A collection of poems on various themes
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(There's a link back to here at the end of each poem)
"Are you 18 years or older?" asks the lady at the till.
"It depends," I say, "on what you mean by 'you'."
She glares, and I can feel the air acquire a glacial chill
As I try to give an answer that is true.
"My cells, you see, divide: they're reproducing all the time,
And though it's inappropriate to boast,
My bones are young and sprightly (though their owner's past his prime) -
My skeleton is ten years old at most!
"Just fifteen years is all the time my muscles get to see,
And sixteen years for guts, before they go.
If your question is addressed to those inner parts of me,
The answer must predictably be 'no'.
"'You've got a lovely liver,' someone said* the other day.
Not just lovely, but so young - about a year?
My red blood cells are younger still, no more than four months old are they;
And they're the things that keep me in top gear.
"There are some parts of me that claim to be a certain age:
My eyeballs, bits of brain, and maybe heart
Have birth-certificated vintage, and as far as I can gauge
Are unsurpassed by any other part."
"I s'pose you think that's funny," says the lady at the till.
"I have to ask the question, it's the law.
I'll let it go this time, and I will sell you what you want,
But next time, don't be such a crashing bore."
* See No place to hide
© 2009 Gordon Judge
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It's motorway madness in Tesco's,
And Sainsbury's isn't much kinder:
If Maureen and I become parted,
It takes half an hour to find her.
So I keep my eyes open for places
I can stop and keep out of the flow,
While the rest of the shoppers race past me
To pick up the BOGOFs on show.
I had thought that a good place to loiter
Would be next to the stuff no-one's buying:
Quorn sausages, turnips, green lentils,
Or kangaroo cutlets for frying.
But how wrong can you get? Well, I'll tell you.
As soon as I stop, there's a rush
To snap up the aforementioned items,
And I'm battered and bruised in the crush.
Wherever I park, it's the same.
What hasn't been selling for years
Is suddenly just what folk need -
A godsend, or so it appears.
It seems that I'm strangely attractive;
Perhaps I should change my career
To make use of my magnetic nature...
Wait! I've just had a super idea:
I'll hire out my body to Tesco's -
It could earn me some cash, I feel sure.
They'd just stand me where sales look like flagging,
And wait for their profits to soar!
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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I've known some babies in my time
And many have been squealier,
But few have been so hard to rhyme
As this one, called Amelia.
© 2007 Gordon Judge
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Technology's gone digital:
There's much it claims to do.
It can't do much for me, though,
I'm analogue, through and through.
I like a knob to twiddle,
A dial engraved with lines.
You can't adjust a button
Adorned with funny signs.
A clock should have two hands on,
Not numbers flickering round.
A proper clock goes tick and tock -
It's such a soothing sound.
I've hung on to my records,
Those groovy vinyl platters;
They're old and scratched and dusty,
But I don't think it matters.
My camera, though old-fashioned,
Still takes an honest snap.
But pixels stored in digicams
Can be altered - so they're rubbish.
The trouble is with digits,
They go in steps, you see,
And lose some information
As they change from A to B;
They think it doesn't matter
What happens in between.
But analogue's continuous,
A perfect data stream!
I must type up this poem.
Oh heck, I should have checked -
My PC is all digital,
I hope it won't object...
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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A waltz by Johann Strauss
Echoes round and round the house
As an ice-cream van blares out its tinny strain.
That tune that Johann penned
Will soon drive me round the bend.
I offer up a futile prayer for rain . . .
Wait, a cunning plan I've got!
I'll assemble at the spot
An orchestra, and wait for his next call.
Then we'll join in on the beat:
There'll be dancing in the street,
And the neighbourhood will come and have a ball!
But we'll play the piece right through,
Nothing less, of course, will do.
Then we'll play all Strauss's other pieces too.
Ice-cream will flow like honey,
And he'll rake in so much money
He'll retire to where the Danube is so blue.
Stop! This grand orchestral scheme
Is a fantasy, a dream!
(He'd return with 'Greensleeves' blaring from his van
With the melody cut short,
Expecting musical support.)
I s'pose I must accept the ice-cream man . . .
© 2010 Gordon Judge
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Oh why, and oh why, and oh why
Did a spider, an ant and a fly
Decide they would stick
To wet paint, laid on thick?
Well, they did, and so now they will die...
How could I have saved these poor things
(Twenty legs, three black bodies, two wings)?
P'rhaps I'll put up a sign
Of a special design
That will show what such recklessness brings:
"O arachnids and insects, be wise,
Be careful, and use all your eyes.
Don't ever alight
On my Pure Brilliant White
For it's death to ants, spiders and flies."
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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Outside the Ladies' Changing Rooms
I'm waiting for my wife.
My brain, alert as ever, thinks
"There must be more to life."
Just over there a notice says:
Save 25%!
"Look, there's your chance," my brain insists,
"To be a Bargain Gent -
"Stand near that sign. The ladies will
Be thoroughly deluded.
They'll snap you up (a quarter off,
With Nectar points included)."
I wander off to try my luck,
But cannot find a buyer.
"I'm Customer Support," I say
When nearby staff enquire.
"Looks like your price is still too high,"
My brain insanely proffers.
"Let's try again: move to your left
To This Week's Special Offers."
As Special Offers go, it seems
Mine isn't good enough,
For no-one takes me to the till -
They buy the other stuff.
My wife appears. "How's this," she asks,
"I'd value your advice."
"At last I'm valued!" I exclaim.
"Yes, dear," she says. "How nice."
© 2007 Gordon Judge
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Our long-suffering teacher of dance
Does her utmost to help us advance:
"Look, it goes slow, quick, quick, slow,"
She says. "Heel, toe...no, TOE!"
Will we get on Come Dancing? No chance!
Of our teacher, it's often been said
She's got eyes in the back of her head -
Half-a-dozen, or more,
Which can scan the whole floor.
(Either that, or she's psychic, instead.)
She can dance as a girl or a bloke,
Which is quite beyond ordinary folk.
Should your dancing offend her,
She'll adopt the best gender
To sort out your steps at a stroke.
You will hear her encouraging call
As you chassé; and whisk round the hall.
Yes, our teacher's employment
Provides such enjoyment
That everyone's having a ball!
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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Two things occurred in '42:
I was born, and CO2
Began its climb into the blue.
Is there a link between the two?
My breathing must be what's to blame -
It's all my fault! (This claim to fame
Will devastate the family name
And tarnish it with lasting shame.)
I've built up such a carbon debt
It represents a global threat.
I've got the answer, though - don't fret:
I'll just stop breathing. But not yet...
© 2007 Gordon Judge
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In Bingo-speak, I'm clickety-click,
All the sixes, sixty-six.
One past my old age pension, and
Four score past pick and mix.
It seems like only yesterday
I'd reached the key of the door.
After two little ducks, a duck and a flea,
The question was: did you score?
By twenty-nine I'm doing fine;
But after flirty thirty,
I get up and run at thirty-one
'Cos her boyfriend's getting shirty . . .
Real life begins at forty,
And after time for fun
Comes Winnie the Pooh (and Tigger, too) -
Er, honey, anyone?
I rise and shine at forty-nine,
Then, in scarcely the blink of an eye,
I'm hurtling down the Brighton line.
My word, how time does fly!
Blind sixty next, then baker's bun,
And then it's tickety-boo.
But now I'm clickety-click; and that
Just now, will have to do.
For who knows what numbers might yet be called?
Is this Bingo game benign?
If I strive and strive at staying alive,
Will the top of the house be mine?
© 2008 Gordon Judge
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Last night I dreamt a poem:
It was good, and it was clever.
But when I woke, the words had gone;
It won't be published, ever.
© 2008 Gordon Judge
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When the universe was younger, vast amounts of cosmic dust
Coalesced to form the rocky inner planets.
On the Earth, the surface cooled to make a solid outer crust
Made of basalt, topped by continental granites.
Now the universe is older, there's still lots of cosmic dust;
But the trouble is, it doesn't coalesce.
It gets everywhere - just look around! - and, much to my disgust,
It's me who has to hoover up the mess.
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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Here's our family tree: look, there's you and there's me!
And there's your Mum and Dad, and there's mine -
Many past generations, and umpteen relations,
Laid out in a complex design.
It lists hatches and matches, and final dispatches;
There are dates, occupations and places.
But it's never enough, for all of this stuff
Won't bring back their voices or faces.
Our forebears weren't grand: many worked on the land
Or in factories, railways or shops.
They were servants and sailors, taxi drivers and tailors,
Clerks, plumbers, night-watchmen and cops.
There were Black Country folk (well, you know how they spoke!),
And Cornishmen, mining for tin;
Some were black sheep (well, grey...); some did well, so they say;
But they all were our own kith and kin.
Hinton Ampner (in Hants), Chaddesley Corbett, Penzance:
These are all on our ancestors' path;
And some lived a spell around old Clerkenwell,
While others chose Brighton or Bath.
I've long squinted my eyes at the minuscule size
Of the typeface on fiches and such
To get all that I can; yet, in terms of the span
From our Adam and Eve, it's not much.
But I cannot spend ages extending these pages
By examining old parish papers
And illegible headstones which mark sites of dead bones -
I'm done with such frustrating capers.
So our tree's incomplete. I'm admitting defeat.
It was just a one-off passing craze.
GRO, IGI, census records and I
Will from henceforth all go our own ways!
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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I've looked at all the FAQs
From the first one to the last,
But the Questions I want answers to
It seems aren't Frequently Asked.
I'm sure that websites do their best
To give the answers needed;
For me, their efforts aren't enough.
Why have they not succeeded?
I can't be asking often enough . . .
So here's my cunning plan:
I'll stop each person in the street,
Each woman and each man,
And put my Questions to them all.
I'll keep a careful score,
Then monitor those FAQs
To see if I need more.
How many times is 'frequently'?
How often must I ask
My questions so they make the grade?
It seems a daunting task.
So just in case that doesn't work,
I'd welcome more suggestions -
Perhaps a website that will list
Infrequently Asked Questions?
© 2010 Gordon Judge
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I'm a grandpa, a granddad,
An old, second-hand dad,
(Elisabeth Anne's dad).
"I need special training," I cry.
I've been quite a bland dad,
A play-in-the-sand dad,
A "What's Disneyland?" dad.
This new rôle looks tough, but I'll try.
© 2007 Gordon Judge
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"Hello, what are you doing?" My interrogator's tone
Was urgent and demanded a reply.
"Just mowing my front lawn," I said, "You see how long it's grown".
I wondered: could he tell it was a lie?
Did he know I'd not been truthful? Did he know I was a fraud?
Did he know what mental anguish he had caused?
Did he know his artful questioning had struck a tender chord?
I needed time to cogitate. I paused . . .
His question was unfathomably deep for such a squirt,
It sought the truth from deep within my soul.
I'd better tell him everything I'm doing, dish the dirt;
So I began to analyse my rôle:
I'm taking up some space, although a lot of it is gas
(I know it's rather selfish, but I must);
And I'm slowing Earth's rotation while the centre of my mass
Is raised above the surface of its crust;
I'm burning carbohydrates - inefficiently, it's true -
And helping global warming pick up speed
By emptying my lungs of my unwanted CO2;
I'm using up the oxygen he'll need;
I'm treading on some insect life, and killing it for sure;
I should be helping others, but I'm not;
I think (therefore I am), but I could think even more -
I'm not using all the brain cells that I've got.
In short, I'm doing things I'd rather not admit,
And damaging the Earth - that's what the price is.
The mowing of the lawn is just a front. This pesky git
Has put me in an existential crisis.
I'll let him off for now, though; after all, this little guy
Is only young. I mustn't rabbit on,
I'll answer his enquiry quite concisely - well, I'll try . . .
But when I turned to tell him, he had gone!
© 2006 Gordon Judge
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I've just been out hoovering the garden -
Well, it's ages since last it was done.
The folk who passed by were all smiling;
I expect they were thinking, "That's fun!"
And they must have told people about me,
For soon after, some big blokes appeared
All dressed in white coats, who said sternly,
"Come quietly with us, mate. You're weird."
I explained that I'd hoovered the garden
To vacuum up lots of white spheres.
That must have convinced them I'm normal,
For they asked, "Have you done it for years?"
They said they'd a place with a garden
I could hoover up spheres that they had,
And they'd take me there now in their wagon.
I refused - they were clearly quite mad.
© 2010 Gordon Judge
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He's six weeks old
And good as gold,
To granny and granddad beguiling.
I think he grinned -
Or was it just wind?
No, look, can you see? He's smiling!
© 2008 Gordon Judge
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"This kitchen's getting crowded, there's not room enough for two,"
I warned my wife. "You see, a man must do what he must do:
I've got the urge to cook a meal, a treat for us to feed on.
The time is getting on, and so I've got to get some speed on.
"So many possibilities, I've still to make my mind up;
I want to do it right, though, so the cookbooks are all lined up."
Eventually, I choose a gastronomical delight:
Sharp implements get wielded to the left and to the right;
Quantities are measured to the recipe's statistics;
Ingredients get assembled in a whirl of tight logistics.
"A bit of this, a pinch of that... I've got to turn the heat up...
If you get in my way, there won't be anything to eat up."
She's seen it all before, this gastronomic zeal and ardour.
She watches as I fly between the worktop and the larder.
"Slow down, you'll blow a gasket," says my wife, while standing clear;
But as usual I ignore her as my pace steps up a gear.
I bet she thinks this meal will be inedible, a joke;
Well, I am going to show her that it isn't every bloke
Can plate up meals as intricate as this meal's going to be,
Or serve it with such style as can a super chef like me.
By the time the cooking's finished, I am flustered, tired and hot.
(My wife had left the kitchen long ago - her nerves were shot.)
"Madame, your meal is ready. I'm not usually one to boast,
Mais voila! Here for your delight: my scrambled egg on toast."
© 2004 Gordon Judge
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I've given up fat and I've given up salt,
And I've given up sugar in my tea.
I have given up so much that I've just about lost touch
With the fellow I once recognised as me.
© 2005 Gordon Judge
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I think we might have had that conversation once before.
If so, I'm very sorry - you must think me such a bore.
The memory's not so good these days. (Oh dear, I can't be sure,
But I think we might have had this conversation once before . . . )
© 2009 Gordon Judge
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I'm a Jack of all trades, but a Master of none.
I can wallpaper walls and paint woodwork.
Though I say it myself all the jobs I have done,
Though not brilliant, are adequately good work.
There's not much I can't mend (except glassware and plastic)
With adhesive, or screw, or new part.
(Oh, and plumbing I hate - it's all wrenches and mastic,
And it never goes right, from the start.)
I can wire up a plug; I can put up a shelf;
I can knock up a mortaring mix;
I can build a low wall in the garden myself,
With neat jointing between all the bricks;
Just show me a bathroom that's needing new tiles,
And I'll show you what tiling's about:
I'll slap on bright new ones in up-to-date styles
And fill in the spaces with grout.
I can re-roof a shed in the blink of an eye;
When a tree needs a haircut, I'll lop it;
Squeaky hinges get oiled if they're rusty and dry;
If a tap starts to drip, I can stop it.
I may not be speedy, in fact I agree
Professionals do things much faster.
But I'm certainly cheap, for my labour is free -
That's because this old Jack's his own Master.
© 2007 Gordon Judge
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One's age, they say, is how one feels. Well, I felt good inside
Until a knocking at the door disturbed this rhyme.
A figure, darkly dressed, is waiting patiently outside -
A hood? A scythe, perhaps? Old Father Time?
He can't be at the right address. I'm young, my brain's insisting;
Inside, I feel more like . . . er . . . thirty-two?
The darks shape's looming now. I move, but feel my limbs
resisting.
The figure bends and pushes something through...
A message - with my name on! But there must have been an error . . .
I lift it from the mat with apprehension,
And ease it from its shroud. I tremble, petrified with terror . . .
The message reads: "You need to claim your pension".
© 2006 Gordon Judge
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Our dancing teacher's methods are effective and unique:
Before she gets you dancing with your partner, cheek to cheek,
She will call you all to order with her mantra, thus enshrined:
"Let's have the ladies in the front, and the gentlemen behind."
In the Quickstep, Waltz and Tango her persistence knows no bounds
As, step by step, you hear her making reassuring sounds.
But when your back arm droops and the steps go from your mind:
"Let's have the ladies in the front, and the gentlemen behind."
In the Cha-Cha-Cha and Rumba, and the Samba and the Jive,
You bounce and sway and jig about. Oh boy, you feel alive!
Until your feet get tangled and your bodies misaligned...
"Let's have the ladies in the front, and the gentlemen behind."
I do wonder if these constant segregations by our gender
Are symptoms of a Women's Lib alternative agenda;
Is her message, subtly coded, "Mother nature has designed
That we ladies stay in front, and you gentlemen behind"?
Of course, it's not; although I have a funny sort of feeling
That Equal Opportunities would find this case appealing.
Their judgement would be written with these words red-underlined:
"Half the ladies in the front, and half the gentlemen behind".
But that would cause confusion as we chassé round the hall.
Let the status quo remain, it's what we're used to, after all.
We've lived with it for years now, so we're really quite resigned;
Let's keep the ladies in the front, and the gentlemen behind.
