast of tupenny

rhyming poetry is dead

good of you to photocopy

a cup of tea instead

of jumping right on top of me 

TSP: God, that was shite!

FB: I know. Dismal what you can get away with these days, dontchya think?

Tra-Laa!