TEC TONIC

I was proceeding

Down a back alley

In pursuit

When my bloodhound

Picked up a lead.

I took it off him.

Unfortunately it was connected

And I was shocked

And dropped the case,

Briefly.

As it fell

My bloodhound

Took it up again

And became instant

Hot dog.

Following my well connected,

Well bred

Sausage dog

I continued my quest

And found the light

At the end of the tunnel

Only to be railroaded

As it transpired

That my canine companion

Was a sleeper

With fish tails at either end.

Now, as everyone knows,

You cannot trust fish tales

As they tend to grow

To the point of absurdity

And I realised I’d been caught

Hook, line and sinker

Baited with a dog end

In a blind alley

Proceeding up which

I had been

In pursuit

Of my own

Fishy tale

Led by

A shaggy dog.

©TONY MORRIS 28 October 1993

BUS BLACK DIESEL BLUES

I’M SAT HERE IN MY CAR

BEHIND A BUS THAT’S NOT GOING FAR.

THERE’S ONLY A DRIVER COLLECTING THE FARE

AN’ I’M CHOKING FROM DIESEL POLLUTING THE AIR.

THE BUS MOVES ON JUST YARDS UP THE ROAD

BEFORE ITS STOPPING TO DEPOSIT ITS LOAD.

I’M STILL STUCK BEHIND HIM, CAN’T MOVE ON

AN’ BLACK FUMES STILL CHOKE ME WHEN HE’S GONE.

I KNOW MY CAR AIN’T HEALTHY, I’M ON THE ROAD TOO LONG

BUT I CAN’T MOVE FOR BUSES THAT DON’T MOVE ON.

THEY’RE STICKING AT THE STOP WHILE THE DRIVER TAKES THE FARE,

HOLDING UP THE TRAFFIC, MORE POLLUTION EVERYWHERE,

I WANT CLEAN AIR!

BRING BACK THE CLIPPIE, KEEP THE BUSES MOVIN’ ALONG

‘STEAD OF CAUSING TRAFFIC JAMS, THEY’VE SURE GOT IT WRONG

AND FOR OUR LITTLE PLANET THIS SURE AIN’T GOOD NEWS

THAT’S WHY I GOT THE BUS BLACK DIESEL BLUES

©Tony Morris 1999

ARE YOU DANCING ?

“I love to go dancing,” she said

Staring into her glass,

Empty.

“Sod off,”

He said,

“I’d rather sit and talk,

Read a book,

Drink the best beer,

The best wine.”

Her sad eyes

Glance at the years between them,

Pirouetting and limping

In alternating foxtrots

And disco rhythms

That sometimes lead to the same bed,

Often to others

As they love to knife each other

And feel their own pain

As they drift

In a sleep

Where there partners are strangers

And they are the strangers themselves

That slide,

Unknown,

In and out of false doors.

ãTONY MORRIS

28 February 1985

www.tonymorrispoet.com

21 December 2008 was the 20 anniversary of the Lockerbie Air Disaster for the memorial site see www.lastingtribute.co.uk

I visited Scotland in July 1989 and wrote the following poem:

LOCKERBIE  -  PASSING

I chose the route

That did not go

Near Lockerbie.

A more practical navigator

Overruled primeval fear.

We went direct.

Flying down the approach

For miles

Through woods

Our only thought

Together silent

Here to lie

Forever

Fragments,

‘Plane, plans,

Unfinished lives

Forever Hidden.

As we passed the Town

We averted our eyes

As passing a naked corpse

Unbiered, uncoffined,

Fallen among mourners.

We were strangers

Who had no right

Who could not know.

This was

Summer day

Full of haymaking

And a beautiful

Empty blue sky.

©TONY MORRIS

6 July 89

www.tonymorrispoet.com

AN EDITOR REGRETS

I am sorry

There is no space.

There are so many stars these days

The Milky Way is so overcrowded

That there are frequent multiple pile ups

Which cause spin offs of meteors

Soon burnt out

In the coarse atmosphere of the Planet Earth

Where they fall

Unnoticed and unnoted

As stone or dust.

If you must keep sending me poems,

Please remember this.

©TONY MORRIS

Oct 1982

COMMENT 2009

©TONY MORRIS

5 January 2009

LOVERS

Over pretty print frock,

Dirty hair drapes her raincoat.

Alone, in the scurry of hot feet,

She sits on a bench

In a square of glass and concrete reflections

Screwing up her lightly painted,

Powdered, puppet face,

Giggling,

Holding negatives to the sun.