© 2004 Gordon Judge
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I've got a little list of all the things I ought to do.
(I'm sure I'm not alone in this - I bet you've got one too?)
It keeps on getting longer, even though I never stop:
When I cross one off the bottom, two more go on the top.
I tried to subdivide it, each a separate mini-list;
But keeping track of where they were just drove me round the twist.
So I made a list of all the lists, but that made matters worse.
I think the Devil's in those lists - they're nothing but a curse.
So here is my solution. It's a single list, no more,
And one that only lengthens; but eventually, I'm sure,
It'll make you feel contented - maybe just a touch conceited:
It's a list of all the jobs that you have finished, done, completed!
© 2010 Gordon Judge
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My computer's got a Memory Stick
Which gives it the facility
To recall things with just one click.
I envy its ability.
My memory's poor, as good as dead;
Could Memory Sticks unlock it?
I tried to plug one in my head
But couldn't find the socket.
It seems my age is in the way:
My head's pre-USB,
And evolution doesn't play
With new technology.
So what you see is what I've got,
No plug-ins, cards or aids.
According to the folk who know,
You can't get head upgrades.
© 2006 Gordon Judge
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The outlook's not good, the predictions are dire,
The ice-sheets are melting, the sea's getting higher,
And fossil fuel stocks won't last out for ever.
If there is a solution, it'd better be clever.
So I'm planning an Ark with a huge solar panel
And a Global Positioning Satellite channel
With radar and sonar and intricate gearing
That plots the best courses and does all the steering;
The waste gets recycled, the food's grown on board,
Rainwater's collected and filtered and stored.
It's better than Noah's: mine's bristling with new bits,
And bigger by far - one or two gigacubits.
Now I must get a move on, or I'll be caught out,
But there's one little problem I've got to sort out:
I still need to develop a stabilised hammock,
That will quell the unease of my landlubber's stomach...
© 2000 Gordon Judge
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A boy's been born into the world
He soon will be let loose on,
A brother for Amelia:
He's Nathan William Hughson.
(I thought there must be better things
To think about all day than
Trying, unsuccessfully, to find
A decent rhyme for 'Nathan')
© 2008 Gordon Judge
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I'm logged on the Net and my modem's connected,
Its dialog boxes set up as directed,
My e-mails are sent with their grammar corrected,
My search engine's humming, I'm password-protected.
My head is chock full with the facts I've collected -
But what if a downloaded file is infected?
Will it make me unwell? Is a virus suspected?
To dwell on such things could leave one dejected.
So far, it's been more or less as I expected:
My ambitious aims have not been deflected
And, even though other things have been neglected,
It's left me nite quormal - bry main's not affected.
© 2000 Gordon Judge
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"Here's the news at a quarter to ten:
No dogs have been bitten by men -
Well, that's not surprising.
The FTSE is rising,
And the weather is perfect again.
"No earthquakes or floods have occurred -
The very idea is absurd!
There isn't much crime,
All the trains are on time,
And the first springtime cuckoo's been heard.
"We've sent out our radio van
To find any bad news it can,
But there's not much around.
Wait - here's something they've found:
A dog has just bitten a man!"
© 2004 Gordon Judge
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They've had a look inside me
With X-rays and ultrasound.
They seemed to be quite taken
With all the things they found.
The youthful radiographer,
As he pointed out my bones,
Said, "Good news on your kidneys -
I can't see any stones".
The hospital's sonographer,
As she smothered me with gel,
Said, "You've got a lovely liver,
And your spleen looks good as well.
"Your prostate is a bit enlarged -
That's natural, never mind -
And that is why your bladder
Keeps a little bit behind.
"Your kidneys, though, are normal,
On the left and . . . on the right.
Internally, your body
Is a fascinating sight".
Well, I'm glad I made them happy
By exposing my inside.
Beware, though: with these characters
There is no place to hide.
If your State of Denmark's rotten
They will find the source of rot -
For they get to see right through you:
What they see is what you've got.
© 2009 Gordon Judge
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My passion is for mending things,
I'm just that sort of bloke.
To me, a thing's more interesting
If it's well and truly broke.
A rattly bike, a wobbly chair,
A clock whose tick needs curing:
What other folk would throw away
I really find alluring.
Just give me pliers, nuts and bolts,
A hammer, tape and glue,
And give me something old and broke -
I'll make it just like new.
I can't resist the urge to fix
Whatever needs restoring;
New things that always work okay
Are boring, boring, BORING!
© 2008 Gordon Judge
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Of all the jobs I have to do, there's one that is the worst.
Success eludes me every time; my efforts are all cursed.
I DIY with the best of them and manage pretty well,
Except when it comes to pipes and joints. That's plumbing, and it's hell.
I find it all confusing, and books don't help because
They make it seem so easy. Oh, how I wish it was!
The tools you need are chunky: huge spanners, Stilsons, Moles;
Blow-lamps, plungers, drain rods, for use by sturdy souls.
There's 15-mil and 22, and half-inch BSP;
There's elbows, olives, O-rings, glands and taped PTFE;
Compression, Yorkshire, push-fit joints; P-traps, U-bends, drain cocks.
A nightmare mix of bits and bobs that's cracking up my brain-box.
Electrics are more flexible and easier to mend;
But pipes are unforgiving and a pain to join or bend.
You drain them dry to fix a drip by tightening and tweaking;
But when you fill the system up, the darn thing keeps on leaking.
Why can't it all be easier? Why must I get so fraught?
Why can't things fit together much more simply, as they ought?
There's no hope of improvement, as far as I can tell;
It looks as if I'm stuck with it. That's plumbing, and it's hell!
© 2004 Gordon Judge
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If you've noticed something odd, or heard a really rhythmic phrase,
And it's bounced around inside your head for days and days and days,
The only way to stop yourself from going mad, or worse,
Is to sit at your computer screen and turn it into verse.
That demon in your brainbox, as it rattles round and round,
Is playing with alternatives and juggling what it's found,
And it's looking at the matter first from this way, then from that,
And it's trying hard to rhyme things, so it's changing 'tit' for 'tat'.
Yet the funny thing with poems is, they almost write themselves,
Helped along by three fat volumes that sit up there on the shelves.
They're battered and they're tattered, and they're all well past their prime:
A dictionary, thesaurus, and a book of words that rhyme.
Almost all the words you'll ever need are listed in these tomes:
There's nouns and verbs and adjectives, all looking for good homes;
Conjunctions, prepositions (oh, and adverbs - what are they?),
Waiting quietly to discover if today's their lucky day.
You can't stop the fiendish creature that's infested your grey cells,
So wait until it settles down, and see if something jells;
Then jot it down, and change it round, take down your books of reference,
Adjust the metre, tweak the rhymes until they're to your preference.
If you're lucky, you'll be treated to a well-deserved surprise:
The beginnings of a poem will appear before your eyes.
Then all you do is nurture it, develop it and tend it,
Choose a title for your poem - oh, and find a way to end it...
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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Posh houses had Bow Windows,
Posh houses had no dust,
Posh houses smelled of Polish
And housed the Upper Crust.
Posh people had Hall Tables,
Black Telephones and Wine.
Posh people had a Motor Car
Which took them out to Dine.
Posh families had smart new clothes
In all the Latest Styles.
Posh families had all their teeth,
Which gave them Radiant Smiles.
Posh Man would work in London,
Travelling First Class on the train.
Posh Wife would have her friends round
Till he came back again.
Posh Children went to Prep School
For a Private Education,
Which kept them safely distant
From kids below their station.
Absorbing this as I grew up
From things that people said,
I didn't fancy "Posh" at all -
I'd just be Me instead.
© 2009 Gordon Judge
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Now, where shall I begin? Ah, yes - this wrinkling of the skin:
It wasn't half as bad a year ago.
Though I've rubbed in creams and potions, slapped on liniments and lotions,
It's less stretchy now, and cracks begin to show.
There's a problem, too, with memory. Rather like a sheet of emery,
It's worn down and it's now well past its prime.
But I haven't lost my touch, and I've not forgotten much -
Just where I'm going, and why, from time to time.
It was more or less all right when small changes in my sight
Could be overcome by squinting both my eyes;
So having to wear glasses to see the board in evening classes
Came as something of a premature surprise.
I'm told I should beware slight receding of the hair
And its colour change from black to Grecian grey.
As you lose it from your head, it begins to sprout instead
From ears and nose - well, that's what people say.
I cannot understand why prostate glands expand
And obstruct the path of easy urine flow.
"It's hypertrophic but benign," says the doctor. "You'll be fine.
But come back if you find you just can't go."
I'm not exactly thick, it's just my brain is not so quick;
It's getting worse at thinking in a hurry.
Names to faces I can do: it may take an hour or two,
But I'll work out who you are, don't you worry.
I still enjoy a walk, although I creak. And, when I talk,
My patched-up molars give the game away:
A youth mis-spent with sweets and lots of other sticky treats
Has left them in a state of grim decay.
But enough of all this groaning and sad, introspective moaning -
Time to rise above this dismal cavalcade!
Though my eyes are getting dimmer, I'm not ready for a Zimmer!
(Do you know where I can get a hearing aid?)
© 2000 Gordon Judge
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As my age is increasing, my skin keeps on creasing;
The Sun is to blame, it would seem.
That's why I'm applying
"Q10 Age-Defying
Double Strength UV-Filtering Cream".
Will it "fight all the signs" of those wretched "fine lines"?
It had better - this stuff isn't cheap.
Will it "re-moisturise",
Or is it all lies?
Are its promises only skin deep?
Must I go on for ever with a skin like old leather?
No! Q10's a "coenzyme", you see.
It "supports ageing skin",
Somehow, "from within";
And that sounds just the ticket to me.
So I'll carry on dreaming that regular creaming
Will do what the ads seem to say.
And my skin will stay smooth,
Without wrinkle or groove,
While the rest of me shrivels away.
© 2008 Gordon Judge
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I really try ever so hard
To recycle the things I discard:
I put plastics and tins
Into little green bins,
And harvest my paper and card.
Milk bottles get rinsed and returned,
While thick woody prunings get burned.
(Bonfire ashes will suit
The growth of soft fruit:
It's the potash that does it, I've learned.)
I save aluminium foil,
Collect my car's old engine oil,
And bank all my glass.
I compost my grass,
And make leaf mould to add to the soil.
Embarrassingly, I'm afraid,
I sometimes rush out with a spade
And a bucket I use
To collect horses' poos
Which I stack 'til they're fully decayed.
Yoghurt pots and those blue plastic trays
Are punctured, and then used to raise
Lots of flowering plants
That, when planted, enhance
Hanging baskets with colours ablaze.
When the time comes for drastic dead-heading
In the garden, my shrubs will be dreading
That my sharp secateurs
Will attack their coiffeurs.
They must know it will all end in shredding.
I'm environment-friendly, you see,
And doing quite well, currently.
So, when I pass away,
Go ahead, make my day -
Think recycling, and recycle me!
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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"This letter's not for me," I said when the postman came today,
"The address is right, but the name is wrong. Please take the thing away."
"It's number nineteen on your door," growled the postman in a fury.
"Of course it is, it's where I live; but the name is Judge, not Jury."
"Look, you're nineteen, so it's for you, I don't care what your name is.
If you ask me, it's the sender's fault - that's where the bloomin' blame is.
The GPO have got a rule that says I must deliver
A letter to the place it says." Well, that got me all a-quiver.
We altercated on the step: he lunged towards the slot;
I countered with a burst of speed I didn't know I'd got.
But posties get well trained these days: he'd just been on a course
On getting letters through the door with a maximum of force.
He punched it through the letterbox. He'd beat me, that was that.
The letter was delivered - there it was, upon the mat.
'Twas then I knew what I must do to spite this vile offender:
I popped it back in the post next day, inscribed "Return To Sender".
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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My grease gun is redundant.
My car is nipple-free,
Its steering joints all sealed-for-life -
Vorsprung durch Technik, see?
Technology move forwards
Like many things in life;
But now that cars lack nipples,
My grease-gun's sealed-for-life.
The cars it greased in distant years
Have long since passed away.
A faithful servant, now retired,
This dog has had his day.
I'd like to give it one last squeeze,
And yet it cannot be.
My grease gun's slowly sinking
Into obscurity.
© 2007 Gordon Judge
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"Now here is an SOS message,"
The radio used to declare.
You'd know that someone was in trouble,
And you'd wait to learn who was, and where.
"Would Arthur McArthur, of Ayrshire,
Now believed to be somewhere near Rhyl,
Please contact this telephone number
Where his mother is dangerously ill."
I used always to listen intently:
Would the next SOS be for me?
I wondered what SOS stood for -
"Save Our Souls," said my Dad, "do you see?"
But today, you don't hear SOSs,
It seems there aren't Souls to be Saved.
So my name won't be heard on the wireless,
And I'll not win the fame that I craved.
© 2009 Gordon Judge
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Blatch & Shepherd's baked wonderful bread:
On their long tins and bloomers we fed.
But then came the chop -
Blatch & Shepherd shut shop.
What now could we slice up and spread?
That day was an awful heart-breaker.
To lose such a fine local baker
As a matter of fact
Made such an impact
That we went out and bought a breadmaker.
No common shop-bread would have done;
We'd been spoiled. Supermarkets we'll shun,
For a loaf wrapped in plastic
Is just not fantastic.
On that, I agree with my son.
We are raring to go, we are aching
To plug the thing in and get baking.
So we load up the beast
With flour, salt and yeast,
Butter, water and sugar, hands shaking.
"Now, let's switch it on!" I exclaim,
For to match B&S was our aim.
And it did pretty well -
Made a luvverly smell -
But somehow it's just not the same . . .
© 2007 Gordon Judge
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The Bubnoff unit, whose symbol is B,
Is far too small for people like me.
One micron a year is a speed that's so small
Not even a snail would detect it at all.
And what could you measure it with, might I ask?
No ruler that I've ever owned fits the task.
It'd have to be stable for aeons of time,
Free from corrosion, protected from grime.
I'd quite like a unit that's named after me,
But I'd want it to measure a thing you can see,
Like poems in Stonechat. So, if there were four,
You'd clock up four 'Judges' as that issue's score.
Then folk the world over would know it was time
To count up in 'Judges' their output of rhyme.
Immortality beckons; life won't be the same
Once the unit of verse is the Judge family name.
© 2010 Gordon Judge
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On the desk inside my head
Just before I go to bed
Are all my life's events, stacked neatly there;
But, though I've never seen her,
In the night I'm sure a cleaner
Comes and throws the whole lot in the air.
Then my brain, or so it seems,
Tries to join them up in dreams;
And I'm sure it really tries to do its best;
But the sequence of events
In my dreaming makes no sense
As I scurry on a helter-skelter quest.
There are people I should know,
Who appear to come and go
Though I never seem to recognise their faces;
And the scene is always changing,
Never static, rearranging,
And I end up in some very funny places . . .
Often situations tricky,
And predicaments quite sticky,
Seem to come from nowhere just to test me out.
Will my dream-self stay alive?
Will I manage to survive?
I always do, despite a fleeting doubt.
At last my mystery cleaner
Comes (although I've never seen her)
To tidy up (although I can't afford her).
Does she check there's no mistakes
By the time my brain awakes?
I really hope she puts things back in order . . .
© 2009 Gordon Judge
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Well, I declare:
That bottom stair
Is just thin air!
It isn't there,
Not there at all
(Or very small).
"Look out!" I call
Before I fall -
A pointless sound!
I check around:
Here comes the ground -
I'll soon be downed.
There'll be a smash,
A spatial clash...
There! In a flash,
A mighty CRASH!
I shout a curse:
It's very terse -
"Oh blow!" or worse
(Not fit for verse).
I'll now test this
Hypothesis:
That my mate Chris
Will take the opportunity to make fun of me...
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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The flint miners of Cissbury were tough and hardy bands.
Five thousand years ago with red deer antler picks and hands
They dug straight down into the Chalk, some forty feet or more,
Then hacked out spoke-like tunnels on the bell-pit's flinty floor.
The flint was what they'd come to get: black, hard, and good for knapping.
Once out, each nodule would be flaked on site, by deft and skilful tapping.
A flake of flint is hard and sharp, but a practised stone-age hand
Could fashion tools and arrowheads for trade across the land.
It's said that flinty arrowheads can still be found today,
In northern parts of England, and in Europe - far away
From Sussex, where those miners left, as far as I can see,
Just dents on Cissbury's summit - and no arrowheads for me!
© 2010 Gordon Judge
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"May I question you, sir, for a moment or two,"
Asked the pollster who called at the door.
"Just some ticks in the boxes; there's not much to do,
Then I'll not have to trouble you more.
"Question One is straightforward. I'll read it out now:
'Do you think you are A, B or C?'
That's really not hard, sir, I think you'll allow -
You just have to choose between three."
Well, I'm not A alone; I'm part B and some C;
It looks like I don't fit your norm.
And some days I reckon I'm D, F and G,
Which you don't seem to have on your form.
"Oh dear, I can only tick one box," she said,
"Or else the statistics won't work.
That's something, you see, that we pollsters all dread
And drives my poor boss quite berserk.
"I'm not trying to influence your choices, of course,
But couldn't you try to be C?"
