Postdiluvian clarity

Venus Jupiter

And silver sliver of Moon

Jewels in azure

Jacob Bronowski

Jacob Bronowski
wrote of Man in the ascendancy
forgetting women are
fah superiah

East meets West

Bonsai Christmas Tree
Occident and Orient
mixed like this haiku

The God Particle

Richard Dawkins
agreed with Stephen Hawking's
view science not religion will claim the God Particle
if LHC finds Higgs's boson's the genuine article.


or


To Peter Higgs, scientist,
talk of the God Particle made him pissed.
His had been the hard work predicting his boson
while priests and shamans had continued to doze on.


Which do you prefer?

The Bated Bard

Prof Jonathan Bate
brilliant BRLSI Bard talk
heard with bated breath


or


Prof Jonathan Bate
baited bears and Bated Bard
all the Globe's a stage


Which do you prefer? Let us know... 

Prof Jonathan Bate

Prof Jonathan Bate
enthused about the Bard to a date
Pointing she asked "Is that Shakespeare?"
and dropped Rohypnol in his beer.


Very loosely inspired by listening to Prof Bate give a superb illustrated talk on next year's Shakespeare exhibition. Part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad taking place around the UK, the exhibition describes the life and times of Elizabethan theatre and Shakespeare in terms of the objects associated with it that have survived. The lecture room at the Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution was packed for the talk.


These include hazelnut shells (the litter left behind after the groundlings had enjoyed the popcorn of their era) and a money-box into which each theatre-goer placed his silver penny admittance fee (wherefrom we derive the term 'box office').

The Postman Always Blogs Twice

Scudding scatter'd clouds
Shred past silver'd gibbous moon
Dark December morn

or



Scudding scatter'd clouds
Shred gibbering gibbon moon
Dark December morn


I can't decide which I prefer. Can you?

Debts Pile-up

In western Japan
Eight Ferraris lone Prius
In bad company




A low-emissions hybrid vehicle was involved in a collision between nine supercars and two Mercedes on a Japanese motorway.


Yes, the Prius was red too.

Leviathans

Arms and armour race
Dinosaur and Battleship
Both sired wing'd things

No Clue!

Humph
Made us harrumph!
Jack Dee
Makes us we

AND ANOTHER THING...

John W. Campbell
imagined Antarctic camp hell
What regenerates faster?
Alien protoplasm or Hollywood chutzpah?

Mind full

under body scan

ten toes ten fingers tension

being not doing

Mindful of my debt to Celia.

Lord Sugar

Baron Sugar of Clapton

Fires wannabe Sugars for fun

To market a digital violin he thought hilarious

Branded as the Amstradivarius

They do it differently in Somnia...

Sleep denies beauty
One star one planet wan moon
light floods night's landscape

Jeremy Clarkson

To Jeremy Clarkson 
Offending everyone was just good fun 
Women, workers, truckers, Thanes of Cawdor 
Serially, and in no particular order

Of special faucets

   
How 'they' got J.B.
A 'double tap' to the chest
One hot and one cold

Celsius 233

Come Truffaut's firemen
Burn me among serried tomes
Old mad bookish man



Of course I thought about using Bradbury in the first line but Ray suffers from toomanysyllablitis, a terminal affliction to be avoided by haikuists.


And I love both works; and both endings, though I oscillate between preferring Bradbury's reaping the worldwind and Truffaut's nuanced and tantalising fade-to-mist.


Now, if only I could afford to have a second wall screen installed...

How long's a piece of string?

Prof. Brian Cox
likes shaking out his locks
Blame it if his eyes look bleary
not on far-flung shoots but on string theory

Trebles & Bass

Watched the Ides of March
Then toasted toes in The Star
Pints of Bass vom Fass

Football Chanting

"Bend it like Beckham" brought Keira Knightley
Fame for her role playing soccer so sprightly
The sequel "Sprain it like Becks" her agent has ruled out
As Repetitive Strain Injury to her Oscar-winning clout


A Clerihew inspired by a past injury to the England soccer player.

Poetic perambulations

Mist on Bath's skyline
Kissing gates and wooden stiles
No style over stile



Worn out after a three hour walk up hill and up hill (again) along Bath's south-east skyline, I managed to recall this haiku composed en route from memory and jot it down before I fell asleep...

Philip Glenister

In the '70s he was misogynist DCI, Gene Hunt

Pure anathema to the Women's Liberation Front

In the '80s he was foul-mouthed DCI, Gene Hunt

At his lack of promotion, Glenister showed no affront

Watching 'Hidden' I was reminded of this Clerihew I wrote when Philip Glenister starred in 'Life on Mars' and 'Ashes to Ashes'.

Off-piste eating

Jazz Café salad
Avocado and Bacon
Sates old timer's wish



Charles reprise's my favourite, no longer on the menu.

Time travel

Relegated to 

Past lover; man, was I good!

Or was I good man?

Lest we forget

Thanks for liberty
Those oft compelled to lose life
freedom and future


Composed following a visit to 'Bassett'

James the Second

James Murdoch
is no James Lovelock
Lovelock discovered Gaia (our Earth Mama);
the other works for his Papa



This Clerihew bubbled to the surface early this morning after watching JM's repeat performance at the CMS Select Committee hearing yesterday. I hope it brings a little perspective however much damage his family's organs have done to the body civic. Which doesn't mean he should be let off the hook; ultimately it's his own conscience he must face.

Hedgerow Haiku

Walking from Northend

In need of Bath; instead beer

In the Bladud's Head

Haiku written on returning to Larkhall from Northend one evening via Batheaston Meadows and the Bladud's Head public house. 

Happy 50th Birthday

At Brome's fiftieth
Four families drunk together
What's good about life!


After an excellent meal and wines in a restaurant in St Margaret's on Saturday 5th November, the evening degenerated into terrifying electrifying speechifying. This haiku was composed, after a fair amount of quaffing, to keep my contribution, above all, short.

2011, A Misplaced Odyssey

We've been here before

Heed Homer's warning, Europe

“'Ware Greeks bearing Gilts”

Indian Imagery

Tooth-full youthful smile

Seat and saddle 'thwart ruled ways

Of abandon'd Raj

[A Haiku inspired by three photographs of a bygone era in India, where my father spent the last months of World War 2]

A haiku for someone

No right to mourn her
If she dies and if she lives
No way to love her




Reworking of a favourite haiku I wrote once for someone...

Clerihews

Poor Mrs Sancho Panza
dies wealthy in la Mancha
Rich widow leaves sum actuary
to Don Quixote Sanctuary


While Ian Hislop's Ugandan relations missed
PRIVATE EYE's 50th Birthday Honours List,
Gnomemart's offer stopped Ollie Nitwit going redder:
a Royal Parks litter bin with inbuilt shredder.