Poetry Blog by John Coopey

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a zealous republican; but nor am I an ardent monarchist either, for that matter.  I sit firmly in the camp of “Don’t give a shit”.  It doesn’t bother me whom we have as Head of State to press the flesh of dictators of former colonies.

So it was with deep apathy that I learned of the death of Prince Philip.  He struck me as an offensive, upper class twit; but that was...

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Written on the occasion of our Ruby Wedding Anniversary.  Cowperthwaite was the vicar.  That we ran out of food at the reception was largely down to him, the greedy git.

We have a photo stowed away

That’s taken on our wedding day;

In truth it does not flatter us –

My double chin, your mountainous

Bosoms occupying all

The shot in their supported sprawl.

But when I ma...

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A re-post; but who's counting?

There’s a lady out there

And she can’t climb the stairs

At her bedtime which is

Half past seven;

She was lured was Aunt Hannah

By the junkmail from Stannah

Into buying their Stairlift

To Heaven.

But she found it so slow

When she needed to go -

Half an hour on the Stairlift

To Heaven;

So from ground to first floor

Sh...

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The tune is a mish-mash of "Star Trekking" and "While We were Marching through Georgia".  But the real debt is to Pam Ayres's "Littering" and to the dirty bastards who've dumped crap down our local country roads.

Fly tipping – we’re out for a nice ride

Fly tipping – the van is full inside

We’d have to pay at dumpit sites so blight the countryside

We’re your friendly fly tippers.

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I confess to being a bit envious of those who self-identify on the issue of gender; that despite their meat and two veg they say they are a woman.  Or vice versa.  And I say “envious” because although  I’m not such a person myself (contentedly masculine, you understand, although I have been known to help the boys out when they were busy) it nevertheless strikes me that if it’s biologically permiss...

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For Doreen, the Mother of Fleetwood,

The dynasty's come to an end

Of strong eucalyptus and menthol;

She's sucked her last Fisherman's Friend.

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I’ve often heard cynics deride the efforts of environmental campaigners like Greenpeace or XR for their personal hypocrisy; or for ridiculing a little teenage girl by, predominantly, white middle aged men, for drawing their attention to the issue.  “How did they travel to their protest, then?”.  “Who made their clothes?”.  “Didn’t she fly to the States?”.  Criticisms which miss the point completel...

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(The first verse, of course, is not mine.  It will be well known to rugby players returning home from away matches on the coach.  Simple pleasures!)

When I was just a wee wee tot

I sat on my wee wee pot

But wee wee there I could not

Till I lay in my wee wee cot.

Wee wee

Wee wee

Wee wee wee wee wee  wee.

And now that I’m an OAP

My bladder’s once more haunting me

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I’ve sung their praise and I’ll sing it again

How Rob and myself would spend hours there then

In days we could gather and argue the toss

But now they’re all closing and this is our loss.

So long, s’been good to know yuh

Now, though, we say “Cheerio” to

Thorntons, it’s time to forego yuh

These haunts of indulgence are all shutting down

And I’ll lounge in your cafes no m...

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A recollection of a halcyon day in 2017 and referencing the iconic and talismanic Frank Worthington who died today.  A cowboy both on and off the pitch.

We praised the God of Yorkshire that October afternoon

It’s not a day we’ll be forgetting sometime very soon;

The scoreboard told the story – it had ended 2 to 1

We sang songs to their glory – the Terriers had won!

They blamed ...

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Spare me these doldrums of malaise;

Though loss and shame I’ve known before

Last Thursday was the worst of days.

I simply ask each man that plays

To wear his badge as if to war;

Spare me these doldrums of malaise.

And if we lose, lose in a blaze

With passion not a spineless bore;

Last Thursday was the worst of days.

It’s hard to find some kind of praise

When this stic...

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I think I've heard Billy Connolly say that you have to respect Mother Nature knowing what she's doing.  But it's beyond the wit of even David Attenborough to comprehend what threats to your ageing body she is anticipating which makes her cause an explosion of body hair in unlikely places.

I’ll be your Long Haired Lover from Haddlesey

With thick foliage on each eye brow

A growth that ...

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Summertime and the lockdown is easing

Hope’s emerging, expectations are high;

Through vaccinations the upper hand we’re seizing

But Covid restrictions will all still apply.

Summertime and the outlook is pleasing,

Folks are thinking “We’ve got this Covid thing beat”;

But use your kokum, and act with sense and with reason

We’ve got an advantage but it’s not yet in full retr...

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The world and its uncle knows the number of days there are in March.  “Thirty one” some wag says.

But I’m talking celebratory and memorial days like International Women’s Day, St David’s Day, St Patrick’s Day, World Book Day, World Wildlife Day, Red Nose Day, World Poetry Day, Tolkien Day and Piano Day; not to mention the focus there’s been on LGBTQIANTYSILIOGOGOGOCH issues. Any more and they’d...

