Happy Bard-day to you...

As well as St George, St Phil (my brother) and countless other important luminaries, today is the lesser known William Shakespeare's birthday. Wiki says they don't know his birthday, only the day of his baptism. But, hey ho, this'll do. It's also the day he died, and four hundred years to the month that his first book of sonnets were sold for sixpence. Apparently.
Anyway. Here's my tribute. I read it at Poetry Cafe at the Bluecoats tonight. They didn't seem to mind that I was teasing slightly.
Mind you, I didn't dare attempt to tell them that St George was probably Turkish o_O x


No Longer Eighteen

Shall I compare thee to a wet weekend?
The ruthless winds have stripped our orchards bare
The lease is up, and yet we still pretend
sweet temperance? Or do we just not care?

In time, most mortal flesh begins to sag.
In Shakespeare's day they died at fifty one.
Who wants to live forever? let death brag.
At least the shade will keep us out the sun.

And so you raise the volume on the box.
Deaf as a post, but still with eyes that see-
In widescreen watch as Britney shakes her locks
Long gone the times you looked like that at me.

But trade you in? My darling, don't dismay-
I'll hang on, so the life insurance pays.

Send in the Clowns...

Today is Comic Relief, and was supposed to be the day we were limerick-ing twimericking for charity somewhere public in Liverpool. I'm tempted to label this post 'procrastination', but in reality, life events took a turn last weekend, resulting in the word 'funny' being buried in the depths of my emotional toolbox, with any potential retrieval seeming distant and unlikely. I'm sure it's not gone for good, but I'm equally sure that the forced effort of writing humour all day would probably have resulted in synaptic meltdown.

Not to say I won't watch it tonight; I will, I really will.

BBC1 from 7pm if you want to join me.

Anyway, enough of the 'woe is me'... I am lucky that my sadness isn't terminal, and that I have sufficient faculties to resolve the situation in due course, one way or another... I just felt that having created 'twimerick-the expectation', some sort of explanation was required.

Also, there's a new writing competition- This Morning and She magazine have teamed up... short story, 1500- 2000 words, deadline 23rd of this month, nice warm up for Screnzy.

Get writing!

And I don't know it...

Well tonight I'm off to the Bluecoats in Liverpool to hear some poetry done proper like.

Unlike mine.

Perhaps I should get an MA in it, and then mine would be proper too. Like.

Oh I'm coming over all self pitying and moany. Think I'll go out instead. This isn't a healthy frame of mind!