MORE BLEEDIN' POETRY

Fond friends - lately it appears sweet Polyhymina, the muse of sacred poetry, refuses to leave my ears alone. I might only be lifting a broom to innocuously beat the cat out of the chandelier - when (quite without my conscent) the Goddess seizes hold of my Eustachian tube and discharges a sonnet or (more often than not) a filthy limerick, into my cerebral cortex.

I am, in short, becoming a poet (well, it can hardly pay worse than archaeology can it?)

My first poem today is a short reflection on L.P. Hartley's immortal line -'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.' Please read on.

THE PAST IS A FOREIGN BODY

Last night I passed a foreign land.

How it got up there

I will never know.

My next poem is a stirring ode to death and birthday cake.

BURIAL REQUEST

Oh say you'll serve buns at my funeral

Jellys and chocolates and cakes

Marshmallow top hats

Lots of sugar and fats

To keep the folks sweet at my wake

- My wake
Feed them all sweets at my wake

Strew my coffin with icing and candles

Then ask all assembled to puff

Like and exhaling choir

Extinguish those fires

So's I won't be the only thing snuffed

- Thing snuffed

See that those candles are snuffed

Make my end a sugar rush festival

Let the tears be frosted with fun

That's all that I'm sayin'

But if you find that profane

Nail me up on a hot cross bun

-A bun

Let me die for my sins on a bun

BURY  ME  IN  CAKE

My final poem today comes with a colourful illustration which would be oddly suitable as a bookmark.

Captain Cheese

By mistake the navy knew him

As 'The Corsair Captain Cheese'

On account of the prosthetic

Mounted just below his knees.

It was that adapted flagpole

The error had been built on,

Since mariners oft' spoke of

That pirate with the Stilt-on.

That's all for now darlings. Thank you for your continuing ability to read.