Old Mag - Oscar Milde

Old Mag the hag sat with her cat,
she in her chair, it on its mat.
She muttered intermittently
as so befits a retiree
but what she muttered was not kind
she had unpleasantness in mind.
From time to time she cast a spell
or brewed herbs with a pungent smell
to conjure up, a witches’ trick,
a demon or perhaps, Old Nick.
Instead, to her intense surprise,
she got a maiden with blue eyes,
long silver cloak, curls on her head.
I am your Good Fairy, she said.
Three wishes I am granting you.
Come on, be quick, it’s time I flew.
Oh give me money! Hag Mag cried.
A chest appeared with gold inside.
Next wish? Speak up and speak the truth.
Give me great beauty, please, and youth.
Then Mag was altered in a flash
so she had beauty, youth and cash.
One last wish, then I’ve got to go:
you’ve got the cash and beauty, so?
Mag cried, please turn my young cat, Vince,
into a sexy, handsome Prince.
When this was done, the Fairy went.
Mag told the “Prince” of her intent:
long nights of passion, love and lust
until they’d jolly well combust.
The “Prince”, her former cat, looked sad.
He said, now look here, don’t get mad.
I’ll do my best but you’ll regret
the day you took me to the vet.

Oscar Milde


Image : Pixabay - StockSnap

At La Catioroc - Oscar Milde

Friday, midnight, moon is waning,
fortunately it’s not raining,
as three naked women frolic
in a habitat, bucolic.
Drinking potions, chanting spells,
these post-menopausal belles
try to summon up their Master,
dancing faster, ever faster
by the light of a small campfire
made of tinder and of damp briar.
In the bushes lurks old Mourant,
toothless, lecherous, unpleasant.
He leaps out, his flies asunder:
at that very moment, thunder
and a vivid flash of lightning,
simultaneous with this sighting,
quickly shatter their delusion
and they scatter in confusion …
To The Press, the witches said
how they were terrified and fled
and how clearly they remember
Satan had a tiny member.

Oscar Milde

Image : Pixabay - TheDigitalArtist

My Cat Yorick - Oscar Milde

Came home last night the worse for drink
and didn’t really pause to think.
Opened the window, popped the cat
outside to do its this and that.
Awoke this morning, shocking head,
tongue like sandpaper, full of dread.
My tower-block flat’s ten stories high
Alas, poor Yorick. Cats can’t fly.

Oscar Milde

Image : Pixabay - SarahRichterArt

Romance - Oscar Milde

Young love’s romantic that’s for sure
it’s dewy-eyed, intense and pure,
emotional to wild extremes,
hot-blooded too, the stuff of dreams.

Old love is different, of course
it’s like a voice that has gone hoarse
from too much talking. Old love must
celebrate contentment, trust. 

Oscar Milde


Image : Pixabay - sabinevanerp

Cold-Water Swimmer - Oscar Milde

In bobble hat and rubber shoes,
she looked a most unlikely muse
but, seeing her, I scrawled a sonnet
(I had my surfboard. I wrote on it.)
She stood there dripping, shaking cold,
and was a pleasure to behold:
a poem-in-flesh, a fishy tale.
I’d read each verse if she were braille.
She brightened up my day entirely.
Cold-water swimmers do inspire me.

Oscar Milde

Image : Pixabay - Free-Photos

Ex-Pats - Oscar Milde

We buy the Telegraph each day
although, each day, it’s one day late
but we don’t mind, we keep abreast
with all things English anyway
and try our best to recreate
our English life. 
This foreign nest 
may offer sunshine, vino and no rain
but Lord, these foreign types can be a pain. 

We bought and now, alas, we’re stuck:
house values down, pensions undone,
so we just have to grin and bear
although we, daily, curse our luck.
We thought life here would be such fun
with friends galore 
but it’s a snare 
with ruddy Spaniards everywhere, 
bad sanitation, mozzies and sun burn.

They’re volatile, and what is more,
they hardly know a blessed word
of English when we try to shop.
It really is a dreadful bore.
They all act dumb. It’s quite absurd,
and yet the blighters talk non-stop
among themselves. 
Heads high, we keep our calm
but yearn for lovely Cheltenham.

