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.

NUN EATEN IN NUNEATON

WARWICKSHIRE POST AND GAZETTE: Letting people in WARWICKSHIRE KNOW

EST. 2015.

Ed. RICH SEAMFINDEr

NUN EATEN IN NUNEATON

By our Warwick Affairs correspondent, Delia Probes.

Shocking reports have reached us here at the Warwickshire Gazette and Post of a sick cannibal preying on the praying community in the area neighbouring Nuneaton. Nuneaton itself has long been stigmatised for the attraction it holds for both bankrupt restauranteurs (and others from the catering industry who failed miserably) and, no less ironically, anorexic support groups. Now, it has proved itself the controversial capital of Warwickshire again with the discovery of the half-eaten remains of a nun outside a church on the outskirts of the town.

The gruesome discovery was made in the early hours of yesterday morning by Alan Snoopins, a retired traffic warden from Coventry, who was on holiday at the time.

‘I woke at the crack of dawn, yesterday,’ Mr Snoopins, 70, said. ‘The toilet in the B&B was blocked, so I decided to go for a walk. I was about ten minutes away from the B&B when I saw a church that looked pretty. Only, on closer inspection, I discovered it was anything but…’

To his horror, on the pathway leading to the church of St Botolph’s, in Credence Lane, Mr Snoopins saw a pack of Alsatian dogs fighting over the remains of a nun.

‘To my horror, I saw a pack of dogs, Alsatians they were, all fighting over this poor nun’s dead body.’

Nauseated, Mr Snoopins immediately alerted the police.

Det. Chief Inspector Alan Mason praised Mr Snoopins for his public-spirited response to what he described as ‘an atrocious end to a nun.’ DCI Mason, who heads what, is now a murder case, has issued the following statement:

‘Thanks to the public-spirited actions of a retired holidaymaker, police are now investigating the suspicious death of a nun, found by the holidaymaker being eaten by a pack of dogs. The dogs themselves were quickly ruled out as the prime suspects in the case as forensics revealed the time of death as some hours previous to their unsightly feast. Further clues point to the perpetrator possibly being male, with a fixation about nuns specifically, or uniformed women in general. Most disturbingly, the number of bite marks on what remained of her body that could not be blamed on the dogs could suggest she was cannibalised.’

The nun has been identified as Sister Veronica Barnacle, from Coventry’s Convent for the Piety and Purification of Our Lady’s Humble Servants. She was aged 55, and believed to have been visiting Father Brawny McGuigan at St. Botolph’s to discuss an inter-diocese funding of a local charities event.

Father McGuigan’s reaction to the police statement was one of ‘complete shock and the deepest revulsion.’ He simply ‘could not imagine,’ he said, ‘what type of monstrous being would do such an appalling thing to a sweet little nun like Sister Veronica. Despite his vocation, Father Brawny spoke of his incredulity over the news. ‘It’s hard to believe, I pray to God for help in understanding the depravity of such a person’s warped psyche. Killing a nun’s bad enough, but then eating her? I pray to God this sick man doesn’t make a habit out of it.’

 

IMP LORE

Imp lore includes a tale of a disabled imp, with a limp and precious ore.
They’re ever attentive listeners, who’ll feign interest when they are bored,
Because they are raised to always be polite,
‘Always be polite,’ they are, by their parents, implored.


Imp lore is obscure, partly for the reason that imps will seldom write.
‘The Bottle Imp’ is a classic story by Robert Louis Stevenson,
But the title imp does not emerge in glory.
They rarely feature in horror films because they are too gory.
I think imps are apolitical, but who knows?
Maybe they vote Tory.


Mischievous imps are commonplace, like sailors with ‘a rolling gait,’
While imps delayed at airports are imps who are made to wait.
It helps them learn to cope with their imp-atience!
Their favourite sweets are mint imperials, which they suck with impish delight.
Imps, generally petite, are hardly heavy, in fact, they’re very light.
They’re not known to be nocturnal, but you can see them at night.


If ‘The Simpsons’ lost an ‘S’, it could easily describe an imp’s male offspring,
I can’t see a person getting animated over this series though, that’s the thing.
I wonder, is the most popular imp-spotting season of the year spring?
Imps sound like pimps, but imps can make prostitutes vanish,
While pimps just make their incomes disappear.


Short-tempered imps, readily taunted, are imps you can easily goad.
A ship’s hold is where I’m told a cruising imp’s stuff is stowed,
To me, imps are awfully precious—they’re worth their weight in gold.
I hope to inspire greater imp awareness in the public with all that I have said.
It is imp-erative that I succeed, or else I will imp-lode,
This explains the urgency of my imp-ulse here to unload.

BEASTS, BALLS AND WORLDS

'BEASTS, BALLS AND WORLDS'
Collage/drawing on A5-size paper (although the collage element here is minimal).
Julian Cloran August, 2013.