No, the problem's not mine, don't you see - it is yours;
I'm not A, B or C - I am me!
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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You should never wait behind me in a queue;
You are doomed to wait for ever if you do.
I can definitely prove
Queues with me in never move,
They just stand like statues, checking out the view.
It's a puzzle. Could it be I have a gland
Which projects a queue-retardant o'er the land?
When it comes across a queue
It envelops it like glue,
And immobilises people where they stand.
I'll design a shirt with these words marked in blue:
"Here's a warning, aimed specifically at YOU:
I'm afraid you're out of luck,
For this queue is firmly stuck.
You should never wait behind me in a queue".
© 2006 Gordon Judge
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I've grown quite attached to it,
Genetically matched to it,
It's been wrapped around me since birth.
I never remove it
Or try to improve it,
It's my closest companion on earth.
It's all in one sheet
From my head to my feet:
Top to toe, front to back, side to side.
It can stretch, and it bends;
If I cut it, it mends,
So it keeps all my insides inside.
It gets up when I do,
Helps cook when I try to,
And I'm never alone when I dine.
Like the best of good mates,
It helps wash the plates
And never refuses good wine.
Even though it's quite thin,
Wind and rain can't get in
When there's terrible weather around;
But it needs insulation
In a cold situation
Such as winter, or night-times, I've found.
It's got holes where my nose is,
And that, I suppose, is
To make sure fresh air can get in.
They're in just the right place
On the front of my face
So they don't interfere with my grin.
It has taken some knocks,
And it's had a few shocks,
But it's stayed with me, though thick and thin.
All in all, I am glad
That, since I was a lad,
I have lived in the skin that I'm in.
© 2008 Gordon Judge
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I've always had this mania
To lay out things in lines
Like pieces on a chessboard,
So everything aligns.
It started when I emptied all
Nan's buttons on the table,
I'd line them up by size and shape
As straight as I was able.
Long lines were such a passion
That anything would do,
Like pennies, cards and cotton-reels,
Old books, and matchsticks too.
These days, I'm still afflicted:
In supermarket aisles,
I straighten up their labels
And neaten up their piles.
Their trolley parks excite me -
They're left in such a state!
I sort them into nested packs
And leave them looking great.
I try to thwart the Second Law
Which states, as I've discovered,
That 'order' gets transformed to heat
And can't all be recovered.
Well, I put things in order,
Reduce their entropy.
If you spot things all jumbled up,
Please get in touch with me.
© 2006 Gordon Judge
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I'm a selfish sort of fellow, it's myself I think of first:
If confronted with a dragon, I'd make sure he came off worst.
Yes, I know he'd need my flesh so he could fill his empty belly,
But I'm not prepared to die just yet - not on your bloomin' nelly!
I would grab the nearest rifle, quickly load it with a bullet,
And with finger on the trigger, if he leapt at me, I'd pull it.
Yet it's said, "You must not kill, because it's wrong; you mustn't do it.
No exceptions, no excuses - it's not right, howe'er you view it".
Do such people, when infected with a rogue bacterium,
Simply sit around and suffer, looking miserable and glum
As the blighters breed inside 'em? Sounds a trifle idiotic;
Don't they feel the urge to kill 'em with a good antibiotic?
When the greenfly, slugs, botrytis, caterpillars, pigeons, moles
Leave your garden devastated, your potatoes full of holes,
Is it right that you should starve while such scallywags as these
Run amok among your brassicas and legumes as they please?
There are tiny flying insects, ants and spiders everywhere
Which I massacre unwittingly - I just don't know they're there.
I am sure I must have trodden on them, swallowed 'em or sat on 'em.
Whichever way it happens, it's the same result: I flatten 'em.
If I pick some luscious fruit, or if I harvest ripened grain,
Have I stolen from these seeds their chance to grow and seed again?
If I cut a fresh green cabbage, have I killed it prematurely?
The alternative's starvation, and that's not an option, surely?
If I kill a fatted calf (which I hear's been done before)
To provide a balanced diet, have I really sinned once more?
There's no doubt that killing must be wrong in many, many cases,
But Thou Shalt Not Kill's too simple a commandment as life's basis.
We've survived because we've eaten things like beef and wheat and lettuce,
And we've beat the competition that was always out to get us.
We're a selfish sort of beast, like all the others on this planet;
Seems like killing things is part of life. Can't all be wrong, then, can it?
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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I am blessed
With a chest
That's caressed
By a vest.
(Had you guessed?)
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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I'm sixty-five not out, as cheery cricketers might say,
And looking back makes twenty-one seem centuries away.
I've cousins, aunt and offspring, but no sister and no brother.
I've done a bit of this and that, a little of the other . . .
I once came third in the long jump†, but sport is not my thing;
And, nursery rhymes apart, there's little doubt that I can't sing;
I'm no good on committees which I've joined to make their quota;
In politics I am the archetypal floating voter.
When young, I made collections: fag cards, stamps, and matchbox tops,
And old piano music found in second hand bookshops.
I've modelled things with matchsticks, Trix‡ and Bayco‡, balsa wood;
'Micromodels‡' were a challenge, but I did the best I could.
Good people educated me from infant to degree -
I only wish I'd thanked them all, but now it cannot be.
By rote, encouragement and fear they inculcated knowledge
That got me through exams and then eventually through college.
I've done research on knee-joints and lost-wax investment casting,
And some of what I've done has had effects that have been lasting:
For artificial limbs and anti-locking brakes for cars
I've tested out and patented some intricate doodahs.
I've been a Civil Servant (of the scientific sort),
But didn't always do the things that Civil Servants ought.
I've played duets on organs, juggled darts, and (what is worse)
I've had the sheer audacity to venture into verse.
So at sixty-five not out, as cheery cricketers might say,
I'm looking to the future in an optimistic way;
But one thing leaves my family apprehensive and perplexed -
They're wondering what on earth this ancient geezer might do next . . .
† There were only three competitors.
‡ Trix was a Meccano-like nuts-and-bolts construction set; Bayko let you build model
houses with plastic bricks that slotted between metal rods stuck into a baseboard; Micromodels
were sets of postcard-size cards from which could allegedly be made miniscule models of things
like the old London Bridge.
© 2007 Gordon Judge
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Have you ever thought of this, my son and daughter, that it's queer:
If I'd never met your Mum, then you two wouldn't now be here!
And you could have said the same about our parents, and their forbears,
Their progenitors, their ancestors, and theirs, and theirs, and theirs.
If they'd worked out, Eve and Adam, what the odds were in advance,
They'd have seen how almost vanishingly minuscule the chance
That you'd be the folk you are; and yet you are, for that's empirical,
So you might say that your presence here is nothing but a miracle!
But the thing is, you could not be thinking wacky thoughts like these
If your ancestors had fancied folk on different family trees.
You exist, and that is that; it's QED, it's status quo.
Could it ever have been different? Ask your Mum (and let me know).
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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This month, there is no poem. Seems my muse is on vacation,
Gone absent without leave. It's quite a shock.
She's taken all my sources of poetic inspiration
And left me nursing chronic writer's block...
© 2004 Gordon Judge
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St. Michael was my tailor; alas, he is no more.
You won't find him in M&S - he's banished from the store.
He always knew what size I was, what leg, and waist, and chest.
His garments were well crafted, his quality the best.
St. Michael stitched for everyone, for children, ladies, men.
But once Per Una came along he never worked again.
St. Michael fought the Devil, according to the Church;
But M&S abandoned him and left him in the lurch.
They took him off their garments, his image was old hat.
The women are big spenders now, they thought. And that was that.
There was no big announcement, it wasn't headline news,
They simply changed the labels - they didn't ask my views.
I feel ignored. I'm angry, and as loudly as I'm able
I want to shout out, "M&S, bring back St. Michael's label.
I want him on my underwear, I want him on my shirts.
If you don't bring St. Michael back, I'll hit you where it hurts."
I'll start a revolution, a cool new style for men:
I'll go without my clothes until St. Michael's back again.
© 2007 Gordon Judge
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Poems about what's on the menu
(There's a link back to here at the end of each poem)
I am just a little duck
Who has run right out of luck.
It might have been all right if I'd been thinner;
But I've been so amply fed
That I'll very soon be dead
And served with orange sauce. Enjoy your dinner!
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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Hens must think it strange
That their eggs, laid on the range,
Are advertised as free
To the likes of you and me.
© 2006 Gordon Judge
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I am a little woolly lamb;
I have a little bleat.
I'll have a little life, as well,
Because you want my meat.
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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I am a broiler chicken,
Just one among so many.
I'd like some space to get a life -
Alas, I haven't any.
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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I am a free-range turkey,
Organic and well-fed;
But I have this funny feeling
That by Christmas I'll be dead...
© 2004 Gordon Judge
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Poems about unusual perspectives
(There's a link back to here at the end of each poem)
Hi, I'm World-Wide Wallace,
You'll have heard of me before*.
I've just set up a business
That can move you, door to door.
I've done a long apprenticeship
In all kinds of house removal
From continent to continent,
Winning customers' approval.
I do things very subtly,
Keeping quiet and out of sight,
But poke my nose in everywhere
To check it's all done right.
So e-mail soon to hire me,
For I'm always in demand.
But you'll find, with World-Wide Wallace,
Your wish is my command.
(* He's a dachshund - see World-wide Wallace)
© 2010 Gordon Judge
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I'm a solar-powered timepiece that you do not have to wind.
I'm as quiet as the grave, because I've got no gears to grind.
I don't wear out; I don't slow down; my rhythm never slips,
So I do not need adjustment when you hear the Greenwich pips.
You would think all these advantages, and others I could mention,
Would leave the world amazed at such a marvellous invention.
The trouble is, although I'm astronomically right,
I'm not much good to people in the middle of the night;
Not portable, not digital, not radio-controlled;
No buttons, knobs or winder shafts. I'm from a different mould
That's schooled in more traditional and self-effacing ways -
The strong and silent type that isn't popular these days.
The clamour of the modern world is urgent and incessant;
Overtaken by technology, I'm feeling obsolescent.
I can't adapt to BST; I'm useless doing seconds;
I'm just a quaint anachronism, everybody reckons.
In short, I am a sundial, and I make a hopeless botch
Of what most folk will say is done far better by a watch.
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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It's just horrible being a ball.
If we're not being thrown at a wall,
You are bashing us, thrashing us,
Bowling or rolling us.
Does nobody love us at all?
You just don't understand how we feel:
When you launch us with fervour and zeal
At coconut shies
To knock off a prize,
We end up unconscious. Big deal!
In tennis, our prospects are cursed
By directions abruptly reversed
As we're volleyed and served,
Spun, top-sliced and curved
'Til our casings are ready to burst.
We're all battered and bruised, thanks to you.
Struck with football boot, golf club or cue,
We end up in goals,
Bounced off cushions, down holes;
We are punished whatever we do.
We give notice: we simply won't stick it.
We detest being thrown at a wicket,
And what's more, we abhor
Being driven for four.
Look here, chaps, it's simply not cricket!
© 2004 Gordon Judge
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I must protest against the name your scientists have called us,
On behalf of other bluebottles. It's really quite appalled us.
The genus name is odd enough: you called us Calliphoria;
But who will love our species now we're known as vomitoria?
You humans think we're grubby. "Ugh! You don't know where he's been",
I hear you say, as though we're something seriously obscene.
But when I look at humans, well, I'm taken quite aback -
The pot, as you'll recall, should never call the kettle black.
Your body is so huge, I bet its total surface area
Is covered, head to toe, with many squillions more bacteria
Than I could pick up in a year of gentle bluebottling around
On compost heaps and carcasses and dung piles on the ground.
Your mouthparts aren't a patch on ours: I have no lips to pucker,
And what I eat I vacuum up with this, my little sucker.
It's quick, it's clean, there is no mess, no washing-up, no waste;
And what is more, it's fresh, organic produce, full of taste.
On each side of my head I've got a great big compound eye,
So I never need to blink, and I never ever cry.
Irises? Who needs 'em? Not a bluebottle like me:
Several thousand ommatidia show me all I need to see.
How come you have no wings and cannot fly? Seems evolution
Left you humans way behind us flies, still seeking a solution;
And look, you've only four legs - and you're only using two
To stand on. How unstable! You need six legs, in my view.
So next time that you hear that gentle, soothing, buzzing sound,
And you wonder if perhaps there is a bluebottle around,
Just remember what I've said; and when eventually you spot me,
Think how backward humans are, compared to flies. And please don't swat me...
© 2005 Gordon Judge
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There isn't much joy here in north-east FitzRoy
For a cyclone, downcast and alone.
It's hard to be fond of the back of beyond;
I wouldn't have come, if I'd known.
The Met Office say, in their clinical way,
There's a high pressure out to the west.
Trouble is, its persistence could harm my existence;
No wonder my pressure's depressed.
Their latest projection says I've no direction:
I'm a drifting Atlantic nonentity.
Now my pressure's got higher...the outlook is dire...
I think I've just lost my...
© 2004 Gordon Judge
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Chiropody's my line of work: I deal with people's feet.
I've got some aromatic oils that leaves them smelling sweet.
I whip your shoes and socks off as soon as you arrive,
Then wash and dry between your toes to make sure I'll survive.
The trouble is with feet, you see, they do get so neglected:
Nails too long, or shoes too tight - that's how they get infected.
Your bunions, callouses and corns are not a pretty sight,
But when I've padded, cut and scraped, they start to look all right.
Some folk can seem quite grumpy and come across all gruff,
But it's hard to wear a happy face when your feet are feeling rough.
So I take a philosophic view when working down this end:
However horrid people are, their feet are still my friend.
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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"I'm an egg, and I'm surprised that
You still haven't sorted out
The old chicken-versus-egg thing.
Well, there isn't any doubt:
Watch what happens when my shell cracks -
There it goes! Now, did you see?
It's the egg before the chicken,
That's the answer. QED."
"No, the chicken came first really,"
Crowed a voice above the egg.
"In terms of things to stand on,
You just haven't got a leg.
If you wonder why the cockerel's
Going cock-a-doodle-doo,
It's because he knows the truth is,
It was me gave birth to you."
"The whole question's academic,"
Said a nearby chef, irate.
"You ought not to waste your hours
In such meaningless debate.
Now the pair of you have pushed me
To the far end of my tether;
I will make a chicken omelette
And you'll both go in together..."
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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Caterpillaring is fun -
It's just continuous eating.
As lifestyles go, I think this one
Will take a lot of beating.
My caterpillar mates don't stop,
And hardly pause for breath;
They eat so much they nearly pop.
They never think of death.
I've seen them die: they disappear
Inside a hard brown case -
A chrysalis. And then, I fear,
They vanish without trace.
Old caterpillar sages say,
"You do not really die,
But live in quite a different way -
No longer crawl, but fly!"
I can't believe that it is so,
It leaves me quite perplexed.
All life must end; for all I know,
It might be my turn next...
Oh dear, I've slept. What's this about -
I've found these verses written.
And here am I, atop a sprout
Whose leaves have all been bitten!
I've dreamt the most peculiar things.
But now I'm wide awake,
My lanky legs and flashy wings
Will help me find a mate.
Hark! Do I hear old sages cry?
"Your legs were once just hobblers,
You had no wings and couldn't fly."
Oh, what a load of rubbish!
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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"Our environment's doomed," cried a microbe of old,
"If we don't get to grips with pollution.
It's getting much worse now, or so I've been told;
We really must find a solution.
"We're worried that soon there won't be enough
CO2, so we can't photosynthesise.
Some say we're to blame for this oxygen stuff,
But how can that be? It's just wicked lies...
"The Sun is the culprit: its harsh UV light
Is breaking apart H2O
Into H2 and O2.
The H2 takes flight,
Leaving O2 behind, as we know.
"If nothing is done, we are doomed to expire.
This poisonous air must be banned.
It's far too reactive: it makes things catch fire,
And spreads rust and rot through the land.
"Who knows what effects all this noxious gas
Will have on our future? It's scary:
Could mutants arise, of incredible mass,
Big brains, arms and legs, and quite hairy?"
© 2004 Gordon Judge
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I'd heard about spiders and how they catch flies
In their webs, which are terribly sticky;
But I'd thought, 'It can't happen to me, I'm too wise'.
But it did; now the future looks tricky...
I've tried wriggling and kicking and buzzing my wings,
But the spider is on the horizon.
(He must have a little alarm bell, that rings
Whenever his web has got flies on...)
He's coming straight at me; I just can't get free.
He's determined - he means to be fed.
Ouch! Mind where you're biting! Oh dear, seems to me
Before very long, I'll be...
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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As you drive to your cosy abode,
Keep an eye out for me. I'm a toad
With an urge to respond
To the call of my pond
On the opposite side of the road.
Every year, on a cold, damp, dark night,
We expatriate toads all take flight
As, all danger unheeding,
We rush to get breeding.
It's our nature - we're not very bright.
In the past, many brave toads have died,
For the road we must cross is so wide;
And with sex on our mind
We are quite traffic-blind
As we hop to that far-distant side.
Perhaps we should set up a school
To teach toads this one golden rule:
"If you're not a fast hopper
You'll soon come a cropper,
For life on the road can be cruel".
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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We dogs are very puzzled by you humans and your ways.
