Category: MikeCrowl

The
CRYPTic crossword’s clues, enigmatic in form, too intricate for a
DUNCE like me who thinks he has to reinvent the
WHEEL at every turn, proved uncomplicated for my
NOBLE friend, who showed me where my cement brain went
wrong.            

[This form of the Quordle poem is known as the Bumped Beginning and Hanging Stump style…]

My Pinot Noir is the very central PIVOT
of my evening slurp in my penthouse CONDO,
when I cease to chomp poetry and MUNCH
on the less tooth-wrenching pizza of PROSE.

With a
BRISK flick of the string tied round my
TOOTH it comes sailing out, goes off
SLOSH into the bushes, causing me to
SKULK around in the dirt trying to find it again.

I broke my ELBOW
doing the LIMBO. I
need to REVUE my
rhythm and stick TO TEMpo.

I TEASE our long, sleek, sleepy
TABBY with the excess of creeping
STYLE learned from long years of sneaking up on her. I
SCALD my hand with the newly-made coffee when she reacts.

[I can’t keep up with the continual quartets of words – they keep on coming in spite of my best efforts..!]

CROSS is how I’d describe myself, looking at the apartment:
STAINs down the walls that haven’t come from any natural process;
TATTY wallpaper – last time I checked it was intact – and the
MOULT of some unfortunate bird left to die in a stinking cage.      

Around the time Jesus was born, those mothers who had given BIRTH
to boys of a similar age, saw their precious darlings SLAIN
by Herod, the supposed Great, a man jealous of power, but not hot
on ETHICs;
when it comes to power, corruption seeps in, and makes all vile men ALIKE.

[So graphic was the original painting that many of the slaughtered children were painted over in the early 17th century so that they appear as bundles, or food on the ground, or even animals. The alterations have been left in subsequent cleanings since they are now regarded as ‘historically significant,’ though they reduce the impact of the original considerably. Notes from the Royal Collection Trust.]

The bloke who comes to add the GROUT
is, truth to tell, a little STOUT.
He bends like an elf with RIGOR
Mortis, and tells me that his name is RALPH.

Some politicians would sacrifice their VOTERs
on the ALTAR of expediency, politicians who are
SLEEK in style and
TRITE of tongue.       

I BLUSH that we, as humans, easily accept the
WHINE, the relentless head-drilling drone that
SCOURs our ears of Nature’s sounds as here we
wait on the frigid East Wind-facing hELIDEck.