A Prayer In Memory of Father Jacques Hamel, murdered by IS While Saying Mass.

May the peace of the Lord be with you;

May the calm warmth of a July morning in church remain 

Always this sense of love, the love of an old priest for his fellow men. Let it renew,

A thousand fold, the stock of love, so we regain

Our sense of trust in each other, and the pain

And suffering and loss shall not obscure our view

Of hope.  Let us mark each hour in our minds with the refrain:

May the peace of the Lord be with you!

And give thanks for it in all the quiet moments of our lives. Let true

Wisdom and mercy govern our reactions, let us remember each grain

Of love produces a miraculous yield. The bad are but the few.

May the calm warmth of a July morning in church remain

In your heart and mind as the scent of a sweet flower when strain

And fear seem to overwhelm, may you find the clear, blue

Light of a summer day beyond the clouds and may it contain

Always this sense of love, the love of an old priest for his fellow men. Let it renew

Your spirit so that you go forth into the world with that tranquility he knew,

Born of faith and trust.  Let not contempt, disdain,

For those who dwell in blackness guide. For we must increase, in all that we do

A thousand fold, the stock of love, so we regain

Our sense of trust in each other: let him not have died in vain.

Let the pastoral peace of psalms and hymns be the warmth that lifts the settled dew

Of sorrow from your saddened soul, may the path of life be a summer lane
Ending in a quiet church wherein that balm of stillness is, which shall violence subdue:

The peace of the Lord.

The Women

They came from shortlists, well designed,

To fill the House with just their kind,

The lesbians with butch, cropped hair,

The Tory ladies dressed with care,

The deeply spoken, and the squeaky,

They came from Ramsgate and Auld Reekie,

Harridans and cold, hard bores,

With steely eyes, pugnacious jaws.

Their politics were much the same

They thought alike, shared every aim,

They crowded round the centre ground

And dished out dull, bland bites of sound,

Their minds were empty, speeches hollow,

Ambition led, ideas could follow,

And yet they rarely ever did.

And they would never make a bid

In favour of less government

Because they were a regiment

Of bossy sisters who loved rules

And took the demos for dumb fools.

They spat at liberty and swore 

To do away with common law,

Because they did not understand

The history of our ancient land

And thought a web of regulation

Would much enhance this once great nation.

They didn't know that less was more

And mould grows from a single spore.

Thoughts Occurring While Looking At Portrait Of Milton As A Child.

In dreary dullness and in gloom

He gazes out, does not look down,

His essence lingers like a perfume,

English roses, warm air blown.

His doublet, once striped gold and brown,

Is black with coal dust dark as doom,

His stiff lace ruff, silly costume of a clown,

In dreary dullness and in gloom,

Is cream and grey like storm tossed spume,

But still it serves to frame his face.  No frown

Distorts his youthful brow, his cheek still sports a coral bloom.

He gazes out, does not look down.

He was not then of great renown,

Yet seems a father to the man. What an heirloom

Man inherits, in childlike clarity of thought which lights up the unknown.

His essence lingers like the perfume

Of a better kind of wisdom which survives beyond the tomb.

His face is grave, his intellectual merit, though not here fully grown,

Is obvious as he looks on. Freedom's not some foul fume

English roses, warm air blown,

Are not sweeter, breathe it in. Why doubt what you are clearly shown?

Past light of stars illume

The present darkness of the night.  Choose what is known.

You aren't children, but free men, born

In dreary dullness.

Bronze Fennel, Hot June Day

The garden's pubes have wilted in the heat,

Flopped over, quite collapsed and flat,

They're flaccid, lying useless in defeat.

I take the turgid, phallic hose and sprinkle them

Hoping they will rise up, once again look neat.

I'm sure they will, yet now I think of them like that

My filthy mind sees stink horns lurking underneath,

The hard, white, leather balls of jellied slime,

Which burst apart and thrust their polystyrene willies in the air,

Each bell end sporting its white hat.

As a child I'd see them all the time,

In innocence thought nothing of their looks,

I never see them now, and do not care,

For they belong to childhood's beech woods and to fungus books.

And this luxuriant, deep bronze, pubic hair,

Belongs to well kept gardens and grown ups.

A Letter Home From The Islamic State

I miss Greggs' pasties:

Here in the Caliphate

We only eat off a plate,

(It's always a stalled ox with hate

Therein).  We nasties

Are nought if not sticklers for etiquette

And Sharia -

Which is just another word

For manners really, rules.

Like wiping your mouth with a serviette,

Only if you forget,

You get your head cut off,

Or you're thrown in a vat of nitric acid.

It's cool, yet I still fancy a pasty,

Greasy, flabby, warm and flaccid

Just to hold in my right hand.

I got my left one chopped off

Because I didn't understand

That I wasn't meant to use the boss's tools,

And I took his spanners as I hadn't heard

Him stipulate

That using his stuff was haram.

He brought his sword down slam,

And shouted God is Great,

And I thought, yeah, but your'e nasty.

And now the end of my arm,

Looks like a boiled ham,

Which is not a good look, in Islam.

Sometimes when I'm hungry,

I wish he'd chopped off my head,

Instead, because my stomach quite often thinks my throats cut

Anyway.  And there's this constant rumbling in my gut.

Here we live off the fat of the land.

Life's not hard.

It's not that the food here isn't tasty,

It's just they just don't do flaky pastry.

Food in the Caliphate is great, 

Like God, but it isn't like food from Greggs

Which is greater,

Like those ones with meat and potater,

I could right fancy one o' them,

Or some chips and battered cod,

But that's not Halal, either pal,

If it's done like I like: in lard.

So I'd better watch it, or I'll lose my other hand

And both legs.

The Dumbing Down of Death

When I am gone

Think only this of me,

I did not die

Because I longed to lie

In silence where I couldn't hear

You reading poetry.

Crying, stumbling, sobbing, taking care,

It's all as bad,

Though man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live,

And is full of misery,

Don't make it worse, 

I did not love the works of Edward Lear,

More than the language of the Book of Common Prayer,

So don't read verse.

Never Buy A Second Hand Carpet From "Fluffy Chops"

Never buy a second hand, Persian rug,
From a woman with the user name 'Fluffy Chops,'
You might think it better, and feel smug
About buying a carpet
From a fellow English woman,
Because all those oriental shops
Seem rather a rip off.
But honestly, if you turn up at the door
And see a notice saying,
'Before you report my manky looking Persian cat to the RSPCA
Here are a few things to bear in mind...'
Then you should scarper, because you will find,
Kitty's not the only mangy Iranian.
The rather pretty looking old Nain,
You saw on ebay was only attractive
Because you didn't know,
Anyone would stoop so low
As to sell,
Something with that cheesy, doggy, catty smell.
And your house will never be the same again,
Even though it's rather fragrant already
What with the scent of incontinent pets of your own,
And those certain places that remind you of that last time at the vets,
And the corpses where your poor old friends had laid,
All night, dead, uncured, and gently leaking,
Despite the thousands of pounds you had paid.
When buying second hand carpet, you wish your animals to be alone
In their vile habits,
And you don't wish to confront the possibility of other people keeping house rabbits,
Or to have to give a name,in your head,
To that vivid yellow stain,
Pretend it is there by design, instead.
And it's no good seeking
Compensation, caveat emptor and all that,
EBay isn't the shops,
If you don't like odour of cat
Then strictly speaking,
You were mad to buy anything from 'Fluffy Chops.'