Naiveties and Nursery Rhymes

Words, poems, rhymes and songs

Page 2 of 3

Love Poem Number Two

You be my ocean

I’ll be your peach

You be my peach factory

I’ll be your peach

You can sort me and slice me

In the seas, I’ll confide.

I’ll fit into your can

I’ll cushion your tide.

Love Poem Number One

You be my evil mastermind

I’ll be your cat

You by my Ian Botham

I’ll be your bat.

I’ll purr at your plans

And help you hit fours

You can spoil me with linseed

And pamper my paws.

Little Baby Willow

Little Baby Willow
Needs a tiny bed
Needs a tiny pillow
For her tiny head

Little Baby Tiny
Fits in a hand
All new and shiny
Tiny but grand

Baby Willow Little
Tiny tubes long
Breathes so brittle
Fragile but strong

Willow Little Baby
Was a probability
Perhaps then a maybe
Now she’s a reality

Sleeping On Her Pillow
Bendy little bones
Little baby Willow
Tiny Willow Jones

The Baddy

Somebody has to be the baddy
To make this little game work;
To hatch a cunning plan;
To hide in the corner and lurk.

Don’t make me be the baddy:
I wanted to be a brave knight.
I wanted to rescue the princess.
I wanted to turn wrong into right.

I’ll strop and have a paddy
If you make me the evil one.
I’ll stamp my foot and scream
And stop you all having fun.

I know! We can use Daddy
Then we can all be the good guys
He doesn’t look much like a baddy
But we can pretend he’s in disguise.

What is a deputy headteacher?

What is a deputy headteacher?

It’s a leader

When the leader is away

Stepping in,

(Sometimes)

To save the day.

Speaking with authority

That is delegated

Often berated

Ofsted rated

And never sated.

What is a deputy headteacher?

It’s a behaviour preacher

The headteacher’s creature

A supporting act

To the main feature

A shouter, a screecher,

A lesser performance

Than the headlining band

A dotted line drawn in the sand

Of Performance Management

(The cardboard cage for Leadership)

And hands on hip

This deputy stands

Dotted line fading on shifting sands

A guide with a flickering lamp

One foot in each camp,

Both driving and conducting the bus;

Requiring limbs like an octopus.

What is a deputy headteacher?

It’s a rota maker,

Temper faker,

Confiscator

“Have it back later”

A blusterer, a badgerer

A business manager

Teach and mark

Take kids to the park

An acronym guru, an E.V.C.

Knowing A.F.L. and A.P.P.

With S.E.N. and I.E.P.

Being merely tools for P.R.P.

A deputy headteacher

Is out of the classroom forty percent

(Sometimes)

Yet one heartbeat away from the top.

To some, the deputy is heaven-sent

To others, the deputy must repent,

Or simply give up and stop.

What is a deputy headteacher?

Is it a mouse who’s learning to be a rat?

Or a cat

Who hasn’t quite got the cream,

Not quite living the dream?

Is it a dog without a bite?

Or the penultimate step of ambition?

A sub-aspiration?

A role in its own right?

Or is it a not quite?

An almost? A maybe?

Is the emphasis on ‘head’?

Or ‘teacher’?

Or ‘deputy’?

Just say what is

You can’t brush your hair

With a teddy bear.

You can’t clean your teeth with a cat.

You can’t wipe your nose

With a garden hose.

You can’t destroy a city with a hat.

You can’t make a bomb

Without uranium.

You can’t poison a water supply with juice.

There’s no shock and awe

In a kitten’s paw.

You can’t wash your face with a moose.

You can’t define life

By your level of strife.

You can’t compare normal with horrific.

You can’t laugh away

The terrors of each day:

You have to be decidedly more specific.

You can’t say a lot

By saying what it’s not.

All you do is add to your delusion.

Don’t get in a tizz…

Just say what is.

It’s guaranteed to reduce our confusion.

 

The Lazarus Rule

I had a difficult problem

I didn’t know what to do.

I mulled it round my head.

I puzzled it on the loo.

It coiled round my ears.

It burrowed into my brain

It stuck between my teeth.

It made my feel insane.

I cogitated, deliberated.

I chewed it like a goat

I inhaled it deeply

I gargled it in my throat.

I categorised and vetted it.

I organised it into groups.

But like a circus animal

It had me jumping through hoops.

I stewed and I considered it.

Then let it drift for a while

I put it on the backburner

On the bottom of the pile.

But just a few days later

The problem came again

It was bigger than before

And like a crowd of angry men.

I hadn’t taken it seriously

I’d forgotten the “Lazarus Rule”

It’s a rule for sorting problems.

At work or home or school.

Leave a problem at your peril.

At most leave forty winks.

But if you leave it for four days

It really, really stinks.

So I told it to some people

As if that would make amends.

But that just made it worse:

They gossiped to their friends.

But problems can always worsen.

And I hadn’t finished yet.

I wrote it on my blog

And put it on the internet.

Then the problem overtook me.

It swerved into my lane.

And slammed on its breaks.

And turned into pure pain.

Pain is only temporary.

It often goes away.

And just like old Lazarus

I lived another day.

It’s good to learn from problems

And the challenges they set

To turn it into hope

And to deal with regret.

To shrug off unkindness,

Callousness and curses

To look to each morning

And their new mercies.

Being on a Ferry

I wrote this with my daughter Elizabeth as we ‘ferried’ from Weymouth to Jersey.

Being on a ferry

Better than a cherry

Great big boat

Staying afloat

It’s windy up here

Fills us with fear.

Hair blown about

Water spout.

Being on a ferry

Kind’a merry

Great big boat

On England’s moat.

Ships in the sea

We can sea

Sailing free

Like our ferry.

The ‘F’ Word

I don’t like the way ‘F’ sounds

Eff.

Phhhh.

Phuh.

Effeffeffeff.

It’s clumsy at the end of a word.

Makes rhyming difficult: like life

Only really rhymes with wife

And strife, I suppose.

Oh and knife – that goes.

‘F’ spoils beautiful

And starts that word we don’t like to say.

But it does have one redeeming feature:

Frog.’

The Frog Tile I made a few years ago

C.S. Lewis’ Zombie Warning #quote

Back in 1950, before Zombie movies and their ilk had had a whiff of mainstream, C.S Lewis gave us a quote that would make all zombie hunters proud:

“But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that’s going to be human and isn’t yet, or used to be human once and isn’t now, or ought to be human and isn’t, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.”

Mr Beaver, The Lion and the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis 1950.

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