Two Poems

FRACKEDY DOO DAH!

It just needs a dash and a splash, really,

a bit like a soda-syphon.

One quick squirt and everybody’s happy:

the makers, the miners, the market, the ministry,

Me.

It’s all down to the bubbles – the fizz that gives you whizz.

We’re working on a new gas boiler.

One pipe in,

one pipe out.

It only needs a bright spark to get things cooking.

Walla! Instant espresso!

What’s the problem?

Whinging windmill worshippers can sail away,

join the Dutch in a ditch,

tilt in a different direction,

stop getting their turbines in a twist.

So long Solar!

Anyway,

penguins and polar bears need to get with the programme

– it’s all about mobility in this day and age.

It’s been the same for millennia – the natural order of things,

dig it up, chop it down, set fire to it.

What’s not to like?

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Geology -

it’s the new rock and roll.

Ingenious Igneous.

Mega Metamorphic.

It’s deep man.

It’s Sedimentary, my dear.

Anyway,

when the layers converge and it all comes crashing down

and homes and playschemes sink into the magma,

we’ll be long gone.

‘Counting our cash in the Caymans.

It’s Cracking!

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ALL THINGS BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL

I’ve never travelled on a plane

The likes of Spain is not for us

I’ve helped my uncle drive a train

I’ve been to Merthyr on a bus

I love the sound of railways more

The clack of points, the puff and shush

But aeroplanes just scream and roar

I’ve heard them at the Gaumont Grand

They’re loudest when they start to soar

But shocking when they come to land

We felt like one was way off course

All stood in pairings, hand in hand

Singing loud with voices hoarse

‘All things Bright and Beautiful’

Voices silenced by the force

Some heeded Mrs Williams call

And hid beneath some good Welsh oak

I stood and watched the white-washed wall

To see the cockpit as it broke

It bulged and cracked from floor to beam

And so in-seeped the rivered coke

The fissure widened like a seam

Miss Williams was the last to speak

I think I was the last to scream

Why has our Lord attacked the weak

The Chapel-goers, lambs of God?

No longer blessed are the meek

Twice interred beneath the sod

The blackness, black, black, stream from hell

Driven to the land of nod

Nostrils full of sulphurous smell

Suffocated, crushed and blue

Just twenty five alive, not well

A prematurely aged few

I left for school aged seven years

And went back home at twenty-two

The Queen, she called to mop our tears

‘Received a posy for her pains

A thank you from the little dears

With the posy came a thought

The children they were rightly taught

The words upon the card said ‘From

The remaining children of Aberfan’