Oscar Milde

It’s Not Cricket! - Oscar Milde

There’s one rule for the privileged, another for the rest
when, in fairness, there should be one rule for all.
If plebs don’t quarantine they routinely face arrest
and there’s been some hefty fines, as I recall,
but with a Lions rugby coach, it’s best
to scrap the rules and let him have a ball.

Oscar Milde

Image : adapted from Pixabay - iximus/Clker-Free-Vector-Images

The Word-Hoard - Oscar Milde

Sup er cali fragil istic expi ali docious

The lyric really is correct, that word is quite atrocious.
Instead of writing tongue-twisters verging on absurd,
they should have used the letters to make hordes of shorter words …

delicious, superficial, supper, sausage, lips and luscious,
expedite, accept, except, sparse, copious and perspex
or saucer, soup, sex or speed, expose, excite, explode …

I could continue
but I’m bored.
Sit down and list your own Word-Hoard.


Oscar Milde

Party Tricks - Oscar Milde

At a party, met a man,
intriguing fellow, very bright,
who told me of his clever plan:
something to do with trapping light
then harnessing it, cleverly,
to create, what, I don’t recall.
It was too technical for me
but he seemed really on the ball
and promised he would let me in
on this to make a lot of dough:
five hundred smackers to begin.
I’d be a fool if I said no.
I paid up front. He smiled and said,
You’re playing with The Big Boys now.
We parted. I went home to bed
to wife and to a late-night row.
The row became a noisy brawl.
She screamed, You spent five hundred quid!
I waited weeks for him to call.
My wife was right, he never did.

Oscar Milde

Image : Pixabay - LillyCantabile

S.O.S. (Save Our Statues) - Oscar Milde

Prince Albert with his pier-side view
and Hugo up on Candie’s rock
must tremble, if a stone statue
can tremble when it gets a shock
as, one by one, monuments fall.
If one’s pulled down, what next, them all?

It must be worrying to be
a statue, innocent or not:
the subject of such scrutiny,
regarded by some as a blot
to be reviled, to have to move
because campaigners disapprove.

Things change, we know that, nonetheless,
while change is good, some is less so.
Should we not focus on progress,
move on from wrongs of long ago,
together face a future shared
where threatened statues may be spared?

Oscar Milde

Envy - Oscar Milde

I don’t know why I envy him.
I think that he should envy me.
He may attend a fancy gym,
look GQ cool, write poetry,
play the guitar, be tall and slim,
and get in smart night-clubs for free,
but, to my mind, he’s really dim,
the fool behaves impulsively,
goes off to Paris on a whim
and never hints at taking me.
He thinks me dull, he calls me prim,
he’s puzzled by my secrecy.
I may be short and hardly trim
but I’m a billionaire, you see.

Oscar Milde

Over The Hill? - Oscar Milde

Hippies get old but somehow they don’t change.
Kaftans and funny beads remain the thing
and tie-dye shirts, of course, but in’t it strange
they never took to lycra or to bling.

Despite a lifetime living without meat,
preferring pulses to a juicy steak,
they don’t look fit, instead they look dead beat
and slouch around with every joint an ache.

The other sort of joints have done them in,
their lungs went all to pieces long ago
and at the Vale Earth Fair, to their chagrin,
their progress up the hill is really slow.

Without a fancy stairlift it’s no good:
the hill up to Vale Castle’s far too steep.
The young ones point and laugh, it’s very rude.
Harsh words can make an ancient Hippy weep.

One told me that he thinks enough’s enough.
He won’t be trekking up there any more.
Each time he climbs the hill he’s out of puff
and can’t remember what he came up for.