FRED, THREADS AND HER

Looming on the horizon,
Blooming cotton—her eyes on,
Stranded at a distance,
Fred’s talk of threads
Are words she can easily follow.
She is a material witness
To the fact that Fred is hollow,
The cotton has him reeling,
Yet she cannot share his feeling.
A memory of cotton mills fills her mind,
Fred needles her but she knows he’s kind,
It was a darn strange thing,
She thinks perhaps Fred’s blind.

He used to have her in stitches,
As a jovial, plump boy in britches.
Now he never makes her smile,
Instead, about him she bitches.
Fred gasps loudly—a sudden stitch in his side,
Her aloofness is something he’s noticed and long denied,
And specifically now ignores out of pride,
Embarrassed enough, for the moment because he has cried.

THE DROWNING PILLAR BOX BOOT
Collage/drawing incorporating elements from copies of my previous works and coloured gel pens. Julian Cloran.

‘ARACH ‘N’ ID’

‘Arach ‘n’ Id’—reads the signpost outside the Freudian pub,
Spiderman’s favourite.
The pub’s website is a sight,
The source of fright, discussed at night.
They serve hot food all day to anorexics.

Vans from Iceland make home deliveries
To the pub—igloos!
Surreal darts tournaments turn a mint:
A player holds a dart while others throw the board at them.

Value subtracted tax is levied by the ‘public Ann,’
Androgynous analytical being,
She believes the ghost of Sartre makes love to her every night.
Irregular customers think she’s right,
Trying with all their might
To catch the insouciant herbalist,
Whose nightly cries of:
‘Thyme at the bar now, please,’ fail to appease.

When the police are called to the pub to cause trouble,
Builders in the bar—wet cement on their faces, create designer rubble.
Eccentrics’ extant tricks pricks the conscience of the psychopathic doorman,
Selling lumps of plasticine to fools seeking illicit drugs.

A skull and crossed fire extinguishers tattooed on Ann’s forehead,
Emblematic of the pub,
Is photographed by Japanese tourists,
Poor wrists inadequately shoot video footage.
Pub folklore is imparted,
Officially, by the junior sub-bore with Alzheimer’s,
Fascinating the facile, and self-perpetuating myths,
Building the pub’s standing (which is) in the community.

Community chest cards from Monopoly games,
Donated by silhouette projectionists,
Are stacked on every available surface,
Revered by thirteen per cent of the locals.

Google maps think the pub is a black hole,
A black stole around Ann’s neck helps keep it under wraps,
Traps set for the unsuspecting are spoiled,
Triggered by masochists,
A mass—oh, kissed, one no one missed.

The pub’s décor, once a bore,
Now is no more, following the arsonist’s party.
As for the drinks, their peculiar stinks and fluorescent colours,
They’re cheap aphrodisiacs, expensive anti-emetics and invariably solid.

Hollow alcoholic people lurch like a church with a broken steeple,
On stools where they perch,
Feeling a part of a fashion,
As the weird pub’s popularity grows,
But why it does so, nobody knows.

Ann shocks all when, at forty-nine,
She marries a former milkman,
Who dresses as Queen Elizabeth I,
With the worst thing being,
The throne he’s surgically attached to.

But Ann’s retired milkman is kind,
He’s also clever and good in bed,
People seem to like him, and remember things he said,
Like his warning of the end of Worthing,
Which he foresaw once out of his head.

Ann’s husband glues his statements,
To furniture and people’s clothing,
Ensuring they adhere to his words,
And though many do no one knows his name,
Not even Ann, who thinks he’s called Stu,
But she isn’t sure; in fact she hasn’t a clue.

Anonymity had once been his ambition,
Having been something of his family tradition.
But his years with dairy products have made him hanker for more,
Like self-pasteurisation on the floor.
He’d better leave a note for Ann,
He won’t be seeing her anymore!

WELL-KNEADED IN THE COMMUNITY

WELL-KNEADED IN THE COMMUNITY, a photo by Narolc on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
In the foreground, I have incorporated a medieval scene of people tending the sick and elaborated upon this theme with inspiration from a pun based on our all too human need of a sense of belonging. Have fun!
http://www.narolc.blogspot.com/

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!’

SPOKES SPOKEN OF

If you tire* of wheel-spoken people just tread carefully around them.

There’s no point in running them down, if they’ve already been run over.

Those who spoke well of outspoken blokes jokes feel wheel spokes in their tactile search for symmetry.

Spokes in wells tells of strokes that fell folks,

Making them drop wood spikes that spite a place for water.

A daughter caught her mother thirsting for her lover,

So she threw her down a well knowing full well she would not recover.

To not speak ill of the dead, to always think well of a shed,

Are equally worthy things to keep inside a healthy head.

For whom the bell tolls, trolls going like the clappers.

Tolls charged for rolls barged down canals channels funds into astronomical budgets,

But nothing like NASA’s.

*Tire is the American spelling of tyre.