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Claire from Customer Care
We have precious little time on this beautiful Earth, and there is nothing I resent more than having to spend it jumping through hoops all in the name of “customer service”. Sitting on hold, explaining things three times to people in different departments, listening to protracted terms and conditions scripts, or – my favourite – “passing security”. (Next time, you’re told that you’ve passed security, do what I do – cheer. They never know what to do with that.)
Anyway, I parcelled up all my frustrations, stuffed them all into a poetic person known as Claire from Customer Care, and vented.
Claire from Customer Care
I can’t come out tonight,
I’m on with Claire from customer care,
Who is voicing my pointless choices,
As my ears bleed despair.
I can’t come out tonight,
I’m finding my ideal tariff
with just ten sections of soul-sucking questions,
As my hopes vanish.
I can’t come out tonight,
I’m ticking terms and conditions,
Poring over each torturous clause,
While The Reaper’s steps quicken.
I can’t come out tonight,
I’m completing a quick questionnaire,
Assessing my satisfaction with that interaction
with Claire from customer care…
And my starving eyes… just stare.
I should have gone out tonight,
Instead, to the beat of on-hold music,
I lose it.
© Nina Parmenter 2018
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Lightning Stripes
Last Halloween
Just don’t fix a date for October 31st – that’s all I’m saying!
Last Halloween
As skies were turning dark last Halloween,
I sat in terror, waiting for my date.
Then in he walked, all beautiful and lean,
With eyes whose depths I could not contemplate.
I studied his anatomy at length,
As there he stood, not daring once to breathe,
His jutting jaw betrayed a deathly strength,
His cheekbones were as perfect as his teeth.
He rattled through the small talk, then we delved
much deeper, and he let me see within,
And when we kissed goodbye, at almost twelve,
I really felt I’d got beneath his skin.
Then midnight struck. My vision cleared. I saw…
A skeleton was walking out the door.
© Nina Parmenter 2018
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You Have To Be A Hexagon
Despite the name of the poem… please don’t be a hexagon, lovely people… I much prefer dodecagons and splodge-agons!
You Have To Be A Hexagon
A hexagon,
A hexagon,
You have to be a hexagon,
Cos everybody knows it’s great,
To fit right in and tessellate.
But I am a dodecagon!
I might just be the only one,
This side is long,
And this one’s short,
And this bit’s weirder than I thought.
No no!
No NO!
A hexagon!
You HAVE to be a hexagon!
Such gleeful uniformity –
It’s how the world is meant to be!
But me, I am a splodge-agon,
A sort of blob with wobbles on,
A curvy individual,
A fun and floopy visual!
A hexagon!
A HEXAGON!
WHY CAN’T YOU BE A HEXAGON?
If you can’t look
Like others do,
I’m going to have to pick on you!
Don’t want to be a hexagon.
I’m sorry?!
A bland, six-cornered dullathon.
I’M SORRY?!
I just don’t want to tessellate,
With you and your identi-mates,
Who mock the eccentricity,
Of those who do it differently,
And I don’t NEED to fit your norm,
Each corner crafted to conform,
No no, I’ll floop, and stretch, and be…
A strange and perfect fit… for me.
© Nina Parmenter 2018
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Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
Cauliflower Makes Me Poo
Cauliflower Makes Me Poo
Cauliflower makes me poo,
It does! It does! I’m telling you!
These cute florets, they all beget
Poogeddon in an hour or two.
I thought “oh great! I’ll lose some weight!”
I piled it high upon my plate,
The poo deluge was REALLY huge,
I weighed myself – still ten stone eight!
So listen, if you’d like to try
Some weight loss via brassicae,
May I advise some exercise…
With cabbages strapped to your thighs.
© Nina Parmenter 2018
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Growing Boy
In “George’s Marvellous Medicine”, eight year old George’s gruesome Grandma declares that growing is “a nasty childish habit”.
Now as the one who has to fund the growth of an almost eight year old boy… well… let’s say she had a point.
Growing Boy
He is not even eight,
But he eats like a bear,
Pile it up on his plate –
In a blink, it’s not there!
So I hide all the snacks,
(He’d consume the whole pack),
But I cannot, I cannot keep up!
As his belly peeps out
Of his nearly-new tops,
And yet MORE ankle sprouts
From his trousers, I shop
Like a ninja on speed
For the clothes that he needs…
Yet I cannot, I cannot keep up!
And those telescope toes
Punching holes in each sock,
Mean I’ll pay through the nose
For more shoes… Should I lock
Up the fridge, nice and tight?
Feed him shrink-pills at night??
For I CANNOT, I cannot keep up!
© Nina Parmenter 2018
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Photo by Enrico Mantegazza on Unsplash
Guest Poet: Jan Allison
I am proud to say I’ve made a good number of poetic friends since I started writing, but the first I made was the wonderful Jan Allison. Jan writes some hilariously entertaining poetry, and, like me, does so for joy and therapy.
We’ve had great fun writing a couple of collaborations, but this farty masterpiece is all Jan… and she DOES do the best fart poems!
Silent Butt Deadly
He’d eaten baked beans for his brunch
Then onion rings he did munch
He built up so much gas
Which he then had to pass
The odour it sure packed a punch
Poor Michael was quite broken hearted –
His fiancé asked if he’d farted
To disguise his foul flatus
He stood by sweet clematis
Then into the bushes he darted
His fiancé said ‘you silly goose
It’s okay to let little farts loose
You should alter your diet
It’s easy, just try it
There’s no need to become a recluse’!
© Jan Allison 2018
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Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash
Juggernaut Growl
This is, perhaps, a slightly unsettling one, but as it’s World Mental Health Day today, I wanted to post something a little more challenging.
Juggernaut Growl
Adrift on this rattling sucking-dry river
I’m twisting like flotsam, my energy peaking
and troughing, my will being tested
and tested…
I’m smashing
I’m shattering
Over and over.
The eddies are frenzied with power, the current
seems drunk on futility, stripping and tearing
And on rasps the river
so careless, so cold…
As my essence is shredded and fed
to its time-silted soul.
Yet somewhere beyond the great roar of this monstrous
onslaught, I know you are talking to me,
And your voice, that smooth sanctuary,
Beckons me home with a pillow-soft promise of healing.
But you are more alien now
than the juggernaut growl
of this river, for I am
the grist to the grind of its fury, its
face-slapping, limb-snapping, life-sapping
venom, its shores as beyond me as meaning
or reason or pleasure or feeling…
© Nina Parmenter 2018
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Photo by Ian Espinosa on Unsplash
The World Needs Poetry
The World Needs Poetry
You ask, “Why DOES the world need poetry?”
And I say…
Its writing is my sanity,
my armour versus apathy,
my dealing-with-it strategy,
my joy, my strange proclivity,
my vital creativity.
Its reading dulls cacophony
and mindless mediocrity
then floods me with philosophy
and tenderness and jollity
that elevate life’s quality.
Each poem is a legacy
itself, but then collectively
they weave a vibrant tapestry
of glorious humanity…
For though we face mortality,
our madness, our hilarity,
our weakness, our capacity
for sadness or sagacity
can all be captured perfectly
by verses, for eternity.
And that’s why, whether knowingly
or not, the world needs poetry.
© Nina Parmenter 2018
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Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash