MINED: YOUR LANGUAGE

'Bling’ Crosby was dreaming of a Gold Christmas, just like the bronze he used to know.

While a troupe of method actors coated themselves in luminous paint,

Knowing there’s no business like ‘glow’ business.

Environmentally-friendly grocers aren’t as green as they are cabbage looking,

Particularly if they used to box and have cauliflower ears.

Ears of corn can’t hear, naturally, even if you raised your voice or used force.

But we take certain expressions for granted, as a matter of course.

For example, there are ‘horses for courses’ and blood ‘courses’ through their veins.

Courses can be educational, there can be courses of action, treatment and antibiotics.

Although why anyone should be against ‘biotics’ is a mystery.

Mysteries, by their nature, are mystifying, which sounds like mist-defying,

Which sounds like someone who doesn’t have the foggiest; being completely mystified.

Personally, why Edward Elgar composed his Enigma variations is a mystery to me.

‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood’ was Charles Dickens’ unfinished novel,

But lots of people have never finished any of his books.

These days, many people read with Kindles, others listen to audiobooks,

I always think if someone has a library of audiobooks it speaks volumes about them.

Language is a funny thing for sure, English in particular,

Where we find ‘deed polls’ do not refer to the actions of Polish people.

Similarly, we discover that a pole vault is not an eastern-European prison,

(Nor is it a secure environment for the storage of scaffolding)

Anymore than the economic term: ‘pink pound’ describes a ‘gay’ prison.

SU CHONG

When Su Chong’s lap sang it came as a big surprise,
Her man, Darin spoke no Chinese
Despite his ‘canto knees’—
His ‘Ezra Pound patellas’, as he calls them
Draped in the late poet’s work.
However, in English, Darin is supportive of Su,
Telling her, ‘Your lap’s singing is a fantastic gift!
The thigh’s the limit,’ he quips, and while she gets his drift,
She feels embarrassed by the strangeness of her singing legs,
And the way they started singing with no warning,
She wondered how they knew the words.
‘Tunes from your lap,’ Darin enthused,
‘That will make people clap!’
‘We’ve heard of lap dancers, they’ll say,’ he continues,
‘Now, here’s Su Chong—the world’s first lap singer!’
Looking down at her thighs, Su sighs,
‘They’re quiet now, my legs. Can’t you see?
Not knowing when they will burst into song makes it wrong—
They’re no good to me.’
‘Steady on, Su. What you have is unique!
It’s too precious to abandon in a fit of pique.’
But Darin’s entreaties came too late,
She’d already decided to amputate,
Both of her legs with help from her Japanese Samurai mate.
Afterwards, ironically, both she and Darin were stumped by her peculiar fate.

THE SAILOR AND THE CARD PLAYER

A sailor was drinking with a card player with a skin complaint.

The player’s hands looked sore and blistered, his fingers swollen with peeling skin and bloated knuckles.

 ‘You’ll be alright, mate,’ the sailor, making light of it, chuckles. ‘Only,’ he frowns at the player’s fingers, ‘how do you think you got it?’

‘I’ll tell you what it wasn’t,’ the player, beginning to explain, frowns. ‘It wasn’t because I shook hands with clowns or wiped them on my dressing gowns…’

The sailor swallowed his drink and after a lengthy pause is on the brink of repeating his question.

But, raising his hands, the player understands.

He decides to put the sailor out of his misery.

‘The plain fact is that contaminated cards are the source of my affliction. I don’t know if they were poisonous or if I am allergic to that specific brand, but I’ll never play with them again!’

‘Fair enough,’ the sailor nods.

‘I’ll tell you this…’ In the air, the player’s podgy finger prods. ‘I won’t touch that pack again, unless I lose my brain, I’m telling you. I’m suffering so badly, I really am in pain!’

The sailor nodded sagely, but he thought his companion was nuts.

‘I’ve made up my mind,’ resumed the player. ‘No ifs, no buts, I’ll not go near those infernal cards ever again!’

