Poetry Blog by John Coopey

(A re-post from 2017. In tribute to Bill Withers who died today.  Worldwide fans may recall the story which circulated 3 or 4 years ago that Donald Trump had, prior to his candidature for POTUS, engaged the services while he had visited Moscow of two prostitutes to engage in a little watersports.)

Some times in our lives

We crave that rain

That’s sweet as flowers;

And when it arri...

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When I was a lad of around 19 and at university I had a holiday job as a labourer at “Billy” Bodill’s builder’s yard.  The minibus would pick us up about 7 0’clock and take us to the job.

It was a formative experience.  For one thing, I risked lung cancer every day travelling in the fug inside that van.

Then there was Gran.  Short for Granville, he seemed about 80 to my mate Bruce and me.  B...

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(Warning: the audio is unexpurgated)

It’s been a source of some regret that I had missed my chance

To be a superhero with my kecks inside my pants.

I wanted to be Batman and to fight the city’s crime

I’d get hold of The Piddler and I’d make him serve his time.

Or whizz around like Superman, on guard by day and night

Looking out for phone boxes in case my pants got tight.

...

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(It seems the offer was stuck in his spam box. I know many others who would like to stick something in his spam box)

We don’t need no ventilators

We’ve quite sufficient on the whole

We don’t need your respirators

Thankyou but we’ve got our own

Hey!  Britain!  We got Brexit done.

All in all it’s just another bad Boris call.

We will beat corona virus

Without the hel...

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I realise completely that this will not make sense to 80% of WOLers.  But, hey-ho, there are some clubs in life you just can’t join.

I sold my records when I went to university in the early 70’s, opting instead to tape them all before I flogged them on a Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorder.  Shame really, some of them turned out to be quite valuable; amongst them was an early copy of Bob Dylan’s...

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(I have, rather belatedly, come to understand why people are stockpiling toilet rolls)

My Sweet Hoard

Ooh-ooh My Hoard

My bog roll hoard

At home is stored

I’m happy that I’ve bought ya

I got more than I oughta

In Tesco’s it was slaughter

But I nabbed all I could afford.

My Sweet Hoard

My bog roll hoard

We scratched and clawed

I took my sword

But now...

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I’ll beat this virus

I’ll beat this virus with toilet rolls

I’ll beat this virus

I’ll beat this virus with toilet rolls

I’ve filled my trolley

I’ve filled my trolley with twenty packs

Enough by golly

Enough by golly for 12 months cack.

I fought a shopper

I fought a shopper who wanted one

I had to drop her

I had to drop her cos stocks had gone

I’m ...

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I have seen the Future

And it is the Past.

Rationing and the blackmarket

Curfews

Rousing speeches from the Leader

And Death

Plenty of Death.

When your electrity and water supply  fail

When garbage rots in the streets

When there are not enough doctors and nurses to staff the hospitals

When the police force is denuded by sickness

When the Army is shooting looter...

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The recent announcements about the Government’s points-based immigration proposals have prompted some discussion among a number of my Facebook chums on how, exactly, one job’s worth can be compared with another.  Care workers, for example, are often cited in this regard.

Well, there are instruments for evaluating the relative worth of jobs – I myself used to be a licensed practitioner of these....

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I’ve started wearing corduroy now I’m a certain age;

I’ve trousers both in red and brown but mostly I wear beige.

(The drawback, though, with wearing beige – it makes you look a dunce -

Is poor control at toilet times leaves piss stains down their fronts).

My pension doesn’t run to much, so mean I barely cope

But corduroy’s affordable in BHF and Scope.

Of course, I’d never w...

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I think it’s remarkable false hygiene goals

Have prompted the hoarding of stores’ toilet rolls;

In Morrison’s, Boots and in Asda the shelves

Are empty as numpties bulk buy for themselves;

Despite the advice of the experts, the dumb

Believe that the virus will egress your bum.

But Brexit has shown how misinformation

Gets swallowed wholesale by a gullible nation.

And so ...

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Priti's been catty

To her staff, they say

Driving them batty

Both by night and day

She's a bully
Tory bully
She's a bully
Tory bully
She's a bully


Her mood's always ratty

Their life's been hell

Who's driving them scatty?

That's Priti Patel

She's a bully....


So I wrote this ditty

To spead the smell

That Priti's been shitty

That's Priti Patel

She's a bully....


...

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(I have just re-read Bernard Cornwell's excellent Stonehenge and was prompted to re-post this)

The cradle of all – the living, the dead                                                  

Where Sol and Lahanna hold thrones,                                                 

Where many a sacrifice leached earth red;                                         

The cradle of all – the livin...

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When old gits gather, talk always turns to nostalgia – the size of Wagon Wheels and Mars Bars, for example.  A loose re-enactment of that Monty Python Yorkshiremen sketch.

At such a coven recently my mate remembered those pre-digital, pre-Facebook days of snapping a dozen photos on your Kodak Instamatic and taking the film to Boots to get it developed.  You’d collect your photos two weeks later...

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I stumbled across his funeral today.  I didn’t even know he’d died.

I was making my way into the Abbey for a tinkle and saw a couple of hearses outside.  I thought I could discreetly sidle down the North Aisle to the toilet when I bumped into the Verger just inside the door.

“Did you know him?” he asked.  I reached for his service sheet to see that it was a former colleague whom I knew from ...

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Driving up the A1 from East Midlands Airport a couple of days ago in this current spell of bad weather reminded me of an incident I was involved in around 20 years ago.  (On a related note, Storm Ciara made for a lively landing, I can tell you.  But it takes more than a spot of breeze to persuade Ryan Air to waste fuel diverting).

Anyway, 20 years ago, I was likewise driving up the A1(M) past D...

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And so this is Brexit

And isn’t this fun?

We Leavers have won it

We’ve got Brexit done.

Two fingers to Europe

The Poles and the Dutch

We’re not xenophobic

Or racist as such.

So three cheers for Brexit

Remoaners, you lost;

We’re free now from Europe

Now let’s count the cost.

So, yes, that was Brexit

Remember this date

We’re soon to become th...

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(The counterpart to my previous "We are the Baby Boomers")

We are Millennial Snowflakes

So PC and woke

Always wearing pained expressions

Suffering from acute depression

Being young is oh-so stressful

Life’s beyond a joke

There’s no-one suffers more than me

Why, yesterday most cruelly

I got no signal on 4G

I need a snort of coke.

And we Millennial Snowflak...

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We are the Baby Boomers

Born after the war

In 1950 I was foetal

Then I grew up with The Beatles;

Our watchword’s always “Mustn’t Grumble”

Snowflakes we abhor

They’re owed a living they assume

They bleat about their stress and gloom

I wouldn’t give them elbow room

But show them out the door.

We are the Baby Boomers

Nearly now old gits

Jobs were plenty; we go...

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It’s said that there are a number of mileposts you pass in your life which let you know you’re knocking on.

For example, when you’re young everyone identifies with the girl in The Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home”.  As you get older your empathy switches to her parents – “Daddy, our baby’s gone!”

I have also noticed that when an airline pilot steps out of his cabin he looks like he belongs on th...

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(I believe the price has gone up to £15 this year)

We bought our discount clubcard

It wasn’t very dear

Fo’ Notcutts Garden Centre -

Just twelve quid fo’ one year;

Besides percentage discounts

There’s coffee or there’s tea

Or even cappuccinos

That’s two a month fo’ free;

Now, reckon up two coffees

At just two quid a punt,

That’s forty eight quid fo’ the year,

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(For the benefit of worldwide fans anxious to cop a glimpse again of Yours Truly in mankini mode - a re-post)

Look what they done to my thong, Ma

Look what they done to my thong, Ma

The posing pouch is very small, the waistband very long, Ma

Look what they done to my thong.

I can’t buy clothes off the shelves, Ma

I can’t buy clothes off the shelves, Ma

I need my basq...

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("There's nowt for getting old" - my Aunt Flo")

I can see clearly now my specs have come

I can see pills that’s on my bedside tray

Gone is my need for library large-print books

I can read perfectly good if it’s arm’s length away.

I can chew proper now my teeth are in

No more rolling food round my gums

No more Angel Delight and chicken soup

It’s gonna be pie, steak...

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I recall hearing a story once – I think it was from the Bible – about someone who cried only twice when his father hit him.  Once was the first time when he cried because it hurt.  The second was the last time his father hit him and he cried because it didn’t – he realised his ageing father was dying.

I too recollect a similar incident.

I’d guess I’d have been around fourteen years old and m...

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I was dispirited, but not at all surprised, by the stir caused by the use of the word “faggot” in Nessa and Bryn’s rendition of “The Fairytale of New York” during “The Gavin and Stacey Christmas Special”.  And equally disappointed to hear Ruth Jones and Shane MacGowan’s defensiveness towards it. I’d rather have heard them say “WYV and man up!” (Further clarification of those initials would certain...

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Oh Jeremy, Oh Jeremy

Pathetic were your chances;

Because of you the barmy Left

Let Boris win with daylight theft.

Your canvassers all heard it too-

They’d vote for Labour but for you;

Oh Jeremy, your legacy’s 10 more years of austerity.

Oh Jeremy, were we blind drunk

To think you had one ounce of spunk;

We must have been completely dense

To let you sit on Brexit’...

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