A distraction of smartphones.
A reckoning of spreadsheets.
An indolence of poets.
A conspiracy of subtweets.
A pile of haemorrhoids.
A bunion of personal trainers.
A grope of presidents.
A condescension of mansplainers.
An abundance of foodbanks.
An underfunding of schools.
A pathy of voters.
A cabinet of fools.
A collection correction of pedants.
A sesquipedality of long words.
An invention of collective nouns.
An oven glove of non sequiturs.
grammar
Fifty Shades of Red
Assorted Poems, Some poemsSemi-colons I shall abuse for you.
Parentheses I shall lose for you.
Correct me like you know you want to.
Repossess my nouns.
Cover me with red ink.
Slap my words around.
Infinitives I shall split for you.
Apostrophes I shall omit for you.
The mistakes I make are just for you,
Each greased up grammar slip.
Let me feel the hardness of your edit,
Your disapproving nib.
Participles will be dangled,
Accents wrongly angled.
So lay me like a transitive verb.
Drip your ink upon my blotter.
Bore me rigid with your rules.
Fix me good and proper.
Man of Action
Assorted Poems, Some poemsI am writing to report
my dissatisfaction.
How dare you say
I am not a man of action.
You say I like:
to sleep,
to loaf,
to lie around,
to drift,
to dawdle,
to loll and lounge.
All verbs, I note:
have you not heard
that verbs are known
as doing words?
po-em
Assorted Poems, Some poemsIf your rhyme is stuck and you can’t get by
then you may need the use of a hy-
phen implanted at the end of a line
and soon your poem will sound like a Stein-
way piano in a grand concert hall,
its notes floating in the air like a ball-
oon. So what if the words happen to spill
into two lines? Do not pity these syll-
ables, orphaned, adrift, left there to hang;
their beauty is in the way that they dang-
le.
Hear, They’re and Everywear
Assorted Poems, Some poemsI here that their everywear,
those people who don’t know
there their from they’re.
It where’s me down,
they’re choice of word;
there grammar should not be scene
but herd.
The Importance of the Oxford Comma
Assorted Poems, Some poemsOwing to ambiguities caused by its omission,
the Oxford comma became the subject of a petition
raised by serious serialists desperate to ensure
its use was to be mandated in lists of three or more.
Signatures flooded in from across all of society;
never had they expected to see such variety.
Who would have thought that those in favour
would have had such a diverse, democratic flavour?
There were the investment bankers,
the robbers and thieves,
as well as C-list celebrities,
the needy and mildly-diseased.
There were the footballers,
clowns and less mentally able,
alongside the poets,
unemployed and emotionally unstable.
There was Michael Gove,
a drug fiend and a trafficker of human organs,
and, of course, the sexual deviants,
Jeremy Clarkson and Piers Morgan.
Such was the range of names
that the list did constitute.
Oh, not to forget the Queen,
a well-known madam and a prostitute.
Exclamation Mark!
Assorted Poems, Some poemsMark was his name!
He would shout and proclaim!
Every sentence he wrote
would end just the same!
He would assert! He would blurt!
He would ejaculate and spurt!
Each line was a screamer!
A gasper! A slammer! A shrieker!
A literary loudspeaker!!!
Frankly, it all began to needle and nark!
Why did no one think to question Mark?
I BEFORE E (EXCEPT AFTER SEA)
Assorted Poems, Some poemsFor relief from the heat,
I swam in the sea.
Dreid myself breifly.
Had freinds for tea.
The Pedents’ Re-volt
Assorted Poems, Some poemsIts not eazy being a pedent
correcting others’ mis-takes all daylong
My freinds and me are totally sic
of observing gramma witch has gone wrong.
“Whom are these language offenders”?,
“could it be that I maybe one, to”
Their ignorant; stupid, and careless:
off gramma they have’nt a clue.
They’re speling is sutch an embarrasment
its’ amature, wired, and, abserd,
comprized of neither thought or intelligance,
to a dictionary they should of refered.
Writing down there awkwardly formed sentences,
the participle clauses are left dangling.
just made one less mistake each would have the affect
to dramatically reduce this language mangling.
The Power of a Homophone
Assorted Poems, Some poems“Sometimes the power
of a homophone
comes out of nowhere
and hits you,
like being struck
by a ten ton truck”,
articulated Laurie.
Brian Bilston 