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N’didi says she’d like to meet me

“Hasty very soon”

She says she’ll come to Ingland

From her home in Cameroon.

She says she has such lovely eyes

And lovely, smile time teeth

She says that she’s a princest

As the dotta of the chief.

It seems that men of my age

Are something of a catch

To 18 year old virgins –

I think we’d make a match.

She re...

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From out the closet I now voice

The truth about my drug of choice -

The heroin contained within

The kitchen cupboard’s biscuit tin.

For found there is the stuff of dreams

Jammy Dodgers, Custard Creams;

And pinching one will never do

I need to see the packet through,

Then hiding crumbs is common sense

For fear Our Gert finds evidence.

From breakfast-time I’ll...

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My hardy perennial in support of the sisterhood.  I'm not convinced I "ground" the poem properly.  Suggestions welcome.

Raise your voices; sisters speak!

International Women’s Week.

Banish weakness.  Let’s be strong.

Time to right what has been wrong.

Linking arms in sisterhood,

Pledged to Justice, pledged to Good.

Standing proud and standing tall,

The worth of one the...

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I’ve never been the sort of bloke that needs to end up as the hero in one of my own stories.  Rather, I quite enjoy being “done up like a kipper” as they say.

Take these two examples.

Some years ago I had the pretentious urge to buy a fob watch for myself.  I saw one on Bawtry Market and after examining it thoughtfully and with an entirely unwarranted professional mien, told the stallholder ...

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I walked this battle trail a year or two ago and it's a bloody inhospitable place even without a blizzard and someone trying to stove your head in.  Said to be the bloodiest battle ever on British soil.

In 1400 and 61

I believe that was the year

There happened a bit of a fallout

With Yorkshire and Lancashire.

For brothers like this to come to such blows

It needed the ca...

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get up

dress

breakfast

ipad

dinner

morrisons (mon)

walk/bike ride

tipping point

the chase

calendar

dinner

corra

news at ten

match of the day (sat & sun)

bed

       repeat 

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After I was made redundant from 20 years in the coalmining industry I embarked on a second 20 year career as a self-employed management consultant.  And what a life it was too!  Getting paid three, sometimes four, times the going rate for advising executives of the bleeding obvious; the joke being that they could have heard my thoughts down the pub at night for free!  And if it went wrong?  Well, ...

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Based on "Hesitation Blues", a song of disputed origin but made famous initially by the Reverend Gary Davis.

I’m drawing Old Age Pension

I’m over sixty eight

Can’t cope with all this tension

I’m waiting for my date

How long do I have to wait?

When’s my Covid jab a-coming?

How long till I vaccinate?

The Government require us

To stay at home alone

I’m sick of ...

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One hundred thousand victims who have died this lonely death

Some on ventilators, some gasping for their breath

One hundred thousand victims who no longer are now here

And millions more of kith and kin who’ve shed their bitter tears

But you have drunk and popped your pills and danced the night away

At secret raves throughout the land; I’ve often heard you say

“Self-isol...

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Originally thought to be a prostitute from a nearby Roman encampment, the skeleton turned out to be 30,000 years old and a man.  It had been laid out ritualistically alongside the skeleton of a mammoth and dyed with red ochre. The suppostion is that a hunting party killed the mammoth but lost one of their own in the process.

Lay me in this sacred cavern

By the softly surfing sea

Let ...

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I saw the call for volunteers and thought I’d do my bit

By taking out food parcels for old biddies and old gits.

I drove my van to Asda and then loaded orders on;

In some were cans of lager so I helped myself to one.

The first old bloke just moaned at me and said that I was late

So when he went back in his house I pissed upon his gate.

The next old skank complained a lot her brea...

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Based (plagiarised) on Jesse Fuller's "San Francisco Bay Blues".  Murdered by Blind Drunk Fats Lemon Coopey.

Walking with Our Gert down beside the flooded River Aire

Scruffy togs is what folks see us wear;

It’s been the same it seems

Since our quarantine,

Just stay at home,

No need to roam,

No need for make-up, scent or comb;

I’ve suits in the wardrobe, white shirts an...

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An homage (and autobiographical update) of the vaudeville star Bert Williams's far superior "Somebody Else Not Me" (1919).

I’d gone to Goose Fair with some of my mates

As panic arose in the queues

The punters were scattering all over the shop -

The tiger was on the loose.

“A ten shilling note for its capture”

The Keeper hollered and cried

“What do you say, sonny?” looking...

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It’s Mel Gibson and I’m surprised he hasn’t won awards for it.  So why do I say this?  “The Patriot”, “Braveheart” and “Apocalypto”, that’s why.  It’s hard to imagine three films that play so fast and loose with historical accuracy that Joseph Goebbels himself would have been proud of them.