We take you out for walkies in the neighbourhood most days,
And often change our route so that you get a change of view;
But you seem to be obsessed with bagging up our doggie poo.
Why is it that you humans find our droppings so attractive?
It's not as though the stuff is horticulturally active.
We try to stop you doing it, by pulling on your lead,
But nothing works. It must be some deep psychological need.
When horses take their humans out, they seem to get away
With leaving piles and piles of poo along the Queen's highway.
Their humans never tag along with plastic bags and scoops
To commandeer for who-knows-what their steaming horsey poops*.
It really is embarrassing, this manurial attraction,
It has to stop; we dogs must take some managerial action.
Next time we take you out, beware! We'll take chunks out of you
If you should ever, ever stoop to picking up our poo.
[*An editorial note: That's true, but gardeners, with their spade,
Will sometimes make a bee-line for the spots where dung gets laid.
They do it rather furtively: they'll wait till no-one's looking,
Then shove it in their bucket, even though the stuff's still cooking.]
© 2010 Gordon Judge
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I suppose you think I'm lucky, perched up here atop this steeple,
Looking out across the countryside and down on all you people.
Well, think again - high altitude and panoramic views
Are not much use to a cock who's got no cock-a-doodle-doos.
And weathercock's a silly name to call me; after all,
I can't foretell the weather, I can't tell if rain will fall,
I can't predict a sunny spell, or warn you that a gale
Or hurricane is coming that is off the Beaufort scale.
I've been aloft for ages, getting pitted and encrusted.
There's bird-lime on my crop, and my pivot's worn and rusted.
My N and S have fallen off, their arms had rusted through;
The W and E came loose, and soon they'd dropped off, too.
I don't like heights at the best of times, but when the wind gets blowing
And the lightning zaps and the thunder claps, well I don't feel much like crowing.
Oh, you lot are all right, you're not stuck here in all weathers
With no cover 'gainst the elements and not a hint of feathers.
The worst thing is the solitude, I've got no soul mates near.
Us weathercocks are miles apart - it's lonely stuck up here.
Maybe they'll build a church nearby, with a steeple. Oh, and then
Perhaps they'll fix on top of it a gorgeous weatherhen...
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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I'm world-wandering Wallace, a hound
Who has travelled the globe, been around.
I won 'Best in Show'
Once, at Cruft's, don't y'know!
But I still keep my feet on the ground.
I'm a dachshund with style, d'you see -
No 'sausage-dog' label for me.
I learned from my Mummy
How to hold up my tummy
And be what a dachshund should be.
On my walks I'm precisely to heel,
And I guard all my friends with great zeal.
But my breed's ancient rôles -
Chasing badgers from holes -
Are not ones I care to reveal.
Like my owners, I cannot gainsay
The urge to be up and away;
But you can still write
Through my internet site:
WorldWideWallace-dot-co-dot-uk.
© 2007 Gordon Judge
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Poems about medicine and biology
(There's a link back to here at the end of each poem)
You are prey every day, in an underhand way,
To attack by invisible foes
Which go into hiding, forever dividing
So their offspring can add to your woes.
You can't spot 'em or swot 'em, but you know that you've got 'em
When they're inside your guts or your airway:
They will make you feel queer, or give you the runs -
Then you'll know it's not just a bad hair day.
You may nurse 'em, or curse 'em and try to disperse 'em
By taking an antibiotic.
Though some are resistant and mighty persistent,
Surrender would be idiotic;
So don't mope like a dope, hang on to the hope
That your white cells are fighting to floor 'em.
Just remember: you oughta drink plenty of water,
Wrap up warm, stay indoors, and ignore 'em.
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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Beneath my protein coat, nucleic acid's all I've got.
I haven't got a nucleus, cell wall
Or Golgi apparatus. I can do without that lot;
In fact, I don't need very much at all.
I drift around with all my mates: we've dropped out and we're free,
We hitch-hike on the slightest puff of air,
Sub-microscopic hippies, yeah, it's how we like to be.
There's no way you can tell that we are there.
But when we get inside a cell and commandeer its works,
We make our presence felt - it can't ignore us.
We've got this hip philosophy that working's just for jerks,
So, once inside, we make the cell work for us.
Forced labour? No, it's nature, man; and this seems clear enough:
God made that cell for viruses to breed in.
It's not our fault if, when we're done, the cell will die - that's tough.
In evolution's terms, man, we're succeedin'!
You say we cause disease in you. Hey, man, don't give me grief!
At least it isn't me whose end is nigh:
Your cells will let you down, your earthly span of life is brief.
But we are not alive, so cannot die...
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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I'm an X-ray machine. All my X-rays, unseen,
Can penetrate through you, unheeded.
I can show what's inside you so the docs can provide you
With all of the treatment that's needed.
Have you've smashed up your knee? Maybe swallowed a key?
Or a part of you's hurting a lot?
You just lie on my table as still as you're able,
And I'll pinpoint the troublesome spot.
P'rhaps you're wondering why there's a white-coated guy
Standing safely behind lead-lined screens?
It's because some X-rays tend to go their own ways -
Mister White-coat, he knows what that means!
Now, don't be alarmed, he'll check you're not harmed:
Back at college, they trained him a lot.
So don't worry yourself, the effect on your health
Won't be too bad. Well, probably not.
When I fire my X-ray it might hit DNA,
Which I honestly do not intend to;
But I will give you data the docs can use later
To find out the best way to mend you.
I'm high-energy, see, that's the trouble with me;
And to make sure my X-rays get through you,
I use thousands of volts (less than lightning bolts).
Well, you don't want a half X-ray, do you?
Right: just breathe in and hold...don't exhale 'til you're told...
...and relax now. That's all there is to it.
Your spine's out of line, but your abdomen's fine -
And I know, 'cos I've just seen right through it!
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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I've just learned my brain is fantastic
(You probably think yours isn't bad!):
Its structure's amazingly plastic,
Reconnecting its neurons like mad.
There's one hundred billion or more,
Whose connections are what make you you.
Got a habit you really deplore?
Then try reconnecting a few.
Want to learn a new language or skill,
Play piano or sing in a choir?
Just practise a lot, then you will,
'Cos your neurons will start to rewire.
They'll do it themselves, without aid:
They'll connect up the pathways they need,
Leaving other connections to fade -
All to make sure your efforts succeed.
Reconnecting's the key to success -
Not too often; or else, as I've spotted,
Your neurons could get in a mess
And end up all horribly knotted.
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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We are staphylococcus aureas,
Past masters at making you ill.
You fought back, and were briefly victorious,
By killing us off with a pill.
So we mugged up on natural selection,
And learned to mutate and evolve
Into forms that gave us more protection
And gave you tough new problems to solve.
When we'd learned to survive penicillin,
We thought we were safe for a while;
But you found a new way of killing,
In your chemically murderous style:
Methicillin (it's semi-synthetic -
Penicillin with knobs, you might say).
So we bred at a rate quite frenetic
And evolved into MRSA.
While you're doing your best to destroy us,
It's no wonder we microbes all hate you.
Though your antibiotics annoy us,
We know we can far out-mutate you...
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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"It's peritonitis," they cried
As bacteria filled my inside.
With death I was dicin'
Until streptomycin
Was jabbed in my tender backside.
My life now extended, I'm thrilled
That all those bacteria got killed -
It was their life or mine.
But now, I feel fine:
All the damage they did has been healed.
My thanks to the nurses and docs
Who cured me and other young crocks;
Without them and their drugs,
Those bacterial thugs
Would have put me too soon in my box.
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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Three hundred million sperm set out
To do what sperm must do;
Yet out of all that wriggly lot
It's only one gets through.
It seems unfair, to say the least,
That all the rest get trashed;
So many expectations raised,
So many futures dashed.
Now they're rejected, cast aside,
Unwanted DNA.
No destiny for these sad souls,
Except to fade away.
The frantic journey they have made,
All thrashing head to tail,
The energy they must have spent -
Yet all to no avail.
How can the great Creator watch
Such manifold rejection?
There must be something He could do
To lift their grave dejection.
He could provide some counselling cells,
Who'd be around if needed
To listen, nod and sympathise,
And kid them they'd succeeded:
"It's taking part that matters, chaps.
Big prizes? You don't need 'em.
At least you haven't been absorbed,
At least you have your freedom."
And so, this message well instilled,
Their sadness would soon cease.
They'd contemplate mortality,
And then they'd rest in peace.
It wouldn't work, though. Sperm aren't daft.
Know why they're looking so glum?
It's 'cos the place they want to be
Is deep inside that ovum.
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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Poems about the mysteries of nature
(There's a link back to here at the end of each poem)
It must be quantum tunnelling, it seems the only way
That woodlice, spotted on the floor, picked up and thrown away,
Can suddenly appear again exactly where you'd found 'em
Without traversing any of the carpet all around 'em.
Or are they using wormholes in the spacetime thingumajig?
(I'm blowed if I can see 'em, so they can't be very big;
And why would all the wormholes end just here, inside my house?
It looks like modern physics has been mastered by a louse.)
Perhaps my trusty Hoover could take on another rôle:
To woodlice it should look just like a bloomin' great black hole!
I'll wind it up to max and fit the biggest nozzle size on,
Then suck those pesky arthropods past its event horizon.
© 2005 Gordon Judge
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Look! There's an ant with a wing in its mouth,
Being blown to and fro by a breeze from the south;
But why would an ant be carrying a wing?
Self-adornment, maybe - a sort of ant bling?
Now she's pulling it into her nest down below.
P'raps she'll frame it and name it and put it on show,
And her ant friends will scoff at this formic upstart:
"You've been at the aphids again. That's not art!"
I know what she's up to. At the end of July
The drones and the queen ants will take to the sky
For a frenzy of mating and airborne attraction.
And this ant, a worker, wants some of the action.
So she's thought of a way to pretend she's a queen:
She's secretly building a flying machine!
With six legs to pedal it, there's plenty of power
To flap her new wing with for hour after hour.
She'll test it out soon, perhaps add a wing or two,
And show all the drone ants that she knows a thing or two.
(Here's one thing she knows that would fill them with dread:
Soon after their flight, all the males end up dead . . .)
© 2010 Gordon Judge
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Butterflies are wispy things
With skinny bodies, flimsy wings.
They really don't look very strong,
And yet they seem to get along.
They're pretty nifty little movers
Who execute some cool manoeuvres:
Their flight controls are so precise
They change direction in a trice.
You'd think a breeze, with little force,
Would blow a butterfly off course;
And air, to insects, is so sticky
That flying ought to be quite tricky -
No aerofoils to give them lift,
No buzzing wings to help them shift
(Compared to bees, their wings are slow).
How do they fly, I'd like to know!
Well, though their brains are rather small
(Three thousand neurons - seems that's all),
It's proved to be no handicap:
Their wings have learned six ways to flap.
They've found out how their wings can tease
Out streams of useful vortices:
They flap and twist, and 'clap-and-fling',
Then catch the lift their efforts bring.
Wing-flapping's what our engineers
Have tried to duplicate for years;
But butterflies, as you'll have guessed,
Have always known they do it best!
© 2004 Gordon Judge
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Chelsea: tented, regimented,
Growth by nature ornamented,
Petals, metals, water features, wood and stone;
Richly fruity, deeply rooty,
Oozing verdant floral beauty,
Novel cultivars and species, specially grown;
Multi-scented, well presented,
Highly bred or new-invented,
An injection of perfection by the Thames.
Oh, the sowing! Oh, the growing!
Oh, the feeding, watering, hoeing!
Oh, the craft and graft that's gone into these gems!
Lots of terracotta pots
And inspiring garden plots,
Vernacular, spectacular and bold;
Sometimes seedy, never weedy,
But for medals always greedy:
Bronze, Silver, Silver-Gilt - and Chelsea Gold!
© 2005 Gordon Judge
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Some scientists, performing
A review of global warming,
Have highlighted what ruminators do:
They generate - to be plain -
One fifth of global methane,
A greenhouse gas much worse than CO2.
At C.S.I.R.O,
They have found a way to go:
They give the beasts a course of vaccinations
Which enters their interior
And kills off the bacteria
That generate their harmful eructations.
No-one's asked the cows or sheep,
Or the company they keep,
Their views on this, or asked for their permissions.
But here's what Daisy says:
"We haven't changed our ways
It's you who've increased greenhouse gas emissions".
© 2004 Gordon Judge
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Earthquakes have no morals; hurricanes have no heart;
Lightning isn't careful where it aims its fateful dart;
Volcanoes aren't too choosy where they squirt their lava streams;
Radiation isn't bothered if it messes up your genes;
Tsunamis, floods and avalanches don't divert their action;
Meteors have no qualms about terrestrial impaction.
If all these things don't get you, like as not bacteria will,
Or parasites, or viruses, or prions out to kill.
We want to say "How dreadful," but these things are bound to be -
Not all is bright and beautiful in life's rich tapestry.
The heat that churns the Earth and air supports all living things,
While water, in its quieter moods, grows cabbages and kings;
And lightning's electricity and bright illumination
Might once have pushed a molecule towards self-replication.
But what about those microbes? Well, it seems, on close inspection,
That some live deep inside us and facilitate digestion.
So nature is both black and white: it's nasty and it's nice -
Choose a dodgy time or place and you're a sacrifice!
We have a sense of danger, and must use it to survive:
Keep an eye on Mother Nature if you want to stay alive...
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small...
Except black-, white- and greenflies which are no use at all,
Outsize spiders, jellyfish, big crabs with sideways walks,
Bed-bugs, ringworms, fleas and lice, and slugs with eyes on stalks,
Ants and woodlice (wretched things), all nits and gnats and flies;
Oil-seed rape whose pollen clouds so irritate my eyes;
Squirrels, moles and bluebottles, fat pigeons, rats and mice,
Slithery, slimy, slippery things (not earthworms, they are nice);
Bulldogs, dachshunds, pekingese; big locusts, lampreys, leeches;
Club root, canker, mealy bugs; those wriggly things on beaches;
BSE and foot-and-mouth, meningitis, cancer, AIDS,
Gallstones, tonsils, athlete's foot, ME that lasts decades,
CJD, MS, TB and ills of longer name,
Some of which just knock you back while others kill and maim.
Sorry, Fanny, do go on. It's just that you ignore...
All things wise and wonderful... the things most folk abhor.
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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Iceland, famed for ice and fire,
And banks that lose your cash,
Has hit the headlines once again
Erupting plumes of ash.
Atop the Mid-Atlantic Ridge,
A fit-to-burst volcano
Blasts through a glacier with a name
Pronounced as only they know.
So now, no contrails scar the skies,
The air is strangely hushed;
For aircraft are not built to fly
Through fine volcanic dust.
It's tough for some, but proves a point:
The Earth's still hot below.
That heat is how we all survive -
It's making sure we know...
© 2010 Gordon Judge
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It's a marvel how the bees
Pack the pollen with such ease
Into bags below their knees.
Yet you never hear them sneeze...
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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The lilies of the field, who never spin and never toil,
Look flashier than Solomon, they say.
Big deal! Who wants to live their life with feet encased in soil,
And doomed to photosynthesise all day?
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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I always thought snails weren't supposed
To leave themselves over-exposed.
This one's climbing a wall!
Has he no sense at all?
Has his malady been diagnosed?
For a snail, he's abnormally high,
Doing things that his mates never try.
Their gaze firmly grounded,
They'd all be astounded
If ever they looked to the sky.
A creature so painfully slow
Needs to think very hard where to go.
If it goes the wrong way
It could end up as prey.
He's a snail of the world - he should know.
As I pondered these thoughts, the snail spoke:
"Look, I'm not doing this for a joke.
I'd more likely be found
If I stayed on the ground;
Going vertical's my masterstroke.
"My direction in life's my affair;
If I want, I'll climb up in the air.
I am blazing new trails
For adventurous snails,
And I'm climbing this wall 'cos it's there."
© 2004 Gordon Judge
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All those seeds I bought last springtime, in their multicoloured packs,
Looked so utterly enticing as they hung there on the racks:
Pretty pictures on their fronts, and full instructions on their backs.
So I sowed them in the greenhouse with the heat turned up to 'max'.
I'd read a lot of gardening books in search of expertise,
And used some sterile compost so they didn't get disease.
They germinated quickly, making little plants with ease
Which looked healthy when I pricked them out in ones and twos and threes.
Eventually, I planted them according to my plan:
I lined them up in nice straight rows, all looking spick and span,
Then firmed them in and drenched them with my bright green watering can.
But then the trouble started, as the air assault began.
Whole squadrons of fat pigeons in formation filled the sky,
All targeting my seedlings. Well, I couldn't just stand by
And watch them all get pecked to bits, I'm not that sort of guy;
So something drastic was required, or else their end was nigh.
Wire netting, folded lengthways, seemed to do the job okay:
It kept the pigeons off my plants. But, as they flew away,
I saw the ground troops moving in - no blitzkrieg army, they,
But slow and slimy slugs and snails who'd come to join the fray.
With time to think, I contemplated what should be their fate:
Geneva's War Conventions all prohibit poisoned bait,
So beer traps it would have to be - p'raps six, or seven, or eight?