Close by her long legs

Posed in black patterned tights

Thrust into black wellingtons,

Her dog,

One ear up,

One ear down,

Watches her,

Seeing

Nothing incongruous.

ãTONY MORRIS

7 November 1987

WWW.TONYMORRISPOET.COM

“Fitting speed-limiting devices in cars could prevent up to 29% of injury accidents on the roads, a report by a Government advisory body has said.”

This statement is based on flawed and incomplete research and a number of faulty premises.

The simplicity of the statement gives it an obvious appeal but I consider it to be at best misguided and most likely wrong.

If 2 cars collide head on and each one has been travelling at 30mph, within the speed limit, the joint collision speed of 60mph will lead to the occupants of the cars being injured seriously. If the limit is 60mph the collision speed will be 120mph, serious injury and death are likely results. If the speed limit is 50mph the joint speed is 100mph or 70mph, joint speed 140mph. So how is a speed limiter that keeps a vehicle to the speed limit going to help?

Additionally, a burst of acceleration can often get a driver out of trouble when braking would result in collision or some other injurious result. If the speed of the car was limited this option would not be available to a driver and collision and or injury might result. So, how does the advisory body know that the correct use of speed has not decreased the number of injury accidents?

The flaw in the research is that though there may be ways to measure causes of injury accidents, there is no way to measure the reason injury accidents did not happen. Without such knowledge any simplistic solution, such as “Fitting speed-limiting devices in cars could prevent up to 29% of injury accidents on the roads”  could cause more injury accidents than it prevents.

 Tony Morris

www.tonymorrispoet.com

SONG FOR ROSIE

Pink Rosie down the back lane in your new peach coat

When I was just eighteen

Kissed me then,

Kissed me again

Down the back lane,

In the doorway,

Where they can’t see,

The screws that walk the wall.

As Adam fell

You made me fall.

Come again

Now I’m forty,

Well a little more,

That’s what this is,

What life’s for;

Love when young,

Love comes again.

Sunset and Rosie

Where are you now?

I know.

You’re here,

Down the back lane.

Now I’m older

You’d think there ‘ld just be memories

Of bolder times

But times are bolder now

And last year,

Suddenly again,

You were there.

They don’t call you Rosie anymore

But it was you,

First love, the morning dew,

Lovin’ for

Sunset Rosie.

But this year

Your coat is green,

As I was then,

Am now again.

Kissin’s what you meant

And always mean

Rosie kiss me,

Kiss me,

Kiss me….

©TONY MORRIS 26/4/84

GILDED VIRGIN

By the Cathedral,

The gilded virgin,

Motionless

Among the throng of milling tourists,

Enthroned,

Photographed.

Occasionally a chorus of small coins

Sings in her not-a-begging-bowl.

All day she sits, silent, still,

Transfixed by Midas.

Truth comes late in the day,

When school is out.

A small boy, a small girl

Come in a whirl of laughter

Round the sombre stones,

Clean off their Mother’s gilt,

Reveal the wheelchair,

Propel away the actress

Whose long legs

No longer ………

© Tony Morris  1995

CUTTING EDGE

To be at the cutting edge you’ve got to be ‘urban’,

Live in a town, write about going down the ‘Soce’,

Spit and sawdust pubs, working men’s clubs,

Discos, lager, copping off, getting laid,

Fashion, grunge and retro, going on the Metro,

Muggers, buggers, teenage tarts.

Urban is smart, politically with it,

At the writing edge.

Rural is out, all that mud and smells, Ecoli on your boots

And other effluentials that dwell in fields and trees.

It’s O.K. to say you want it all conserved, fossilized,

As long as it’s gardened rather than farmed.

You don’t want it harmed by pesticides or houses,

Windmills for electricity or roads or anything that

Makes it less than pretty if you want to look,

Though you prefer it as a photograph in a book,

Televison programmes, the odd sound effect on radio.

Oh, no, it’s definitely the blunt edge of the knife

To be rural and at peace with life. ‘Rustic’ is

Neither ‘nice’ nor acceptably nasty, not worth

A word in a poem, not worth writing about,

It’s not ‘real’ so get real, get ‘urban’.

Suburban is half a step but so middle class,

Muddle class, not inner city, ain’t life shitty,

Whingeing with something to whinge about,

Out of work, depressed, messed up by drugs.

Compared with this what’s the price of pigs

Or failing farms to do with the price of bacon.

No, you’ve got to be ‘urban’ to be

At the cutting edge of poetry.

©Tony Morris 2000

Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com