A funny poem Frank I'm sorry, I know you're anti-Tory but Ed Miliband's speech was a joke. His 'comprehensive school' wasn't like the rough ones near me in Brixton, it was a classy educational institution. His family were extremely wealthy too. Labour are as fake as the Tories in my book.


Nice one Biz


Great write Archiver - the atmosphere's romantic but I sensed an image of the sun.

Hermann and Hitchcock

Hitchcock’s suspenseful thrillers
That shocked the world so much
Wouldn’t have been such chillers
Without the Hermann touch.

Suite for a ghostly double
And a man’s need to go
Stumbling through life’s sad rubble
Crippled by vertigo.

Each unreleased emotion
Heard in orchestral toil
Like a despotic ocean
Making the mind recoil.

Then Hermann scored the rapture
Of an exciting quest;
Chased yet avoiding capture,
Fleeing north by northwest.

Meanwhile a girl drives faster
To violins that jab,
Tension becomes the master,
Rapid, relentless stabs.

Stops at a motel hidden,
Pretty and on the run
She was the fruit forbidden
From a psychotic son.

Taking a harmless shower,
You don’t suspect a threat
Until you notice our
Mrs Bates’ silhouette.

Making what’s safe uncertain,
Terror's own theme of themes,
When she pulls back the curtain
Every allegro screams.

I find it quite fulfilling
To listen as strings play
After the bathroom killing
Where the blood swirled away.

Marnie, a thief virginal
Who hated crimson, which
Sadly was Hermann’s final
Music composed for Hitch.

Celluloid greats require
Soundtracks and for unrest
Dwelling in fear’s dark mire
Bernard, you were the best.


©

So true. The world would be flat without the gift of music.

Apparently, Hitchcock's bosses first saw Psycho in private minus the music. They were unimpressed. After Bernard Hermann's soundtrack was added they re-watched it and left the studio in complete shock

I'm off to stay at my brother's in London for a few days. We're going to crack on with the book - the last version was too small and I'm hoping additional poems are going to make it the right size. See you on Friday IPaDA fans

I didn't know that, but it makes sense. Every time there's a shower scene in a film there's a little frisson (eek eek eek).

I think that scene is part of folk memory now. I wonder how many people lock the bathroom door before getting into the shower............I know I do.


Not long to wait now.

Musty - we have to differ on our politics - but as to fact this in your comment that EM's family was rich Ed Miliband's speech was a joke. His 'comprehensive school' wasn't like the rough ones near me in Brixton, it was a classy educational institution. His family were extremely wealthy too is just plain incorrect, EM's father was a Marxist educationalist and a Professor in the USA hardly anywhere near as wealthy as an entrepreneur with their own firm.

Not that relatives' or relative wealth was a point or ever my main point in a poem about influence and old boys' networks, 19 PMs going to Eton, the infamous trio, the three pivotal top dogs in the same pack through their adult lives, all posh hooray henries at the same secret Oxford Bullingdon Club. I am not saying they are all bad persons but the beneficiaries of stark privilege rampant in our system of discriminatory educational opportunities.

I know Ed only got to the top with a leg-up from the Unions so influence paid a part there too to be fair. Good luck with your project. I love the music in Hitch's films too, good write again.
Frank

You can't keep a dead man down
Life began with body in the ground
They try to put you back in earth
You spend all your life just opening up.

Born in Transylvani-a
I was born in Transylvani-a
Born in Transylvani-a

You got recruited to the corps undead
Must find a safe grave to lay a head
If a peasant finds you sucking rat
Unfold your wings and take flight as a bat.

Born in Transylvani-a
I was born in Transylvani-a
Born in Transylvani-a

They'll never keep a bad Rumanian down
Red blooded women better getoutta town
The news Count Dracula is on the prowl
Lord of the Night he wants to hear you howl.

Born in Transylvani-a
I was born in Transylvani-a
Born in Transylvani-a

Trouble is this job can really be the pits
Found blood in one of my bowel motions
Piles or worse afflict my dying nether bits
I've gotta fly for vampire bottom lotions.

Things are really getting me down
Life is verging on dead boring
The Cossacks rode every virgin in town
I Dracul, may just as well be snoring
Fangs just not what they used to be.

I hear much ripe fruit lies in Ireland
But God too and woe! So many crosses
There's less maidenhoods I fear in England
But we aristocrats always cut our losses
And Renfield will have much noble company.

Born in Transylvani-a
I was born in Transylvani-a
Born in Transylvani-a

Hi Frank My point was, Miliband tried to portray himself as 'working class' in his speech and it's simply not true. His comprehensive school was far better than the ones I knew. I actually lived in a really hard-up, poor area: Brixton. I don't go around using it as a badge of honour though. And Miliband's Dad may not have been rich, but the family owned two houses, one in rural Oxfordshire - something families like mine who rented terraced housing with outdoor toilets and no bathrooms could only dream of. I know BS when I smell it. Unfortunately Ed and Labour reek of it. And they're too scared to use the word socialism. They also encouraged the banks to ruin the economy and took us into Iraq. What a shower. They shame the original Labour Party IMO.