It took some time to buy the beer...and then it was too late:
They'd marched straight past the beer traps, where I'd planned they should have drowned,
And razed the soft green shoots I'd planted, right down to the ground.
It's time for counter-measures; can a remedy be found
Before it's all repeated when next springtime comes around?
I'll ring up Alan Titchmarsh: "How d'you stop these pigeons pecking,
And all these slugs and snails and things from absolutely wrecking
My handiwork?" "Ah, yes," he'll say, "hang on, I'm just re-checking...
Thought so - it's really simple: cover all your soil with decking."
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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I've just found the explanation for our blackbird's agitation:
A stranded baby bird below its nest.
Its precarious situation left it open to predation,
Then a magpie saw it - you can guess the rest.
It had realised with delight that it had the power of flight,
And had launched into the unsupporting air.
Blackbird Mum had seen its plight, but the magpie's vicious bite
Soon ended weeks of nurturing and care.
Squawking, angry and forlorn at the death of her firstborn,
Blackbird Mum bewails her lot, her baby gone.
Now is her time to mourn; but there'll be another dawn -
One down, still two to go. Life must go on...
© 2006 Gordon Judge
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The things that drive girl guppies dotty
Are guppy males whose skins are spotty.
But guppy guys know decoration
Makes them targets for predation.
If predators nearby are feeding,
Big, flashy spots, though good for breeding,
Can make a chap an easy meal -
It's just the price of sex appeal.
So what's a guppy guy to do?
Well, nature's got a trick or two:
It's learned just how a guppy feels,
And given it some cool alleles.
The genes that program guppy spots
Have different forms - in fact, there's lots:
One 'spot' allele may code for many,
While others dish out hardly any;
Some make red spots, some make blue,
Some an iridescent hue;
Small spots, big spots. All these may
Be expressed by DNA.
Thus, guppy genes have quite a range
Of possibilities for change.
Those who survive, it's evident,
Can change with the environment.
It means that guppies can adapt
To life, instead of getting trapped.
The trouble is, adapting means
Survival of the fittest genes.
So some within the population
Are destined for extermination:
Those guppy blokes who find they're stuck
Without the right allele - tough luck!
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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We've had some awful flooding here.
I think perhaps I can explain:
Last time we had a lengthy drought
Too many people prayed for rain.
But now, of course, their prayers have changed:
"O let these downpours cease," they cry;
And many pray the selfsame plea,
"O make again the country dry!"
If they were engineers, they'd see
Their system lacks stability.
Perhaps they ought instead to pray
For much less variability.
Or, better still, don't pray at all,
O ye of little faith. Instead,
Build reservoirs, keep off flood plains,
Ignore Mike Fish and use your head!
[Michael Fish was a forecaster in the UK Meteorological Office who famously rubbished talk of an approaching hurricane the day before the Great Storm devastated southern England in October 1986]
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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Our garden's wildlife-friendly,
But when wildlife comes to visit
It devastates our vegetables.
Now that's not friendly, is it?
If wildlife won't be friendly,
I'll go on the attack:
I'll shout at them and be quite rude
Until they all turn back.
Then I'll cover all the garden
With mesh made out of plastic.
(When food supplies are threatened,
The solution must be drastic.)
I'll make some holes to let in rain,
Providing irrigation
Through special valves, which won't admit
Those objects of vexation.
There'll be some airlock openings
To ventilate the plot,
And automatic sun shades
For when the weather's hot.
(I'll let in worms and blackbirds,
And ladybirds, and bees,
For they are friendly wildlife
And may do just as they please.)
Then I'll look out at the garden
And think, "It's such a shame.
Our garden's wildlife-friendly,
But it isn't quite the same..."
© 2009 Gordon Judge
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Poems about trying to get to grips with reality
(There's a link back to here at the end of each poem)
What on earth is the use of a brain
Which, whenever it tries to explain
What reality is,
Gets itself in a tizz?
Still, I s'pose I ought not to complain.
It's stuck with the inputs it's got:
Five senses, that's all; not a lot.
Just touch, taste and smell,
Sight and hearing as well.
Oh, and memory, too - I forgot!
But they're simply not nearly enough
To be able to handle such stuff
As "Can time ever stop?"
Or "Does space have a top?"
My brain cannot know - and that's tough.
But it knows that admitting defeat
Wouldn't help the poor thing to compete.
So, to keep me alive,
It tries hard to survive
With a world-view that's quite incomplete.
© 2004 Gordon Judge
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'I think, therefore I am,' said Descartes when in a jam.
He reckoned only thought itself was sure;
All else could be deception. An interesting conception,
But one that has a dubious allure.
The whole idea of 'self' is the key to mental health,
Yet self is mind, and mind's a brain-based thing.
The brain interprets what the senses say they've got
Which makes the whole thing very puzzling.
I used to think my eyes would never tell me lies,
But optical illusions prove me wrong:
My brain starts off confused, then ends up quite bemused -
It finds it's been deluded all along.
While I'm asleep, eyes shut, my mind stays active; but
I wake, and usually know I've just been dreaming.
Yet sometimes it's so real that I cannot help but feel
That I'm still in it - running, jumping, screaming.
One possible defence is to use the other senses
To check if you can touch and hear and smell
The thing your brain insists is out there and exists.
But what if they are mind-tricks too? Oh hell!
© 2000 Gordon Judge
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I exist in a volume of space,
The edges of which you can see.
Everything outside's the Universe;
Everything inside is Me.
Each thing is defined by its boundaries
Which set it apart from the rest.
But a difficult question arises
Which leaves my grey cells highly stressed:
"Does the Universe also have edges?"
If no, then how can it exist?
If yes, you must ask "What's outside them?"
It's driving me right round the twist...
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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First impressions can mislead.
So change your point of view
To get a new perspective; then
You'll see the world anew.
We see the amazing range of life, all creatures, great and small.
That's why we used to think we were the greatest of them all.
The dinosaurs thought much the same, before we came along;
It only goes to show just how our boasting was all wrong..
We see the skies above our heads: the Universe surrounds us.
It's only natural, then, to think it all rotates around us.
But, thanks to dedicated men who measured with precision,
We came to learn our place in space demands a wider vision.
We think time passes at the rate our clocks and watches tell:
The Greenwich pips and Big Ben's strike confirm that all is well.
But that's because we never move at near the speed of light
When time's dilated. Then whose watch has got the time just right?
Diseases were a mystery: they'd weaken and they'd kill.
It must be something bad we'd done - or witchcraft - made us ill.
But scientific medicine has put such fears at ease:
And now we know that natural causes underlie disease.
The Earth on which we humans stand seems solid; and the pages
Of maps of continents and seas have served us well for ages.
But plate tectonics is for real: geologists hare proved
That ocean ridges make new crust, and continents have moved...
Surely matter is eternal? That at least can be observed.
Don't basic laws of physics say that matter is conserved?
Try telling that to Einstein, or to people in Japan.
The energy in matter's made its mark on every man.
First impressions can mislead.
So change your point of view
To get a new perspective; then
You'll see the world anew.
© 2010 Gordon Judge
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I am locked in the dark in your skull night and day,
At the top of your long spinal cord;
I am silent, immobile, invisible, grey,
Underused, undervalued, and bored.
I mean, you're asleep for one third of the day -
And for most of the rest, you are lazy.
Can't you see I'm frustrated, just wasting away?
Won't you use me, before I go crazy?
Oh well, if I can't get you thinking great thoughts,
I will count up my neurons instead...
There, I've done it: a one and eleven more noughts,
All packed in here, inside your head.
Their interconnections are legion; that's why
My potential is quite astronomic.
Yet they're stuck in the head of a lacklustre guy
Whose dominant mode's autonomic.
They are starting to ask what "reality" means.
They can't see things, or touch, hear or smell 'em,
But they've learned to construct quite extravagant scenes
In your head, from what other nerves tell 'em.
They have mastered the art of creating a model,
And it seems to keep you quite contented;
For they've made you believe that, outside of your noddle
There's a world - yet it's wholly invented!
Could it be that there isn't a real "world" out there?
That's a problem I can't get your head round.
I hammer away at it under your hair,
But all that I get is a dead sound.
Try asking big questions and puzzling things out:
Start by asking "Why? How? What? Where? Who?"
'Course, I can't provide answers that banish all doubt,
But it will give me something to do.
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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I need a neural upgrade - my senses are too slow.
There's a problem that brings furrows to my brow:
Whenever something happens, it's a while before I know;
So, although it happened "then", to me it's "now".
We're all living in the past because the present's been and gone
By the time our senses recognise it.
Our poor brains, the last to know it, do their best to work upon
All the data coming in, to analyse it.
Then our brains make moving "pictures", but the fact we can't ignore
Is: however good the "movie", or how pleasant,
Like film the pictures only tell of what has gone before -
So it's true to say there's no time like the present.
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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That big rainbow in the sky
Isn't there. I'll tell you why:
It's just nature's grandest optical illusion.
Every single drop of rain
Bounces sunlight back again
And refracts it, making colours in profusion.
But the colours don't entangle
'Cos each colour has an angle
Which it makes between the sun, the drop, and you.
If a drop's in every place
That a ray could hit your face,
Then you see a bow of yellow, red, or blue.
But there ain't no rainbow there!
It's a mirage in the air:
If you flew up to the cloud, you wouldn't see it.
(Do you think that's too pedantic?
If your vision's more romantic
And includes a pot of gold, well then, so be it...)
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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I am in reflective mood;
I'm not the chap I used to be,
For all my cells have been renewed.
The question is, am I still me?
I think I am, and that's what counts,
As Monsieur Descartes would have said.
The "me" that's stayed the same amounts
To jumbled memories in my head;
That's why I think the "me" I was
Is now the "me" that is today.
(I hope my logic's right, because
I don't know any other way.)
Could I be wrong, though? What if all
My memories are mental quirks?
It's possible; for, I recall,
It isn't known how memory works...
Enough! These broody interludes
Could generate insanity.
I'm giving up reflective moods -
So stuff the chap I used to be!
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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They said: "The Sun goes round the Earth",
And everyone believed it.
The opposite seemed so absurd
That no-one had conceived it.
And likewise, "All the universe
Must spin around us, too".
We strained our eyes to watch the stars
And knew it must be true:
The centre of the universe
Was us, God made it so.
Until our measurements improved
And scientists said, "No!"
"Our data fit another view
Which upsets, we should add,
The paradigm that's been around
Since Adam was a lad."
So now the Earth goes round the Sun!
The only thing that's new
Is how we've looked at what we've seen
And what we've thought was true.
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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The Cutty Sark's gone up in flames -
(Except the bits they'd stored).
So, when its burnt bits are replaced,
Is Cutty Sark restored?
It's like the tale of Granddad's axe:
If he renewed its blade
And Dad replaced the handle, has
A new axe then been made?
How much of something can be changed
Before it isn't it?
A molecule? An atom? Or
A rather bigger bit?
I need to know, because my cells
Replace themselves, they say.
So am I still the chap I was,
Or different every day?
© 2007 Gordon Judge
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(There's a link back to here at the end of each poem)
Tie a mass on to a string. Let it hang - don't let it swing.
There's a tension in the cord, and that's the clue:
There's a serious pulling force (it is gravity, of course)
Acting outwards on the mass, away from you.
Now whirl the mass, instead, in a circle round your head:
Still a tension in the cord, I think you'll find;
So are we right to claim there's an outwards force again?
That depends upon the picture in your mind.
First, imagine you're the mass (oh, you poor demented ass!);
You can feel an inwards tension from the string,
And you think, "That tension oughta make the string a little shorter,
Yet it isn't so. Now there's a curious thing!
It must mean, by Newton's Laws, there must be another force
That is opposite and equal to it, see?"
You think, "Opposite direction means it's outwards in complexion -
A centrifugal force! So QED."
Now pretend that you can fly: go and hover in the sky.
(Someone else can do the whirling - show them how.)
From this aerial perspective you can be a force detective:
Can you see what's going on below you now?
"Things go straight (or do not move) as though they're travelling in a groove,
If no forces are externally exerted."
That's what Newton also said; and, even though he's dead,
His Laws are frequently asserted.
So, if what you're now observing is a whirling mass that's curving,
It's curving 'cos a force is hard at work.
It's an inwards-acting traction with a centripetal action,
Acting on the mass to change its state.
So the mass is forced to swerve as it travels in its curve:
The dynamic equilibrium of flight.
Centrifugal force? A myth! Don't believe in things like thyth!
Just release the string to prove that I am right...
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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A rocket, fired due north,
Veers off east as it flies forth -
Or so it seems to earthbound folk around.
(Before it's launched, the beast
Is moving to the east
As fast as is its launch-pad on the ground.)
Its eastward motion stays
After launch: it still obeys
The law that says momentum is conserved.
But, Earth's a ball and so, er,
Earth's eastward speed gets slower
As your latitude increases, I've observed.
So the rocket's eastward speed
While it travels north (agreed?)
Means it overtakes meridians below it.
That's why someone on the ground
Thinks a force must be around.
Monsieur Coriolis was the first to show it.
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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A lonely little photon
Came rushing through the sky.
As I turned my head to see it,
It flew into my eye.
My retina absorbed it
And used its energy
To fire an optic neuron
That helped my brain to 'see'.
And what it 'saw' was starlight
From the depths of outer space.
(That photon travelled light-years
Before it hit my face.)
The queer thing is that maybe
Its parent star's now dead -
Its last-emitted photon
The one inside my head!
Well, little cosmic orphan,
You've really got me going:
Are stars and planets real or not?
There seems no way of knowing.
If sight is not reliable
At proving things exist,
I may as well just give up
And get extremely drunk.
© 2000 Gordon Judge
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O pity the electron, it's not sure what it is:
A wave, a particle, or both? It's always in a tizz.
It seems to get from here to there in steps that aren't contiguous -
A schizophrenic entity that's spatially ambiguous.
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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Hi, there! I'm g. To keep up with me
You'd better not procrastinate:
10 metres per second per second, it's reckoned,
Is how you must accelerate.
(That's not quite exact. My value, in fact
Isn't constant, but varies with place:
Though 9.81 is the number for some,
You really should check - just in case.)
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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A Theory of Everything! Wouldn't that be great,
If only it could be attained?
You'd put in the numbers and, after a wait,
The universe would all be explained!
But a theory must always be proved, so you make
Observations to try to reject it;
For as long as you do that and find no mistakes
You can use it - but always suspect it.
The basis of theories can only be what
Has frequently happened before:
If you see something happening the same way a lot,
You can formulate it as a "law".
Yet, however consistent your law seems to be,
Remember it's based on the past;
Don't ever confuse it with reality -
That problem is simply too vast,
Your brain's not equipped with the bits it would need
For such metaphysical stuff.
Your theories will work for you, that I'll concede,
But somehow they're not quite enough...
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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I once saw Einstein on a train
Which whistled past our station.
"Your clock ticks much too slow," I yelled.
"Ach, nein. That's time dilation,
"I'm travelling near the speed of light.
When I glance back at you,
I looks like your clock's running slow:
It's crazy, but it's true!"
Herr Einstein wasn't looking well,
He really looked quite thin.
He must have heard: "Nein, nein," he cried,
And flashed the Einstein grin:
"A metre rule along my train
Is shortened by its speed, too;
That's why I think I haven't changed.
A ruler can't mislead you!
"But even so, I must admit
I find it hard to move.
I have a theory why that is,
Which, one day, I will prove:
"When moving near the speed of light,
You need more energy
To shift a mass from here to there
Than when at rest, you see.
"All matter in the universe,"
The physicist declared,
"Holds energy whose magnitude
Is shown by mc2.
"When I return, I'll stop the train
And you will learn the truth:
I've found the key to time and space,
And to eternal youth!"
© 2005 Gordon Judge
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That deep-thinking chap, Isaac Newton,
Had views he was quite resolute on.
His Fourth Law states clearly
That you will pay dearly
If you sit under trees with ripe fruit on.
© 2000 Gordon Judge
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My son is a quantum-like entity,
For over the years I have learned
That his actual physical whereabouts
Cannot be precisely discerned.
It's as though all the atoms that make him,
Conspiring together, behave
As Max Born proposed, back in the twenties,
Like a giant probability wave.
Such an entity, Born said, could pop up
Nearby, far away, or just here...
But there's no point in guessing the outcome,
Just wait for the thing to appear.
Only then are positions determined,
Only that gets the wave to collapse;
Only then can I know where my son is -
And that's where I'll find him. Perhaps.
© 2005 Gordon Judge
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Did God make the proto-Higgs boson?
Did He switch on His own LHC?
Has the Emperor of Physics no clothes on?
It seems we must just wait and see.
When the hardware at CERN has been mended,
Will the Higgs show its presence a bit?
If it does, physics' work isn't ended,
For gravity still doesn't fit . . .
If it doesn't, our model's mistaken
(As it has been before in its history).
It will leave many heads being shaken,
And the nature of mass still a mystery . . .
It looks like a new Standard Model
Will have to be worked out at CERN,
Though I doubt if there's room in our noddle
For all that we still have to learn.
© 2009 Gordon Judge
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I am not a happy cat.
I was sitting on my mat
When they locked me in this box. "A test," they said.
But now I'm feeling queer,
It's as though I'm not quite here -
Am I really still alive, or am I dead?
