This is just a tongue in cheek look at poetry.

I still rarely read poetry or listen to recitals. My influence comes more from lyrics of songs of song writers like Dan Fogelberg , Jim Croce, Gordon Lightfoot and Chris De Burgh. Artist who paint a picture in your mind when you listen to their words. Or with a turn of phrase can express a feeling or emotion where normal words fail or are inadequate.

 THE FOOL IN THE SCHOOL

I never liked poetry when I was at school

The ranting and ravings of some daft old fool

Not for me all those  rhythms and rhyme

No thank you , just didn’t have the time

Why didn’t they just say what they really meant

And not waste my time I could have better spent

Oh how I hated all that rubbish, that old gibberish

Why didn’t they just say it in plain English

No need you see for all this old poetry

Stop beating about the bush or even that tree

Just say what you mean and mean what you say

In plain language please, there’s no better way

Generations of misery inflicted on every schoolchild

Keats and Shelley and Byron and Wilde

MIlton and Wordsworth and his bloody daffodils

As for that old Shakespeare, just made me sick to the gills

Might as well be looking at the Man in the Moon

Oh please God let this class be over soon

Why did they have to make it so hard

The craft of the Poet and the art of the Bard

Many years passed and I survived school

But poetry I never needed to use as a tool

Life taught me many lessons,some very hard

While others were a lot better in that regard

I did my very best to keep a balance and check

Then fate dealt me the joker from the bottom of the deck

A disease called Parkinson’s has messed with my brain

And because of some medication I take for the pain

I’m now sprouting poetry all night and all day

These words in my head just won’t go away

So I have to write them down before they fade in the fog

From deep within my mind, a memory I did jog

And I smile to myself as I recall those long days in school

The irony of it all, the rantings and ravings of this daft old fool

c  Denis Murphy 14 Sep 2015.