Nice one Frank - all this needs is music to accompany it

The Fossil by the Sea

The fossil washed up on the shore,
Its strange appearance there I saw,
Down on the beach
I bent to reach,
Investigate and see.

I held it up and then observed
That old survivor, ridged and curved
Yet now redeemed
The relic seemed
To turn a distant key.

When brushed away, the cold wet sand
Revealed what I'd picked from the land,
My wonder grew
While seagulls flew,
Sometimes you just feel free.

Encircled patterns were arrayed
And pretty little spirals played,
Without a sound
I almost found
The fossil spoke to me

Of endless years and long agos,
Of churning pulls of ebbs and flows
When oceans stormed,
When life first formed
And sparked prehistory.

I watched the grey incoming tide,
What made Infinity decide
To gently steer
Then place it here
At this vicinity?

One object in my hand contained
The many eras that had reigned,
So bright and small,
I still recall
The fossil by the sea.


©

Book update: It took over four hours to make the version we wanted just right but we got there in the end I'm waiting for it to arrive in the post now - fingers crossed

Thanks Frank

all the good ones

Why do all the good ones
Have to leave before
Their unique ambitions
Ever get to soar?

Why did such a prophet
As Mahatma fall?
Wasn't Gandhi's message
Listened to at all?

Dallas in the sunshine,
Guns for JFK,
One more threat subtracted,
One more blown away.

Doves are flying lower,
Wounded on the wing
Like the dream that died with
Martin Luther King.

And the younger brother
Bobby's end came through
Bullets shot at point blank,
Poor John Lennon too.

Why do all the good ones
Have to die before
Peace can gain the power
To extinguish war?


©

So many unanswerable questions Musty. If only we had a magic wand.

I know Biz, I know Never mind, autumn's here - I like cold crisp days with a nice warm fire on indoors And we've passed 80,000 views!

Makes us appreciate our comforts doesn't it?

And congratulations.

The Prancing Pony

Far away from Mordor's spies
And the gaze of prying eyes
Bree, the friendly village stands
Lonely in these empty lands.

Through the West-gate enter Bree,
Men and hobbits both you'll see,
Follow streets towards an old
Signboard swinging in the cold.

In the Prancing Pony find
Local bonhomie combined
With warmth keeping out the night,
Homely windows glowing bright.

Drink makes vision but a blur
Where Barliman Butterbur
Landlord of the inn sells beer
At the house known for good cheer.

Passing Rangers find the pub
Useful, as it is the hub
Of news spread by word of mouth
From the Greenway in the South.

Lodge upstairs or downstairs chat
Near the seat where Strider sat,
On the road that never ends
Frodo lodged here with his friends;

For the Prancing Pony played
Its part when a trip was made
By four hobbits from the Shire
And the One Ring all desire.

Gandalf, king of rune and spell
Knew the Prancing Pony well,
Blazing hearth, strong ale that gleams
In the tavern of my dreams.


©

Yeah - I fancy a pint in the Prancing Pony now

A little bit of what you fancy.

I recognize some of the names in your yarn, but I've got to admit I haven't read any hobbit stories.

The Lord of the Rings, while a masterpiece, takes a major effort to read - it took me three attempts. The Hobbit's a much smaller book and I'd recommend it as the best starting place for Tolkien beginners. It's not just a story for children

Although I've been a devoted reader in my time - I remember my mother complaining ("You've always got your nose stuck in a book.") when she asked me to do something and I genuinely didn't hear her. Oh to have that gift back again.

Today, I indulge in television dramas, and of course read poetry on here.

There was an old woman
had so many children
she didn't know what to do
she hadn't heard of then
social benefits for the feckless
given out to those who are reckless
today's shoe-livers have more than a clue.

Quick as a flash in free buses they dash
say they have no known spouses
so demand their free houses
fully furnished, at least two stories
with nursery, how hunky dory
and this is no fairy story.

~~~~~

Old Mother Hubbard
whose name rhymed with cupboard
is best known for having a dog
who wanted a bone
though none was to be had
but rhyming bone and none
is just bad.
It was a talented beast,
to whom when deceased,
its mistress erected a sone.

~~~~~

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
it's somewhere to go after all
far beyond a joke, his spirit was broke
he just wanted a smoke
and his wife's ban was starting to pall;
as he fell on his head
free of ache and of pain
he was better off dead
without the old ball and chain;
lost his yoke and his shell,
all's ending up well,
Humpty Dumpty, the ghost, standing tall.

A typo in the previous "stone" not sone - idiot, proofread you twit.

So true Frank - I like the way you illustrated a modern social problems with nursery rhymes here.

That's the main thing Biz