BITTER ABOUT LITTER

A while ago, I wrote this poem about litter:

Hey you,

Yes you,

You who tossed away

The carrier bag,

The cigarette end,

The leaflet,

The receipt,

The free newspaper,

The can,

The bottle,

The sausage roll wrapper,

Pick up your litter, scruff,

Or I’ll flush you

down the crapper.

I'm just back from a walk in a beautiful country park and I took a note of these items, discarded along the way:

crisp packet,

Aero chocolate wrapper

plastic water bottle

Coca-Cola bottle

coffee cup

leaflet

another Coca-Cola bottle

tissues

Polo mint wrapper

water bottle label

another water bottle label

yet another water bottle label

handkerchief

train ticket

J-cloth

receipt

chewing gun wrapper

plastic carrier bag

plastic bread bag

cellophane salad bag

chocolate eclair sweet wrapper

I refer you to the last three lines of the poem above.

SQUIRRELS

Clumber Park, 12 September 2014


Squirrel bouncing along, bushy-tailed, full of freedom,
mini-leaps on the grass beneath a tree, stops, looks,
then seems to enter a hurdle race, jumping over invisible barriers,
before bounding onto a sawn-off tree trunk, treating it
like an old school gym horse, full of freedom and enjoying it.

NO LONGER NEAT

Like badly drawn freehand straightish lines 

on a near-blue page furred with white gauze,
the black cables wobble in the wind 

against the cloud wisp movements in the sky.
Crow claws clamp birds to this floating therapy, 

arousing buzzes in their feet, and they wait, 

lower, higher, lower, higher, lower, higher, low, high, low, high.........


Below, something etch-a-sketches a winding path in ragwort, a thread-stream
in amongst the yellow carpet and a radar hawk homes in on a new treat.
Above the impending kill, above the cables, a fighter jet rips across the silence
and a mess of crows splatters the heavens, a sky no longer neat.

CLUMBER PARK HAIKUS

hanging between plants,
frosted-white cobweb cradles,
soon to disappear


ducks, swans, crows giving
it full-belt, quack, yodel, caw,
pow-wow on the lake


a couple debate
algae floating on water,
he gives up, she wins

AMAZON, WATERSTONES, FOYLES - FUN WITH WORDS, FUN WITH RHYME

Fun With Words, Fun With Rhyme

By Joe Cushnan

I love poetry. Sometimes I don’t understand it but other times I get it, learn from it, am entertained by it and, occasionally and wonderfully, I laugh out loud at it. This book is called Fun With Words, Fun With Rhyme and, apart from sharing some new funny poems, I want it to be a book of encouragement to promote a lifelong love of books, bookshops and libraries. The poems can be read quietly or performed by and to enthusiastic, interactive audiences. There are those who, for whatever reason, have the ability but have not had the active encouragement to come back to the language and give it a great big hug. We can all do it. We can all write poems. We can be serious or funny, serious and funny, whatever we want to be. Our poems don’t have to be literary masterpieces, don’t have to be hifalutin, Nobel Prize nuggets of genius – although, if they are, good for us. The joy is in having a go, playing with words, playing with rhyme…..and having fun. Start with “the fat cat sat on the mat” or wherever you like. But, have a go. Like my old friend John, tear poems out of newspapers and magazines. Keep them in your pockets to read later or to give to others. Read poems out loud whenever you can to poetry groups, school classes, at parties – to yourself!

ISBN: 9781784079581

Total Pages: 101

Published: 12 August 2014

Buy it here:

AMAZON

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fun-Words-Rhyme-Joe-Cushnan/dp/1784079588/ref=sr_1_18?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410187169&sr=1-18&keywords=Joe+Cushnan

WATERSTONES

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/joe+cushnan/fun+with+words2c+fun+with+rhyme/11313790/

FOYLES

http://www.foyles.co.uk/witem/fiction-poetry/fun-with-words-fun-with-rhyme,cushnan-joe-9781784079581

The book will appear on most major sites soon.

RUR-ALE

From my latest work in progress -

The Poems of Hamish Sheaney: Remastered & Expanded

RUR-ALE

I would wade through ditch and gulley,

Bog, bramble, bracken and thistle,

Brush, fern, thicket, briar and hedgerow,

Nettle, weed, needle and prickle,

All kinds of growth from grass to shrub,

Always thinking, moaning, muttering:

“There’s got to be an easier route

to the local pub.”

******

And don't forget my latest book of funny verse for kids (of all ages)

(available here http://www.feedaread.com/ ) and soon via Amazon and other book sites

BUS FUSS

From my new book of funny poems (available here http://www.feedaread.com/ ) and soon via Amazon and other book sites

BUS FUSS

I gave the bus driver a potato,

He looked at me all agog,

I gave the bus driver a frying pan

And a collar once worn by a dog.

I gave the bus driver an apple core,

He started tugging his hair,

He said: “Look mate, dunno what you’re playing at,

It’s just not fare!”