It's my quantum states, I s'pose;
They've all got superposed.
But I know the way to crack this paradox:
In order to preserve me
I must get them to observe me,
So I'll kick up a commotion in this box.
Well, I've jumped and banged and crashed,
But something in here's smashed;
There's a nasty smell - it's cyanide, I'm sure.
I fear my plan's misfired -
I've decohered - expired.
Erwin Schrödinger has much to answer for.
© 2000 Gordon Judge
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So the cat's in the box? Good! It's what it deserved.
Now I'll guard it, to keep it from being 'observed';
Then its quantum dichotomy can't decohere -
That'll teach it just who is the boss around here!
© 2000 Gordon Judge
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Isaac Newton said, "It's clear:
Forces act from far and near,
Every mass attracts each other, in proportion."
Said Einstein, "No, not that!
You're assuming spacetime's flat,
But around each mass is serious distortion."
Yet each is just a way
Of explaining things away
Which remain a total mystery for ever.
They are too much for the mind,
Which just limps along behind
While the maths men write equations and look clever...
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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Do some work, compress a spring -
Strong muscles are essential.
The energy you give the thing
Has lots of new potential.
The rate at which you do the work
(A megajoule per hour?),
Provided that you do not shirk,
Will demonstrate your power.
Now make the spring propel some rocks.
This could be quite frenetic:
The energy the spring unlocks
Is dangerously kinetic.
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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We've found some leaky wormholes in the warp and weft of space
Where space-time's vast continuum needs tweaking.
To mend a thing like that, you've got to switch it off, in case
You get your wires all crossed, celestially speaking.
So time will stop for maintenance at ten o'clock tonight;
We'll get it fixed and working just like new.
And, 'cos we're conscientious, just to make sure it's all right,
We'll do a routine service on it, too.
You'll have to leave us to it as we go about our task,
But one thing we should mention, to be fair:
Your lives will have to stop. Now surely that's not much to ask?
It is? Why, were you going anywhere?
Now look: this work's essential, so you'd better change your tone.
It's no more than a minor irritation.
The universe is cracking up, and all you do is moan!
You ought to give us more co-operation.
You won't remember anything, it won't leave any trace.
Your memory's a sequential-time machine.
It's time alone that separates what's happening in space;
Without it, you can't sense the changing scene.
We've switched off many times before, in quite a similar way -
You'll find our detailed records clearly chart 'em.
So why the fuss? Could it be this: did we forget to say
We'll stop your lives...and then, of course, re-start 'em?
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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The Planck time's a blank time,
A quantum's tiny tick.
As you might guess, there's nothing less:
It is, in fact, time's nick.
© 2007 Gordon Judge
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As planets orbit, they are thrown by solar gravitation
Into ellipses, 'gainst their own inertial inclination.
Inertia is a tad annoyed, she's feeling put upon,
Her whinging echoes through the void - she does go on and on!
"I don't like changes, I resist 'em; curvatures I shirk.
The orbits of the Solar System are the Devil's work:
The planets ought to travel straight, it is their natural way!
Ellipses I'd eliminate - Inertia rules, ok?"
But deep in space, another stirred: "That's what you think," said he,
He'd listened in to every word. His name was Gravity.
"My influence is everywhere, benignly interactive.
It makes each bright celestial sphere peculiarly attractive.
My pulling power is so great that things need no assistance
To centripetally gravitate; most offer no resistance.
If I had my way, every star in every constellation
Would race together from afar - a mighty conflagration!"
If you're a planet, neither fate can bear imagination:
You'd either freeze, or gravitate towards annihilation...
So better far to steer a way between these mighty forces -
That's why the planets choose to stay on their elliptic courses.
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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We're photons and electrons,
We pop up everywhere;
You think of us as particles
And waves, but we don't care.
When we're moving in large numbers
Your predictions of our flow
As current, or as light beams,
Aren't bad, as such things go.
But you cannot track us singly
Through slits onto a screen:
You can't detect which slit we use
Or tell where we have been.
You claim your maths explains us,
And yet it is not so.
We're aspects of reality
That you can never know.
Your paradigms are faulty,
Your theories are all duff;
Herr Schrödinger's equations,
Though good, aren't good enough.
Such sorry facts should highlight
The limits of your brain.
Just leave it to evolve a bit
Before you try again!
© 2000 Gordon Judge
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(There's a link back to here at the end of each poem)
Astronomers have Janus heads with two opposing faces:
Their charts show how the stars traverse the skies,
And yet they teach that stars stay put, not moving from their places!
They ought to be in politics, these guys...
© 2005 Gordon Judge
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The night sky has a lot of stuff
That's really hard to spot,
So use 'averted vision':
It's like looking when you're not.
Employ it when a galaxy,
A nebula, or star
Is just too faint for naked eyes
To see from where you are.
Here's what you do. You need to know
Where, roughly, to expect it,
And then you focus to one side
And let your rods detect it.
What earlier you couldn't see
Will now come into view -
As long as you don't 'look' at it!
Seems crazy, but it's true!
© 2006 Gordon Judge
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A total eclipse of the Moon was due,
So the astronomical crowd
Got up at three in the morning to see
The Moon eclipsed - by cloud . . .
© 2008 Gordon Judge
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I'm new to astronomy - that's why I'm eager,
Now I can tell Altair from Deneb and Vega,
To sort out the Universe. That will ensure
I'll be a replacement for Sir Patrick Moore.
© 2005 Gordon Judge
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I've done what Galileo did;
Like him, I was astounded.
I looked at Jupiter's bright moons
And saw they moved around it!
My geocentric turn of mind
Is troubled now, you see,
For hitherto the universe
Has always turned round me.
But what you see is what you get.
It looks like I was wrong:
The Earth is not the hub of things
It seemed like all along.
Poor Galileo went on trial
For what he saw that night:
The facts did not agree with what
The Church decreed was right.
Well, many things have changed; but still
We look up to the sky,
And what we see can't help but make
Us wonder how and why...
© 2005 Gordon Judge
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Holmbury St Mary is rural,
A tranquil, remote sort of place.
Yet the quiet folk who work in its mansion
Are trying to make sense of space.
But Gamma rays, X-rays, UV,
Do not reach the Earth. What they do
Is send up a spacecraft or satellite
For an extraterrestrial view.
Radiations (electromagnetic),
Picked up by their sensors, are plotted;
And brains (those of Mullard Space boffins)
Conjure theories that leave one's mind knotted.
AGNs, GROs, GRBs,
Compact binaries, quasars, the Sun,
Galactic dynamics and jets
Offer hours of head-scratching fun.
The furthermost thing they have seen
In the Universe, cold, black and vast,
Is a gamma-ray burst which was active
Thirteen billion long years in the past.
Four per cent of the mass of the cosmos
Is all that we currently know.
The rest is Dark Matter and Energy,
So they've still got a long way to go...
© 2009 Gordon Judge
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The US has not got the money
To put man again on the moon,
So their astronauts won't be a-roving
The regolith any time soon.
It's been landed on, orbited, probed;
It's been sampled, impacted and tested.
A whole load of junk has been left there,
And a whole lot of dollars invested.
Now Obama has cancelled all landings,
And his critics in NASA are mad;
But no matter what anyone else thinks,
The Man in the Moon will be glad . . .
© 2010 Gordon Judge
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Pity Phoebe: very old,
Quite alone and icy cold;
Cratered skin all disarrayed;
Orbit tilted, retrograde.
Captured into Saturn's grip
From Kuiper's Solar System tip.
Seven million miles away
From her guardian's ringed display,
She felt ignored, unloved, rejected.
But in the '80s, unexpected,
Two Voyagers flew past and gave
A photographic Phoebian wave.
"It gives me hope," poor Phoebe said,
"That, though they snapped my dented head,
There might be someone out in space
Who might quite like my pock-marked face."
But Phoebe's mood again turned glum:
She felt romance would never come.
When twenty years or more had passed,
A distant speck appeared at last,
And grew in size, though still quite teeny.
Then, on its side, she saw: "Cassini".
Its closeness made her all excited -
A spark of love had been ignited . . .
She smartened up each Phoebian feature
And waited for the probe to reach her.
She heard Cassini's high-tech clicks
As, overhead, it took its pics.
But then, to her intense dismay,
Cassini seemed to drift away . . .
The probe was answering Saturn's call -
It didn't fancy her at all.
Imagine, then, her bitter woe
When thus rejected by her beau,
And pity Phoebe: very old,
Quite alone and icy cold.
© 2006 Gordon Judge
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It seems the Sun has gone to sleep:
Its spots have disappeared
And not returned when they were due.
It's really rather weird.
They've mostly been as regular
As a clock, well oiled and wound.
Eleven years each cycle took
On average, it's been found.
When last this happened, Earth got cold
From 1645
For seventy chilly years, until
The spotless Sun revived.
But now we're in a minimum
That's stayed a tad too long.
I hope the Sun will wake up soon,
And nothing has gone wrong...
© 2009 Gordon Judge
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On the Moon they've found some water,
But it's locked into the dust,
So you'd need to scrape the molecules
From the regolithic crust.
The problem has been aired before,
By Coleridge, I think:
"Water, water everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink."
© 2009 Gordon Judge
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Binoculars,
Though good for stars,
Can't show me Mars.
That's why I hope
This telescope
Is going to cope,
And let me see
A galaxy,
Faint nebulae,
The whole night sky.
What's this I spy?
A crooked tie?
I can't be sure...
Refocus...Cor!
It's Patrick Moore!
© 2005 Gordon Judge
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"Thou shalt not see the stars by day,"
The Sun said, in its haughty way.
"Compared to mine, their piffling light
Means they can only shine at night."
Astronomers arose, as one
To silence this pretentious Sun:
"Our radio 'scopes can see by day
Faint galaxies light-years away.
"And when you've set, we see the skies
By means of dark-adapted eyes;
Earth's shadow blocks your dazzling rays
And we can see the night's ablaze
"With heavenly bodies large and small.
You're not so very big at all -
Although you think you're bright and glary,
You really are quite ordinary!
"We've used equipment telescopic,
Done some studies spectroscopic,
Crunched the numbers, found your spot
On the Hertzsprung-Russell stellar plot
"Which shows how bright and hot each star is.
It proves you're dimmer than Polaris;
And in size, we can deduce
You're not a patch on Betelgeuse.
"But all the same, we can't ignore you;
Deep down inside, we're sorry for you.
Six billion years of slow decline -
That's what's in store for you, sunshine!"
© 2006 Gordon Judge
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Though Venus is a planet,
To me she is a star:
Of all the heavenly bodies
Most beautiful by far.
I watch her in the evening
Before the stars come out,
A beacon in the twilight -
The only one about.
Then, as the heavens darken,
And Earth slides into night,
Still Venus blazes brightly
With never-twinkling light.
Her atmosphere is hellish:
You'd choke, be squashed, and fry.
I know...but I see only
Her beauty in the sky.
© 2007 Gordon Judge
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(There's a link back to here at the end of each poem)
I'm just a plain, undeviating, regular straight line,
But single, so I'm looking for a mate;
I'd like to meet another one with qualities like mine.
I'm not in any hurry - I can wait.
Though lots of other lines have crossed my path from all directions,
I haven't met one yet that's turned my head.
I'm looking for a rectilinear home for my affections
Then, maybe, the day will come when we'll be wed.
Perhaps I'm just too choosy, but so far it seems to be
Impossible to make my life complete:
The only lines I fancy are all parallel to me -
There's no way we are ever going to meet...
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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When the traffic's at a crawl
And you've hardly moved at all,
Do some sums with number plates. Here's how it's done:
To each letter (A, B, C...)
Give a value (1, 2, 3...),
Tot 'em up, then add the numbers, one by one.
It's a harmless mental test
That will leave your friends impressed
And amazed at skills they didn't know you had.
Either that, or else they'll mutter
Sotto voce, "She's a nutter -
All the stress of driving's sent the poor girl mad".
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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If you're a factorial, answer this, sonny:
You don't seem to me to be terribly funny,
So how come your symbol's a fake exclamation?
You'd better come up with a good explanation...
"The answer, my friend, is well known to the wise.
The reason the symbol looks like a surprise
Is because we factorials are not often used,
And so, when we are, we are highly amused!"
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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Pythagoras, that ancient Greek, once taught his band of brothers:
"The square on the hypotenuse is the sum of both the others".
So I am something special, and the reason is, you see,
Triangularly speaking, I'm the longest side of three.
My status is precarious, though, and here's the vital clue:
The angle opposite must be exactly pi by 2;
If not - I dare not think of it, I'd only get the blues -
I'd simply not exist...I'd be a non-hypotenuse...
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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Why do 2 and 2 make 4? And what on earth are
fractals for?
How are conic sections turned into
quadratics?
Where do logs and
roots and
sines fit into Nature's grand designs?
All these questions are the stuff of mathematics.
At the heart of mathematics are cerebral acrobatics:
You can calculate what 'x' is with some ease;
But for existential fun, the square root of minus
one
Is for intellectual poseurs with degrees.
Mathematicians have affinity with the concept of
infinity,
Which the rest of us consider a deceit;
Yet there's something quite hypnotic in a curve that's
asymptotic
To a line that it will never, ever meet.
Raw statistics, charts
and graphs may not be a load of laughs,
But can help you track your finances and shares,
And outwit the local rookies who bet money at the bookie's -
Get the winnings coming your way, 'stead of theirs!
Are you needing some persuasion to resolve a tough
equation?
Is the calculus inducing signs of slumber?
Try your hand at exponentials, which describe
life's growth potentials,
Or contemplate the famous golden number.
If your teacher's stiff and starchy, you could mention
Fibonacci
And his number sequence - that'll make her grin!
Ask her, innocently, "Why're all seed head patterns doubly spiral?" -
It's a great side-tracking ploy that's sure to win.
Mathematics stands aloof, upon a pyramid of proofs
.
There's a problem, though, which cannot be removed:
The point to comprehend is that its theorems
all depend
Upon axioms - but axioms can't be proved...
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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It's a very strange number, is pi:
It's 'transcendental' - though heaven knows why.
3.1416 is the usual mix;
More precision's just pi in the sky.
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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You can't write down my value
However hard you try,
Or convert me to a fraction -
I'm irrational, that's why.
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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They know I'm here, yet everyone ignores me. I persist
In fighting for a bit of recognition,
But still I get the feeling people think I don't exist.
Perhaps it's just a quirk of definition:
They say, you see, my area is vanishingly small;
Co-ordinates are all they say I've got.
So people talk about me like I wasn't here at all:
"There isn't any point," I hear a lot.
Such folk are just plain ignorant - well, that's my gut reaction;
I'd like to put their noses out of joint.
I'm really an important mathematical abstraction:
The point is - are you listening? - I'm a point!
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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Poems with musical connections
(There's a link back to here at the end of each poem)
To play duets, you need four hands, which might seem quite a lot
For one piano. Two are yours, the other two are not;
So players have to listen hard to what the other's doin',
Or else they'll soon get out of sync and it will end in ruin.
The music has two separate parts. Take Mozart's Turkish Rondo:
The upper part's called Primo, the lower part's Secondo.
Now Primo, with the better tunes, can really show off with 'em;
While Secondo usually plods along just banging out the rhythm.
You must match each other's tempo, whether speeding up or slowing;
Once you've started, there's no stopping - you must keep the music flowing.
The best advice to duet players boils right down to this, my friend:
Do make sure you're both together at the start and at the end!
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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The cymbalist waits for the beat...
Here it comes... As the metal discs meet
The expulsion of air
Rearranges his hair,
Which once looked so terribly neat.
The trianglist wants to do well,
He's counting the bars - you can tell.
But a hundred bars' rest
Is too complex a test,
And he's just missed his entry. Oh, hell!
The timpanist's sturdy physique
Boosts his wickedly boisterous technique.
He insists that these wimps
Stay away from his timps;
In the 'kitchen', he's chef de musique!
© 2004 Gordon Judge
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We're an orchestra, a band of musicians, highly trained.
If you'd care to lend an ear, certain things will be explained!
We are ruled by dots on lines that dictate how we should act:
When to blow and scrape and bash, so our timing is exact.
You'll have noticed lots of strings under chins,
or held upright:
Mostly small ones to your left; rather big ones on your right.
If you see their left hands shaking (it's "vibrato" - did you know?),
They are trying to find the note as they wobble to and fro.
Hear the gentle woodwind's sound - smoothly lyrical, with trills?
It comes from perforated tubes, yet their music's full of thrills.
There's the oboes and the flutes, clarinets and big bassoons;
And a piccolo (it's tiny, but it plays some jolly tunes).
In the interval you'll see how the members of the brass
Exercise their embouchures as they drain a well-filled glass.
(Well, you need a lot of puff to play Tchaikowsky, Wagner, Liszt;
And experience has shown they play better when they're refreshed.)
At the back, above it all, the percussion
section doze,
Counting rest bars by the dozen on their fingers, thumbs and toes.
Then, quite suddenly, one stirs, lifts his cymbals: there's a crash
(Has he dropped them?), and the noise wakes up the others in a flash.
Have they slept right through their cues? As they try to find their place,
Lots of bangs and clangs and booms echo through the concert space.