Take “The Patriot” – a full-bodied partisanerama of American and British characterisation.  No mention of...

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For those of you unfamiliar with mining an explanation of what's going on is given in the first comment below.

“There’s no bigger, silly bastard undergroun’

A disgrace to thee, ‘is mam an’ ‘is class

‘E took ‘is fuckin’ shovel wrong road roun’.

We’d walked back in once t’shotties fired their roun’

An’dep’ty said as we wa’ clear o’ gas

There’s no bigger silly bastard unde...

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He fought for you

in two wars

seventy five years apart.

What have you done?

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Not a representation of the Corona Virus or a Russian Sputnik but the Christingle Orange.

Neither Our Gert nor myself are religious people.  I was for a few years verger at Selby Abbey but my interest was always historical rather than spiritual.  But we did used to attend Sunday School with our kids when they were little.  We wanted to expose them to Christian worship so that they might ma...

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Don’t mind

boozing in illicit bars

We’ll find

a rave and drive there in our cars

Cos this whole quarantine

Just applies to has-beens

But it’s not for us teens

Cos the kids are alright.

Don’t mind

meeting up with other guys

I’m fine

if later some old gimmer dies

From the plague that I spread

Just one more old git dead

I’m OK, cos it’s said

That the ...

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Soon there will be no-one

To remember anyone;

Then it will be up to us all

To remember everyone.

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Well actually, no.  Rather a piece about the French predilection for sexing inanimate objects.  (“Ok, ok”, I hear you say, “strictly speaking cocks and fannies aren’t inanimate objects”, although these days mine is becoming increasingly so).

I’ve been reading Tim Moore’s “French Revolutions” about his attempt as a fairweather cyclist to complete the Tour de France.  In it he relates how he went...

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My poem has been deleted

Though why I’m not quite sure

I’d posted it on Write Out Loud

At least two times before!

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This item has been removed by our moderator team because it didn't abide by our Code Of Conduct. Comments may also be deleted.

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While I am on a roll with my railway poems, here is a re-post of my homage to the North Yorkshire Moors Railway and the man in black, Johnny Cash. And played with just a hint of slide guitar.

I hear the train guard’s whistle

The slamming of the doors

The fireman stokes the furnace

For the haul across the moors;

The driver lets some steam off

And sees the train guard’s flag

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I saw a post on Fb from a pal of mine who’d lifted an extract from a Douglas Adams story called “The Englishman and the Biscuit”.  Now I have no intention of trying to gazump his tale (his writing far outshines mine) but I suspect I have the edge on him in terms of personal experience.

It would have been about thirty years ago when I worked for the Coal Board that I applied for a job with ...

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I was prompted by the Lloyds Bank advert on the telly with its black horse running alongside the FC to re-post this.

Steel and copper forged and cast

To bring to life a legend’s past

Snorting steam and smoke at last

A spirit now set free

The 60103.

Polished to a brilliant sheen

In LNER racing green

No finer loco has there been

Nor ever will be too

The 4472.

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A re-post from earlier days when dentists were open.

“You keep up with the brushing,

At least twice a day?

And have you done your flossin?”

“Wergly wergly werg”

“You keep good teeth“, he said to me

“But your gums recede.

How hard is your toothbrush?”

“Wergly wergly werg”

“You look well tanned for wintertime;

Have you been away?

“Wergly wergly wergly ...

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If any single event could be said to mark the birth of modern society, my own TOTP would hark back to the 14th century.

The Black Death is reckoned by historians to have accounted for the deaths of between 25 and 60% of England’s population and, in my view, marks the birth of capitalism on which society is organised.

Hitherto serfs were enthralled to landlords by ties of feudalism. The great...

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The tune is Leadbelly's "Bourgeois Blues".  I am to blame for the lyrics. Trump is to blame for the rest.

I’ve always had a mind to visit Nashville Tennessee

But never would you catch me near to Washington, DC.

It’s a Traitor’s town

Ooooh a Traitor’s town

Those redneck traitors they wanna bring their Congress down

Home of the Free, Land of the Brave

Those Dixie boys ...

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A timely reminder, given the current cold snap we're having.

As we crunched through snow together

In inclement Arctic weather,

I thought I’d bring to mind an Old Icelandic song;

There’s a saga of the Viking

That you need to heed when hiking

That “Pissing in His Boots -

Keeps No Man Warm for Long”.

In Nordic runes it’s written

That if your foot’s frost-bitten

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A re-worked piece, updated and prompted by Jimmy Greaves being awarded the MBE in the New Year's Honours List.

Those of us who follow football will no doubt be aware that Wayne Rooney stands as England’s most prolific goalscorer.

A Pretender in my view.

Cited in the New Year’s Honours List is one James Peter Greaves, formerly of Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur, AC Milan, West Ham and Engl...

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