tim woodhouse

God is a kindly old man,
His beard is long, white and flowing
And I'm trying the best that I can
To find Him and really start growing,
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I think I like you
I'll write a haiku -
How many syllables? Damn!
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I took my wife for a clean weekend:
We visited the art gallery, took in a show and shopped on Oxford Street.
No licking yoghourt off body parts,
No obscene acts with bars of chocolate -
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Do not let your little ones drink bleach,
Keep it locked away and out of reach.

Do not let them eat sweet, sickly food,
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Staggering out of the country pub,
Filled with beer and cigar smoke,
I walked up the scree slope to the National Park,
Tumbled down the hill to the town,
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Taking the short cut along the gravel path I often had to stop,
Avoiding dog dirt, syringes and discarded waste,
Before turning left towards the corner shop
For cigarettes, newspapers, bread and sandwich paste
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Other people's children are obnoxious, spoiled and loud,
Their parents are misguided and quite unjustly proud,
Blind to temper tantrums and snot upon their faces
They seem convinced their little ones are blessed with heavenly graces.
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Like a circle needs a diameter,
Like moral behaviour needs parameters,
Like Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard needs iambic pentameters,
I lose my shape and structure without you.
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Just when I think that I can live without you
I come home early when you're away at work,
Pick my nose, walk into town, meander
And feel the shadows of boredom as they lurk.
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Married a few years,
Sex a little bit predictable,
Farting in each other's company,
Sanitary towels left in bathrooms,
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Every school has them, the dead kids,
The ones that never made it through:
Brave Paul with his cystic fibrosis,
Little Janet at the railway crossing,
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Country walking,
Canal barges,
Fellow ramblers in the rain,
Glowing children,
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Never underestimate the temper tantrum,
You might just get your own way,
The better restaurant table,
A slight increase in pay,
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Past....imperfect,
Present....tense,
Future....conditional,
Conjugation....irregular.
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I met your boyfriend for the first time,
Tried to hate him because you weren't mine,
Until he said he liked the stuff I do,
You know, the poems and songs - he knew two.
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Handsome Hylas lands on some deserted shore with the Argonauts,
Open sandals, flowing robe, body lean and taut,
Comes to a limpid pool with lilies and gentle ripples
Where half a dozen naked nymphs, all pouting lips and protruding nipples
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What are these things called words?
Noises with our lips, teeth, tongues and throats
That have the power to sound refined, absurd,
To wound, to scar, to help us sink or float
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Trying to read James Joyce's Ulysses
Is a little like fighting a rare disease -
It puzzles and enrages,
It breaks me in stages
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