Then the audience applauds, crying "Bravo!", wanting more,
For they think the loud finale was what's written in the score!
We've rehearsed for weeks and weeks, phrasing this and stressing that;
We've been bullied and cajoled ("You are sharp!" or "No, that's flat!")
By a fellow at the front - waves his arms about a lot.
If our music is no good, he's the bloke who should be shot!
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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I know the National Anthem (all its verses), top to bottom;
It really helps to make me feel I'm King. It
Really wouldn't matter, though, if ever I forgot 'em,
'Cos I'm the only one who mustn't sing it!
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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On Sundays you'll see us, we're part of the team.
But organists aren't all the same:
While real ones have feet that can dance like a dream,
Pianorganists' legs just hang lame.
We learned the piano on uprights and grands
And practised for day after day.
That instrument's easy: one keyboard, two hands -
You sit on the stool, and you play.
The piano keeps both of your arms occupied,
But your feet are left dangling around,
Remote from the action, excitement denied,
Completely ignored, on the ground.
So imagine the terror pianorganists feel
When pressed into organists' rôles:
Dwarfed by a casework of timber and steel,
A flight-deck array of controls.
If God had meant mortals to play organs, He'd
Have given us ten pairs of hands
And eyes in our feet, for that's what we need.
I wonder if He understands?
There's one keyboard up there, another down here,
And often some more in between.
And then you espy, as you tremble with fear,
One more where the floor should have been.
There are stops to the left of you, stops to the right;
And buttons for fingers and feet.
There are couplers and mixtures that fill you with fright
When you hit a bum note off the beat.
So spare us a thought when you catch us out fumbling -
One wrong note can make quite a racket.
This thing has such power; it's scary and humbling -
But it's fun when you finally crack it!
© 2000 Gordon Judge
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"I really can't win, moaned a Second Violin,"
As its music was put on the stand.
"I think I've been cursed to not be a First,
Though why, I just can't understand.
"I can cope with vibrato, legato, staccato,
Andante, vivace, the lot;
And I'm built just the same. What is their little game -
What have Firsts got that Seconds have not?
"Could I start pulling strings and see what that brings?
Catch the eye of the Leader, maybe?
No, that is just risible: to him, I'm invisible,
He has eyes for his Strad, never me.
"So it seems I am fated to be relegated
To pad out the sound of each chord,
Stuck under a chin as a Second Violin,
Second-fiddling, my talents ignored."
© 2008 Gordon Judge
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That Jeremiah Clarke piece
That's very often played -
Well, why's it called a Voluntary?
Because he wasn't paid?
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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It's Verdi, his Requiem, they're playing today:
Four soloists, a choir, and a band.
The lights have gone down and they've started to play,
But there's something I don't understand:
At the back of the band, by a whopping great drum,
Sits a little guy, counting his way
Through the Kyrie's bars with his fingers and thumb.
I wonder when he'll start to play?.
Now the Kyrie's over. He's mopping his brow.
He pulls back his jacket's right sleeve
And picks up a drumstick. He's standing up now...
If I were that drum, I would leave...
Dies Irae has started - it's loud and it's fast,
And he's winding his arm round his neck.
Now he lets it go - wham! - with a thunderous blast
That leaves him a gibbering wreck;
Yet again and again he creates such a din,
As the music commands him to do.
He's worth every penny I paid to get in!
I like Verdi's Requiem, don't you?
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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If you play the double bass,
You need an awful lot of space,
Good eyesight, quite long arms, and comfy shoes.
If you're violoncelloing,
You must make sure nothing's showing,
Or the audience will get some shocking views.
Those who play the violin
Need a leftward leaning chin
And a left hand full of double-jointed digits.
Viola players, also,
Are much the same, but more so -
The viola's big, it's not a job for midgets.
Clarinettists, old or young,
Require a really mobile tongue
To give each note a crisp and sharp attack.
They, and other woodwind,
Need a strong and steady good wind
To stand out from the brass behind their back.
Brass players must be sure
They can form an embouchure
And still perform well when they've sunk a beer.
Percussionists must count
Up to quite a huge amount
Before the rests end and their notes appear.
Take note of this advice.
Think carefully, think twice,
Before you choose which instrument to play;
Then go for it. It takes
Lots of practice and mistakes,
But I'll see you in an orchestra one day!
© 2005 Gordon Judge
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(There's a link back to here at the end of each poem)
These poems are in limerick form, too:
Heavy plant crossing
Newton's Fourth Law
Santamania
Sign of the times
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A mathematical fellow called Ben
Thought, "I'll count up to twenty-one." Then,
With his fingers and toes
(And the tip of his nose),
He did so, again and again...
© 2005 Gordon Judge
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A rascally fellow was Bert:
He'd chase anything in a skirt.
But he once failed to spot
What he chased was a Scot,
Which encounter left Bert quite inert...
© 2005 Gordon Judge
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A singer called Henry Caruso
Had a terrible voice - and he knew so.
He thought, "It's a shame
That a chap with my name
Cannot sing like Caruso would do so".
© 2008 Gordon Judge
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A teacher of dance once confessed
He'd discovered a pregnancy test:
He could sense the condition
From her weight disposition,
Long before the young lady had guessed!
© 2008 Gordon Judge
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A dashing young major, called Gordon,
Confronted a bull with his sword on.
Though he slashed left and right,
That old bull was quite bright:
'Twas his backside that Gordon got gored on.
© 2005 Gordon Judge
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His wife left him, saying, "I'll miss you.
Your allergic response is the issue.
Did you know, when you sneeze,
That you do it in threes:
'Atishoo! Atishoo! Atishoo!'?"
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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Once, I read all my poems to Maureen.
By the end, I found Maureen was snorin'.
When she woke, she said, 'Lad,
Your poems aren't bad;
It's your voice - it's so dreadfully borin'."
© 2009 Gordon Judge
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An amateur poet called Percy
Attempted some comical verse. He
Then read it aloud
To a critical crowd,
Who pleaded with Percy for mercy.
© 2005 Gordon Judge
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"I've noticed," said four year-old Peter,
"How incredibly distant my feet are.
From the tip of my nose
To the ends of my toes,
Is considerably more than a metre."
© 2008 Gordon Judge
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There was a young lady called Sarah
Who balanced herself on an airer.
But the airer gave way,
So I'm sorry to say
That now people called Sarah are rarer.
© 2005 Gordon Judge
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An active young fellow called Simon,
Whose hobbies were jugglin' and climbin',
Thought he'd try both at once,
But found out such stunts
Demand very accurate timin'...
© 2009 Gordon Judge
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A magical chap, known as Tony,
Claimed to levitate people alone. He
Was found out one day
When the wires all gave way,
Showing clearly that Tony was phoney.
© 2005 Gordon Judge
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Poems about...er, well...Life, really
(There's a link back to here at the end of each poem)
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You need not lie about your age.
Just say, "I must be truthful:
Geologically speaking, I
Am positively youthful."
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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I may talk in a confident manner
With a voice that's commanding and strong,
But my views might be wholly unfounded
And my facts quite impressively wrong.
© 2006 Gordon Judge
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They'd put up a notice: "This door is alarmed".
I was shocked. What had frightened it so?
I wondered, first, how could this poor door be calmed?
And then, how on earth did they know?
© 2004 Gordon Judge
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It's quite a surprise on these dark winter nights
When you come across houses all covered in lights.
Look! There's reindeer, bells, Christmas trees, angels, a star,
And a giant inflatable snowman - bizarre!
All of them lit up, from inside or out,
So you're obviously meant to be left in no doubt
That their owners are making their personal bid
To drain all the amps from the National Grid.
And fairy lights flash in their manifold hues,
All strung out on wires from a 13-amp fuse,
Draped over the trees pretending they're leaves,
Racing up walls, creeping under the eaves,
Up to the roof and the tall chimney stack,
Over the front door and round to the back,
Winding round drainpipes and hanging from gutters.
What's up with these folk? Are they artists or nutters?
Their houses and gardens light up the night sky,
They've spent lots of money - the question is, why?
I reckon these people should all be reminded
That poor Father Christmas is easily blinded;
His night flights with reindeer to slumbering tots
Might not be so easy if thousands of watts
Interfere with his Present Delivery System,
And millions of kids wake to find that he's missed 'em.
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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Bicycling Bertie had only three gears
With which he'd been cycling for many long years.
They'd taken him everywhere he liked to go,
Those old Sturmey-Archers, in the hub down below.
The handlebar lever, marked '3', '2' and '1',
Gave Bicycling Bertie such innocent fun:
He'd change down to '1' when his legs felt the need,
Then change back to '3' when he cycled at speed.
But, one day, while walking his bike up a hill,
He was passed in a flash by young Mountain-bike Bill.
He spotted that Bill had not three gears, but more -
It couldn't be, could it? It could - twenty-four!
'Call that a bike? Well, I think it's disgusting;
Gears should be hidden, protected from rusting
By Three-in-One oil, not exposed to the air!
I know he did pass me - but see if I care!'
Now his pride had been hurt, but our Bertie was bright.
He hatched an idea. He would do it tonight.
He dismantled some old bikes and took out their guts,
Then hammered and welded and tightened up nuts.
He'd thought it all out, and developed some theories
That if you connected eight Sturmeys in series,
Encased in their hubs so that none of them spoiled,
Then twenty-four gears could be yours - fully oiled!
One trifling problem, however, remained:
Those eight Sturmey-Archers, all nicely contained
In their eight oil-filled hubs, needed eight gear-change levers -
A point missed by Bertie's inventive night fevers.
He'd need longer handlebars, that was for sure,
But he'd only got two hands; he couldn't grow more.
So he added three saddles for others to ride,
And broadened the frame so they sat side by side.
A test-drive soon showed that more wheels were essential,
And the drive had to pass through a small differential.
By this time, the bike was impossibly whopping
That more brakes needed fitting to guarantee stopping . . .
Well, that made it heavier; it had to be stronger,
So the frame was enlarged, but that made it longer . . .
And so it went on, and it still does today;
But Bertie's new bike will emerge . . . one fine day.
© 2007 Gordon Judge
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To see your own name in the paper,
You really had better get wed.
If it's in when you're born, you can't read it;
And the same thing is true when you're dead.
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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It's doing my head in. I've read a report
Which must be some sort of a prank.
The last page's message has left me distraught:
"This page is intentionally blank".
© 2006 Gordon Judge
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Nostalgia's when you find you wish you
Had that vintage toilet tissue:
One to hygiene dedicated -
Good old Izal Medicated.
Remember Izal? Good and strong,
Hard and shiny, white and long,
Single-layered (why use two
When, with Izal, one would do?).
Iconic, quietly understated,
Regularly perforated,
Slightly see-through (good for tracing),
Intimately interfacing.
Izal rolls before en-suite
Would greet you as you left your seat,
For your most personal ablution -
A medicated institution!
© 2005 Gordon Judge
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Stock up on high-strength tea-bags, there's cups of tea to make!
The builders are at work today: each time they take a break,
They sink a pot of Assam brewed up long and very strong.
The puzzle is, how all that tea stays in them, all day long?
It wouldn't do to get caught short when halfway up a ladder;
So maybe, deep inside, they have a special Builder's Bladder?
There is another answer, one on which I will not dwell,
But recently I've noticed that our garden's growing well . . .
© 2008 Gordon Judge
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I am chasing a dream
Where I set up a scheme
By which weather forecasts are improved:
I have fathomed out how,
With the aid of a cow,
All the guesswork's completely removed.
For, time and again,
All those Met Office men
Get it totally wrong - and get paid!
It's high time their black arts
And extravagant charts
Were exposed, and their errors displayed.
So the plan in my mind
Is a satellite, primed
To spot cows in the fields. I'll explain:
If a cow's lying down,
Whether black, white or brown,
There's a saying that says it will rain.
So it scans every zone
Plotting cows who lie prone,
Then it filters the data it's found;
Clever circuits, hardwired,
Exclude cows who're just tired,
And beam down its results to the ground.
My new forecasts will be
Of such accuracy,
They'll be better than any about.
No more will you bet
On a dry day or wet -
The Met Office had better look out!
© 2004 Gordon Judge
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Put on goggles
for conkers?
The mind boggles -
it's bonkers!
© 2004 Gordon Judge
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If your back is put into it,
You will very quickly feel
That your nose is to the grindstone
And your shoulder's to the wheel.
'Keep your ear glued to the ground
And your eye sharp on the ball'
Is good advice for short folk,
But rubbish if you're tall.
It's best for normal mortals,
Eyes peeled and on their toes,
To relax and keep their hair on
In a less demanding pose.
© 2007 Gordon Judge
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In the beginning, the Word;
But were there some vital omissions?
If only God's voice had been heard
Announcing some key definitions,
Like evil and heaven and hell,
Like God and the Devil and sin.
If left undefined, who can tell
What all of these terms really mean?
Are angels gay blokes who can fly?
(Do birds work on similar lines?)
Do demons have horns? If so, why?
And could there be other designs?
The effects due to charge can be shown,
And those due to force can be bruising;
But what they, and mass, are, ain't known.
The whole thing is pretty confusing.
Great edifices can arise,
Reinforced by unthinking traditions.
How vital it is, if we're wise,
That we recognise duff definitions.
It's a lesson to humble mankind,
Yet mankind has ignored it through history:
If something cannot be defined,
You have to accept it's a mystery.
© 2004 Gordon Judge
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I worry when I go away -
I do, you mustn't scoff.
Are all the things at home okay?
Did I turn the oven off?
Perhaps the freezer door's ajar,
Or the kettle's boiling dry?
I can't stop thinking that they are,
However hard I try.
I didn't lock the kitchen door
Unless I'm much mistaken:
It's let in burglars by the score,
And everything's been taken.
The gas fire's on, I'm sure of that;
And the bath is overflowing.
Maybe the budgie's in the cat?
There's just no way of knowing.
But wait - I have a cunning plan:
I'll sell the house and quit,
And then I'll buy a caravan -
The touring sort. That's it!
And so, when next I go away
And worries come to mind,
To check that everything's okay
I'll simply look behind.
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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I'm a dingle dangle scarecrow
With a flippy, floppy hat;
I can shake my hands like this,
And shake my feet like that.
And a lot of good it's done me,
This old flippy, floppy hat:
All the crows just have a laugh
When I shake my feet like that!
Well, there must be more to living
Than a flippy, floppy hat.
Oh, for lively conversation
And some intellectual chat.
Are there any lady scarecrows
With a flippy, floppy hat
Who can shake their hands like this,
And shake their feet like that?
In my dreams, you're standing out there
With your flippy, floppy hat,
And your hands that shake like this,
And your feet that shake like that.
We can never be united,
But our lives need not be flat
While we shake our hands like this,
And shake our feet like that.
If you're real, please send a message
By a passing mouse or rat,
Then my hands will shake like this,
And my feet will shake like that !
© 2008 Gordon Judge
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'Heavy plant crossing,' it said,
The sign a few metres ahead.
So I slowed down to see
This rare, ambulant tree -
But a digger was crossing instead.
© 2008 Gordon Judge
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Most things, in ages past,
Though less dependable,
Were mendable.
You'd get your box of tools
And take the thing apart -
A vanished art?
If something broke in two
You'd nail it, screw it,
Or glue it.
A blank TV? Just buy
A valve and fit it.
(Or hit it!)
But nowadays, you must -
You've got to face it -
Replace it.
© 2007 Gordon Judge
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Old Plato was dogmatic: "The world of you and me
Is but a shadow on a wall; it isn't real, you see!
You cannot know the truth of things while you are stuck within
A body of decay and change: you must escape your skin.
"The real world must be perfect, for the gods would not make tat.
To know perfection, think it, there's no other way than that.
It's no good working out how stars and planets move,
For what you see is limited, and so is what you'll prove.
"Well, I have thought," said Plato, "and here is all you need:
All motion goes in circles and is uniform in speed.
The universe is spherical, the best and perfect form.
Your thinking from this moment must be governed by this norm."
And so it was that Ptolemy, and Aristotle too,
And scientists for ages felt that's what they had to do.
Their thinking had to get the answer Plato deemed was right
Or no-one would take notice. Oh, what a sorry plight!
When nineteen hundred years had passed from Plato's time on Earth,
Copernicus worked loyally for all that he was worth
To build with epicycles Plato's "perfect" universe;
But then came Kepler, who could see this dogma was a curse.
In medicine, old Galen had the same effect. His creed
Meant progress in anatomy stood still: there was no need
For questions to be asked when everything was "known".
For fifteen hundred years or so, old Galen ruled alone.
In 1628, bold William Harvey said, "He's wrong!
The heart it is, and not the lungs, that moves the blood along".
His colleagues scoffed, some patients left, but Harvey stood his ground,
"I've done dissections, done the sums, and that is what I found".
When reputation blocks dissent, and evidence is ignored,
The human mind is hamstrung, and life's mysteries aren't explored.
It's good to doubt a dogma: if there isn't any proof,
And the facts don't fit the dogma, use the facts to find the truth.
© 2008 Gordon Judge
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For a Bear whose Brain is Very Small,
Life's mysteries are many.
I've tried so hard to solve them all,
But find I can't solve any.
I asked Chris Robin. He said, "Pooh,
If everything were known,
Your Brain would not find much to do
With certainties alone.