Oscar Milde

Time Travel - Oscar Milde

The year is Twenty Thirty One
a new decade has just begun
and if time-travel is your bag
you’ll join me here without a snag
but what a shock, what a surprise,
you hardly will believe your eyes:
the Guernsey of Twenty Nineteen
has vanished like it’s never been.
No more mind-numbing traffic jams,
aggro, hostility or scams,
or undisguised abuse of power,
with prices rising hour by hour.
The modern Sarnia has changed
though sometimes it just seems deranged.
We all live indoors nowadays.
Outside, pollution like a haze
hangs over our poor Bailiwick:
if you go out you come back sick.
Life’s safer now with VRC
(that’s virtual reality),
much better than real life by far.
We live like beetles in a jar
for our protection, say the States
(yes, we still have those reprobates).
Nobody works, it’s too much fuss.
Now robots do the jobs for us.
St Peter Port is just glass towers
bedecked with artificial flowers,
there’s no marinas, not one boat,
all’s tarmac now nothing’s afloat.
The highlight of our little lives
is once a year we and our wives
are taken on a trip to see
something miraculous for free
Today we’re off to see real grass,
extremely rare, kept under glass.
It used to flourish all about
but blade by blade we stamped it out.

Oscar Milde

Flamingos - Oscar Milde

Thank you Lord, Flamingos cry,
surveying, with disdainful stare,
all manner of ignoble beasts
of crooked horn or matted hair.

Thank you, Dear Lord, they intone
their prayers of gratitude to Him,
for making Others ugly
while making Us so chic and slim.

Oscar Milde

Anyone For Tennis? - Oscar Milde

We hit words to and fro,
employing power and back-swing,
serve and volley,
determined, each, to score points off the other.
We both started out with Love
but now it’s Six-two, Six-three
and the neighbours are complaining
about the racquet.

Oscar Milde

Piper - Oscar Milde

That bloody Mayor, he promised me
three bags of silver, newly minted,
and maybe willing girls, he hinted,
if I would only guarantee
to rid the Town of rats, posthaste.
He said the word “Rats” with distaste.

I played my pipe: a tempting tune
of sharpish sharps and flattish flats
that has a certain way with rats.
Hypnotic notes: no rat’s immune,
those furry critters bobbed and swayed
and when I played they all obeyed

and followed me along the bank
into the water, flowing fast.
I drowned them all down to the last
and waited till each damn rat sank
then went right back to see the Mayor.
The wretched rascal wasn’t there.

He’d fled and taken all the cash.
The Council said, Can’t help ya, bud.
I swore I’d pay them back in blood.
They threatened me with fists and lash
so I pulled out my pipe again
and played a new tune tinged with pain.

This time it was the kids, not rats,
that followed to my piping notes:
wild laughter sprang from childish throats.
I stole them all, those little brats.
I led them off. Hid them away.
You hire the Piper, best to pay.

Oscar Milde

The Catioroc Witches - Oscar Milde

Dancing at La Catioroc,
Nell and Dolly, Maud and Alice,
skipping, one rock to the next rock,
sniggering with joyous malice.
Three old witches, laying curses,
incantations, spells and verses.

To invoke their evil Master,
they gyrate and prance at midnight.
Not a stitch on, twirling faster,
ever faster, in the moonlight.
Three fat witches, chanting, smirking,
never guessing who is lurking.

Old Man Ozanne, not the Devil,
in the bushes, drunk and manic,
thinks to join their naked revel
but he causes them to panic.
With appalling shrieks of No, No!
they flee all the way to Cobo.

Oscar Milde

Boris Brontosaurus - Oscar Milde

Boris, Boris, Brontosaurus,
crashing blindly through the forest,
hair askew, complexion pinked,
destination indistinct,
doesn’t know that he’s extinct.

Oscar Milde

The Great Guernsey Take-Off - Oscar Milde

It’s all become a real ordeal:
in peelings, she’s up to her eyes.

These damn pies of Potato Peel
will be the death of me! She cries.

He says. They’re great. Don’t ever doubt it.
One day they’ll make a film about it.

Oscar Milde

Mr Pol - Oscar Milde

When Mrs Pol goes off to see her aunt
who lives across the town with umpteen cats,
Mr Pol skips upstairs with a smile
to slip on his wife’s best frocks and hats

and pull on her silk stockings and high heels,
her bra, with fillets filling out the slack,
and sometimes when he’s feeling in the mood
he’ll don her cheery little plastic mac.

He’s played these naughty games since, as a child,
he dressed in Mother’s bonnet and her shoes:
he’s not ashamed exactly, but concerned
at the hostility of other people’s views.

So how does he explain it to himself?
It’s really a compulsion not a choice.
It brings to mind his mother’s heady scent,
the fond-remembered romance in her voice.

Oscar Milde