Limerick posted 3am

After being woken by thumping and banging to see three men lifting manholes and dragging cables out and cutting them into 5ft lengths and dumping them in their open-backed truck with its engine running and no light on, I phoned the police on the off chance they might be cable thieves.
While I was kept on the line for the 27 minutes it took them to arrive in two squad cars (or rapid-response teams as they probably prefer to be called) I gave a blow by blow account of their nefarious actions.
As it turned out (the police having released me from witness custody once they arrived) they were legitimate. The police kindly informed me half an hour later as I was trying to get back to sleep.
Aroused for the second time, my thoughts turned to the deeper things in life and I meditated on religion for a short while before this popped into my head.

There was an old lady of Ceredigion
Who suffered in silence for religion,
Though wracked by doubt,
She never ‘came out,’
For fear of being shat on by a pigeon.


What do you think of at 3 in the morning?

The Walrus and the Bookseller...

Having just, in my previous post, attacked myself as ‘Le Petit Auteur’ in rhyme from the viewpoint of the agent/publisher, I thought I might as well share with you one composed earlier, upon the palindromic birthday (181) of that Janus figure of children’s literature, Lewis Carroll, which birthday anniversary enjoys a threefold symmetry, left-right, up-down, and rotational in two dimension, which, on that day, for some reason put me in mind of my relationship with a certain book chain...

It has, unfortunately to be presented as an whole image, for typographical reasons, which of itself maybe deemed a little Carrollian. But let’s see, now....
Voici!

[Seemingly the product of a fit of senility on the part of the dear deceased Reverend Dodgson, this remembrance of his fine work, needless to say, fits no reality I can think of.]

Agent’s Lament (or Publishers.. whatever)

In response to a tweet an hour ago by Salt Publishing, bemoaning the weather in Cromer,

“SALT ‏@saltpublishing

1h Hello winter, my old friend, / When will you ever bleeding end? / And #Cromer pier is still so freezing, / And my chest is softly wheezing.”

I was moved to write this, on behalf of and in empathy with the sufferings of poor agents (and publishers) who do have to put with so much...

My Simon & Garfunkelian Blues.

Call it: “Agent’s lament” (Or Publishers?)

Here goes (and remember its humble origin as emanating from one of those so derided here)

“Hello writer, my old bane,

You’ve come to pester me again,

Despite rejection, are you so deranged?  

My derision, was it not, all too plain,

Scarce restrained,

Within the bounds of license?

In endless reams you write like those,

Whose narrow feats of cobbled prose,

’Neath contempt, so deadly dull and camp,

Sputter sulphur like an old gas lamp,

Choking shadows along those blind alleys, 

Your galleys,

That just astound my good sense.

In naked daylight can you not see,

You’re one of thousands, more maybe,

Writing words without thinking,

Writing sentences without linking,

Writing drivel that no one wants to share,

Friends don’t dare,

Disturb your profound ignorance.

“Fool,” said I, “you do not know,

Genius like a cancer grows,

So heed my words that I might reach you,

Take my advice that I might teach you

To give up now,” but on deaf ears my words fell,

And echoed 

In the empty chambers of his mind.

And those authors stood and gaped

At the neon god they aped,

And the sign flashed out its warning

In the words that it was forming,

And the sign said, profitable words are written in the publisher’s halls, 

Not tenement walls.

So just go drown in the sound of silence.”

Dear reader ,
If you like this (as we lonely Amazonians are wont to say), why not try:
The Walrus and the Bookseller.
or
A Limericked Look at Rude Reviewers
or, indeed,
 Aloysius B. KattelBach’s, On Book Titles and other Tittle-Tattle
 and many more scrapings from the floor of culinary creativity. 

After an adventurous night, last night, this...