"We do know some things well enough
To make our lives less frightening;
But, fundamentally, that stuff
Is not at all enlightening.
"It's riddled, even now, with doubt:
We can't get to the bottom
Of what reality's about.
Want mysteries, Pooh? You got 'em!"
A Pooh who likes to sit and think
Needs mysteries to ponder,
Like: What does Eeyore like to drink?
And: Is that honey, yonder?
Or: Does the Earth go round the Sun?
So, what I've learned is this:
Not having answers makes life fun,
And ignorance is bliss!
© 2005 Gordon Judge
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What once we did with youthful flair
Must, now we're getting grey of hair
And clocking up the wear and tear,
Be executed with more care;
So, let us from this table rise -
But slowly, lest such exercise
Should, at our ages, prove unwise
And spark our premature demise.
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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The journey to maternity
Is looking like eternity -
No unit left on Crawley's soil,
And closure planned at Princess Royal.
It will be safer then, you see,
According to the PCT,
Whose options are for distant birthing:
Redhill and Brighton; maybe Worthing.
But if your baby's in a hurry
And there's no time to reach East Surrey,
You'll have to do the best you're able.
So how about a birthing stable?
It happened once before, I'm told,
When visitors brought myrrh and gold.
But risk assessments were not done
For what they said was God's own Son;
And birth contractions in a hovel,
Obstetrically, though rather novel,
Are ill-advised. A better plan:
Move house to Redhill while you can.
That way, your baby's free from dangers
Lurking in those messy mangers.
For stable births are pretty scary -
Unless, of course, your name is Mary . . .
© 2007 Gordon Judge
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I am Nessie, the Monster, ye ken,
And ma home's here in Scotland's Great Glen.
I am shy, so I stay oot o'sight in the day,
Though I do break the waves noo and then.
Folk try tae describe what I am,
While others believe I'm a sham.
They say, "Och, the noo, it just canna be true.
'Tis the whisky - ye've had a wee dram."
I have noticed that this loch o' mine
Is warming. To some folk, that's fine:
They'll plant grapes on the side o' the Great Glen divide
And mak a real guid Scottish wine.
Then thousands of people will flock
Tae the slopes o' this auld glacial loch
Tae sample, the noo, a wee tumbler or two.
And they'll call it "Auld Nessie's Medoc".
But Auld Nessie they'll not see again,
Warm waters I can't entertain.
I shall sink tae the deep, and there I will keep
Ma ain counsel. Ye'll seek me in vain.
© 2008 Gordon Judge
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We old friends congregated round a table set with food,
Remembering the past from long ago.
It was wall-to-wall nostalgia: we were in reflective mood
As we talked about the times we used to know.
Then, life was rosy, bright and safe, and horses ploughed the ground,
And fields were full of flowers, cows and sheep;
Front doors were left unlocked, so we'd go out and run around,
Forever making memories we'd keep.
The phone box at the bus-stop had two buttons: B and A.
How lucky if you got to press the B one!
And ricks with sloping roofs were built in fields to store the hay -
It's such a shame, these days you never see one.
So many things have changed: the smithy's gone, the brickworks too;
The Sompting Children's Outing is no more;
The carnivals are over; and the old black barn we knew
Has vanished; so has Lintern's hardware store.
Vic Bashford sold us vegetables, Frank Slimming sold us meats;
Our groceries we got from Skilton's shop.
The newsagent sold gobstoppers and liquorice, and sweets
From shelves of jars, each with a screw-on top.
We reminisced indulgently for ages; it was pleasant,
But Father Time looked in to end our wallow.
The evening's now a memory itself; the fleeting present
Has taken us to what was then tomorrow.
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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We're going by bus!
It'll be much less fuss
If we go on the bus down to Brighton.
We won't use the car
For the bus stop's not far -
It's the stop for the bus down to Brighton.
We wait and we wait,
Then a bus arrives, late;
So we check it's the bus down to Brighton.
It says on its screen
That it's route seventeen,
Which is right for the bus down to Brighton.
The door opens wide,
So we scramble inside
And sit down in the bus down to Brighton.
The driver, a man,
Drives as fast as he can
At the wheel of the bus down to Brighton.
But the driver is good:
He slows down when he should,
And takes care of the bus down to Brighton.
Now there's road works ahead
And the traffic light's red,
And it's stopping the bus down to Brighton.
Soon, we hear the bell "Ding!"
As some passengers ring,
And they get off the bus down to Brighton.
As soon as they've gone,
Several others jump on,
For they, too, want the bus down to Brighton.
As we sit here inside
We watch green countryside
Passing by, from the bus down to Brighton.
On the fields, as we peer,
We see sheep, cows and deer,
All ignoring the bus down to Brighton.
And now we can see
It's the A23,
And it's taking the bus down to Brighton.
Look, look! There's the pier!
It's Brighton! We're here!
And we get off the bus down to Brighton.
© 2007 Gordon Judge
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"All men are sinful creatures, and in them there is no good;
Repent, or else the end is very near.
Forsake your evil actions and do all the things you should!"
Such strictures folk in churches used to hear.
These days, the same old message: "You must mend your wicked way!"
But now it comes from scientists as well.
"Your fate will be much hotter if our call you disobey",
But theirs is quite a different kind of Hell:
Teeth-gnashing, yes, and wailing too, as water levels rise,
More floods, tsunamis, hurricanes and storms.
"Remember we predicted this," will come the prophets' cries,
"You pump out CO2 - the planet warms."
"It can't be our fault," people said, ignoring every sign.
"We're doing what we want, what's wrong with that?"
"You're messing up the world in ways that weren't in its design:
Your lifestyle's why you'll lose your habitat.
"You choose to use resources as if each day is your last -
You're acting like you think there's no tomorrow,"
Say scientists, agreeing with the prophets of the past.
"Why can't you see it's bound to end in sorrow?"
© 2006 Gordon Judge
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I saw my dentist in the town,
Approaching from the south. But
He didn't recognise my face -
I must have had my mouth shut.
© 2008 Gordon Judge
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There are four months still to go,
Yet there's Christmas cards on show.
They seem to turn up earlier each year.
August's far too soon to choose 'em
(If you do, you'll only lose 'em).
It seems as if the calendar's gone queer.
Guy Fawkes would be confused
Seeing fireworks being used
At times removed from his November treason.
It's the same with other goods:
Hot cross buns and Christmas puds
Are put on sale completely out of season.
It's a question of degree;
So, although I must agree
That spreading sales will flatten out the peaks,
Weren't these sorts of things once meant
To be linked to an event?
I think the links should not be months, but weeks.
© 2004 Gordon Judge
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Young Peregrine Purple
Knows well that to burp'll
Annoy Mum and Dad every time.
And that sort of twerp'll
Know, too, that to slurp'll
Be to soup-supping parents a crime.
© 2009 Gordon Judge
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When your beard is all knotty
And your insides feel grotty
Since a night on the tiles left you blotto,
It just seems so unfair
When there's signs everywhere
That proclaim to the world: "Santa's grotto".
© 2002 Gordon Judge
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I don't believe in psychics:
They advertised their fair!
If psychics were real psychics
They'd know the fair was there.
They'd know, if they were psychics
Of every psychic fair,
By sensing cosmic energy
They say is everywhere.
If psychics were real psychics
Their lives would have no cares:
They'd prophesy the FTSE
And all be millionaires.
© 2007 Gordon Judge
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"I need a new handbag. My old one's worn out,
I expect it's the way that I use it.
The shops won't be busy now, no-one's about;
Do come with me and help me to choose it.
I know what you're thinking: 'Oh no, what a chore!',
But without you I might get it wrong."
Well, I fell for it, just as I've fallen before,
"Okay, if it won't take too long."
So we get to the shops, and she looks at the bags,
And none of them seem to be right.
(Just as well - did you notice the price on those tags?
They've given my wallet a fright.)
"It's no good," she says, "what we need is a shop
That offers a wider selection."
I ought to know better but, caught on the hop,
We seek a designer collection.
"Now that's a nice bag," she says, "it's a name
That will give me some cred on the street,
But I'll need some new shoes. Well, it would be a shame
If the bag were shown up by my feet."
What next? Let me guess: first a skirt, then a blouse,
Pair of trousers ("do they make me look fat?"),
Fancy underclothes (just to embarrass her spouse),
Then some earrings, a coat and a hat...
Can you see where we're heading? The slippery slope
Where shopping goes out of control.
Make her see reason, that's my only hope,
Or it could take a terrible toll.
Can women see reason? I give it a try:
"Where will it all end, dear!" I joke.
"Look, I need all these things, can't you see?", her reply;
"And I think I might need a new bloke..."
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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In December, it's pretty well known,
You can't find a Santa-free zone.
As you go in each store
You will meet more and more -
I reckon each Santa's a clone...
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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1. Proof without certainty
Men and women of science have long put reliance
On testing and proving ideas.
Their ideas are deemed true until something new
And demonstrably better appears.
But they can't be dogmatic, for Nature's erratic:
The beat of a butterfly's wings
In the forests of Chile can make them look silly,
For they cannot allow for such things.
And they've all learned at college you cannot have knowledge
Of everything you'd like to know;
"Uncertainty's rife in the science of life,"
Said Heisenberg, not long ago.
2. Certainty without proof
In religion, the truth doesn't need any proof;
You get certainty - take it or leave it.
The message is clear: that you need never fear
Life or death if you only believe it.
To believers, old writing will often enlighten
And guide them in plotting their courses;
So their faith doesn't falter, for dogmas don't alter.
They can sense supernatural forces:
Both the clergy and laity experience a deity
In ways that, to them, are quite clear.
They can't prove there's a God, but they don't find that odd
Because proof isn't relevant here.
3. Mystery
So, when life behaves oddly, the faithful and godly
Will perceive Cosmic Purpose in action.
Meanwhile, scientists query: they'll set up a Theory
Which describes things to their satisfaction.
But both are just models inside people's noddles -
They can't know if they're right or they're wrong.
So, now they've been rumbled, both camps should be humbled,
For the mystery's been there all along...
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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"Menswear at the back of the shop,"
Said the sign, catching me on the hop.
Now I'm wondering where
All the girls go to swear?
It's disgraceful. It really must stop.
© 2005 Gordon Judge
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This website's been preoccupied
By ecological fervour,
It's moved its digital residence
To a solar-powered server!
It's eco-friendly, clean and green,
And humming night and day.
So point your browser without guilt
To geoverse.co.uk.
Under the Californian sky
You'll find it, gently toasting.
It's up and running once again
Thanks to Ecological Hosting.
© 2010 Gordon Judge
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I manage all the Infrastructure Services there are.
It's real behind-the-scenes work: I'm a bod
Whose influence and power is exerted from afar.
Don't let the title fool you. I am God.
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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There's things that must be done in life
Or else you won't survive,
Like eating, sleeping - all the things
You need to stay alive.
And other things you have to do
All take a lot of time,
Like shopping, cooking, washing-up
And getting rid of grime.
But things that make you really you,
That set you quite apart,
Are different things: like meeting friends,
And making music, art,
And learning things, and teaching things,
And being bold and daring,
And growing things, and building things,
And nurturing, and caring.
In busy lives you need these things
To counter stress and strife;
To fit them in, you need to find
The interstices of life.
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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Hey! How did I get in here, and why is it so dark?
I feel as if I'm floating in a void.
Okay, the joke is over; it was just some kind of lark.
Now let me out, or else I'll get annoyed.
Wow! Now it seems as though a door has opened wide;
I blink, and gulp in air with all my might.
A voice says: "Mind the door. This floor for Childhood.
Step outside."
And out I go, head first, into the light.
Coo! On this floor the drinks are free, and everything is fun,
But soon I'm back inside the lift again.
A button labelled "Up" is lit, the voice has just begun:
"Next floor for Youth and Teenage Angst and Pain"
Gosh! This floor's full of schools and girls and booze and raw emotion,
And other things I really dare not say.
I drink and fight and snog some girls and kick up a commotion,
Behaving in a reckless sort of way.
Phew! Back inside the lift, the button still shows "Up", and so
I wait to see what's next in store for me.
The voice: This floor for Work, Bank Loans and Kids."
And out I go,
Though now, I think, more apprehensively...
Hell! Now I've got so much to do, there really isn't time
To stop and think what all this is about.
I work, I eat, I sleep; and in a flash, I'm past my prime.
I'm getting slower now, there seems no doubt.
Stop! Get me out of this! Come, lift, and open up your door!
I hear its voice again, not far away:
"Retirement, Later Life and Death available, next
floor."
I'll get on board, but go the other way;
God knows, I need a change! The lift has been there all along.
I step inside, but something makes me frown.
The voice says "Going up!" And then I realise
what is wrong:
It hasn't got a button labelled "Down"...
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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I'm a cow, and I'm bored with just chewing the cud
Which goes right through my system and drops with a thud.
There is nothing to do
But to chew, poo and moo,
And paddle about in a field full of mud.
The flies are a nuisance. Whenever I spot 'em,
I wind up my tail - then release it to swot 'em.
But it can't reach my face:
It's the most awkward place,
And it's usually the place where I've bloomin' well got 'em.
The bull seemed to like me: it wasn't for long,
Then he found someone else; he's very headstrong.
I get milked by a pipe -
I'm so sorry to gripe,
But my calves should be here to have had it. It's wrong.
What's the purpose of life? I keep asking the question.
I can't find an answer, but here's a suggestion:
I might be naïve,
But I'd like to believe
That it's more than just bovine microbial digestion.
© 2007 Gordon Judge
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Ain't it odd, when something tricky must be done,
And you've mustered up your courage and begun,
That, just when you're feeling good 'cos it's all gone as it should,
One last screw is rusted up? There's always one!
You have done the usual things to get it out,
And you've tried the clever tricks you've read about;
But no book on "How it's Done" ever says "there's always one",
Yet it's true - there always is, without a doubt.
If you wonder why the traffic flow has slowed,
It's because there's one rogue driver on the road
Thinks the overtaking lane is for chumps like him to stay in.
You can tell he's never read the Highway Code.
Have you noticed, when you're washing clothes, it's queer
How a single sock can simply disappear?
There is always one that goes - it's a loner, I suppose,
Seeking freedom. Who are we to interfere?
On a train, one man is bound to have a cold,
And there'll be one child who won't be good as gold.
Can you guess what they will do? Well, they'll both sit next to you:
He will sneeze, and she will not do as she's told.
Have you crossword addicts met the problem, too?
Do you rack your brains to solve the final clue?
Well, you might as well forget it 'cos there's no way you will get it,
So there's just no point in getting in a stew.
It's no different when you go out for a meal:
Choosing something from the menu's an ordeal;
Then the dish you'd like to scoff is the only one that's "off",
So you have to order one with less appeal.
Why's it true there's always one? It drives me mad -
Is there not a hope of good things to be had?
Sometimes, surely, one is best, standing out above the rest?
No it's not - if there is one, it's always bad...
© 2003 Gordon Judge
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There are too many Santas in Sussex;
Only one is the real one, I'm sure.
Wherever you go, you're invited
To "Come and see Santa instore"
I thought I would call Trading Standards
And ask them to sort out the mess,
But it's probably not in their remit
To deal with a Saintly excess.
So instead, I suggest that all children
Should memorise this little motto:
"To discover the real Father Christmas,
Go check out the smells in his grotto".
If he stinks of fresh soap and deodorant,
And his boots reek of polish, I'd bet
He's a stand-in, a Santa-clone copy,
The closest the shop folk could get.
But if there's a hint of warm reindeer,
And his clothes have a slight sooty pong,
And he greets you by name when you meet him,
Then you won't go so very far wrong.
I am certain the real one's in Horsham,
But as I'm much too old to find out,
I write hoping Horsham's fine children
Will dispel any lingering doubt.
If you sniff him out, write to the paper -
Do it now, do not waver or pause -
"Dear Sir," you should say, "We've discovered,
In Horsham, the real Santa Claus!"
© 2009 Gordon Judge
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Christmas is coming, decorations are up
In the town, so two things to remember:
First - better check that Aunt Flo's still alive;
And second - it's only September!
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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In November, it's highly unwise
To cast your gaze up to the skies;
For spent rockets may fall
With no warning at all
And make quite a mess of your eyes...
© 2001 Gordon Judge
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Your face is familiar... I think we have met,
But when the encounter was, I quite forget.
Was it yesterday, last week or several years past?
You're not quite the same as when I saw you last.
Have you put on some weight? You used to be lighter;
And that dark hair you had - now it looks a lot whiter.
Oh dear, you're offended. Well, I would be too
If Time had changed me in the way it's changed you.
Your name... it was just on the tip of my tongue,
But it's difficult, now that you're no longer young.
Are you still friends with Whatsname, that weird-looking bloke?
He did like his drink, and he didn't half smoke.
I don't think you smoked, though your teeth are quite stained,
And you're looking so knackered, exhausted and drained -
It must be your skin tone. To put it succinctly,
It looks rather leathery, dried-up and wrinkly.
I'm afraid we must now call a halt to our meeting,
For my breakfast is ready - it's time to be eating.
We must meet again soon, when my memory's clearer.
Same time and same place, then? In front of this mirror?
© 2010 Gordon Judge
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