‘Well that’s fair enough,’ said the sailor after an awkward silence. ‘One thing’s for sure, mind, this would never have happened to you if you’d been playing cards on board my ship.’

‘Oh, why?’

‘’Cos we always swab the decks, mate,’ the sailor guffawed. ‘We always swab the decks!’

SWEATING IT OUT

Someone is sweating over money inside a cathedral.

As one perspires, purse spires inspire the supernatural manifestation of a pun made literal.

A moneybag with bags of room for a steeple to protrude;

Vast, phallic and symbolically rude,

In the past, one’s imagination had been quite crude.

So how did this surreal monstrosity suddenly intrude with the fused elements of reality with which it was imbued?

One counts the days, for there are only seven,

But then again—now, there are eleven!

In a place of God, you appeal to heaven.

Only to find perfume in a monstrous bottle before you—truly heaven scent.

If you repent, you think, the strange happenings might relent.

You regret your wasteful ways, the money squandered and time misspent.

As Daliesque melting clocks ooze from every single vent.

‘Only time will tell,’ says a clock face, as human as it is horological.

Your heart is racing on a track formed out of pews,

With various other human organs, this is too much!

You vent your spleen; literally, smothering melting clocks that make you turn green.

As a colour and quite a pleasant hue,

You feel like a shady character and wonder what to do.

Abruptly, a corrupt umbrella salesman pushes his rain-protective wares on you.

Fair weather friends assemble in an insincerely sympathetic horde.

Despite your rising terror, you try hard to look bored,

Drills give thrills to spectating sadists as they penetrate your pores,

Bleeding and screaming, painfully aware of your flaws,

You empathise with victims and casualties of wars.

At this stage, in agony and rage, you visualise theatres of war,

Operating theatres where surgeons butcher Shakespeare.

It occurs to you that King Lear might appear,

Well more Fool you.

Scenarios unfold, plays play out with tales untold,

That transform themselves into silk that, once, you spun, now hold.

You follow the thread with fascination and dread,

The taste of cotton in your mouth is seen by material witnesses—

Crumpled individuals publicly washing their dirty linen,

Coming clean, expressing outrage over the obscene,

An odd scene develops involving money laundering,

As gangsters compete with hypocrites in the immorality stakes.

WELL, WELL, WELL

It is better to put things well than put things in a well, where they’d get wet.
You can know full well something’s going on while remaining ignorant of how full a well is.
A successful gambler can win well in Welwyn Garden City without feeling shitty, providing he means well.
Inkwells are old-fashioned and seldom seen nowadays, although there are a few in Staines and Blackpool.
People who ask, ‘Are you keeping well?’ Should, strictly speaking, rephrase the question.
Although I accept they are, generally, well-wishers.
Wishing wells are full of coins but you’d get more money out of oil wells.
One who oils well is unlikely to hear their hinges creak, while painting well in oils falls short of the old masters at their peak.
If you’re ‘welling up’ it means you are close to tears,
Unlike a so-called town crier, who is dry-eyed when he appears.
Well-meaning people don’t mean wells,
Any more than Wells Cathedral is a place of worship for wells.
H. G. Wells wasn’t wells but a writer—still, his words were well chosen.
Ice at the bottom of a well is obviously well frozen.
A bucket dropped to the bottom of an unknown well ‘pails’ into insignificance.
All’s well that ends well is not true for wells.
Oh, well!
There’s no such thing as a well-lit street—wells do not produce a light source.
Equally absurd are the notions of well-built men and well-adjusted children,
Patently, wells are not responsible for a male’s physique or in any way involved with the emotional development of a child.
No doubt many of us are well acquainted with these misleading terms,
People are well advised—not literally—not to take them literally.
The well heeled must find it difficult to walk, however well read they are or well spoken.
As for those who look well preserved, they owe wells no gratitude.
Wells get huge amounts of undeserved credit; something, which I think makes them pretty low.
Ill people don’t literally want to get well soon—it’d be a nuisance and spoil their afternoon.
Anyway, enough’s enough, I’ll finish off now—the subject’s been well covered.