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A Misspent Youth

by Mickey 

Posted: 27 April 2015
Word Count: 84
Summary: I haven’t written anything for over a year, but I’ve just discovered an old disc on which I have found pieces that even I had forgotten about!


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Being one of Life’s carousers
I never dared wear turned-up trousers
Cos time and time and time again
I had to ‘grasp the porcelain’
And often pebble-dashed me shoes
Regurgitating excess booze
I always used to look and wonder
Why the latest batch of chunder
When I was pickled as a parrot
Came up looking like diced carrot?
It was years before it dawned
That all those technicolour yawns
Were telling me I must desist
And not spend all my spare time pissed!
 






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Comments by other Members



James Graham at 20:52 on 27 April 2015  Report this post
Great stuff, Mike. More of your light verse, just what we need. Comment - appreciation more like - to follow.

James.

James Graham at 20:34 on 29 April 2015  Report this post
A funny, entertaining poem – about vomiting! It confirms my belief that no subject is unfit for poetry. There are lots of things to amuse, e.g. that euphemistic ‘grasp the porcelain’ which could almost be one of those polite Victorian expressions for things one must be very circumspect about.
 
The rhymes are fun, especially wonder/ chunder and parrot/carrot. Slang is such a goldmine, with so many words for bodily functions and malfunctions. They’re funny in themselves, but as well as that they open up a whole new range of rhyming possibilities. I checked with my dictionary of slang, and it says ‘chunder’ is from a sailors’ warning ‘Watch under!’ As for ‘parrot’, it seems unfair to parrots but they’re stuck with this role, supplying unpleasant similes. Sick as a parrot – now a nicely alliterative ‘pickled as a parrot’. ‘Pebble-dashed me shoes’ is good too.
 
You don’t need ‘Binge Drinking’ in your title! The poem graphically describes that very thing. How about a mock-serious title: ‘Memoir of a Misspent Youth’? Or even a po-faced ‘Recollections of Youth’?
 
‘Regurgitating excess booze’ could maybe be spiced up a bit – except I can’t think of the words. ‘Throwing up something-something booze’. Buckets, pailfuls don’t fit the rhythm. Niagaras. Don’t know – you might get an inspiration.
 
I’ll just throw in this idea which you might take up if it’s interesting enough. Brain and stomach are at odds where binge drinking is concerned. The brain wants more alcohol, but the stomach doesn’t. Ah, but the stomach is the boss. It vetoes the request for ‘just one more’ and exercises its authority by emptying itself. Nothing the brain can do about it. I don’t know how to put that into a few lines of rhyming verse – but you might.
 
I can’t get over it – a funny poem about getting shickered and yodelling. (Both choice Aussie words.)  I enjoyed this – you can probably tell!
 
James.

Mickey at 10:49 on 30 April 2015  Report this post
James
Thank you for your comments.  It always amazes me how you find so much to say about other people’s work (especially mine which is never more than a short silly verse!)  I did originally call this piece ‘Vomit’ but it seemed a bit off-putting.  In view of the bad press that binge drinking gets these days (we used to stick to beer which, as you say, determines its own level), I think I’ll take your advice and just call it ‘Misspent Youth’  Thanks again for your interest and support

Dear Ana
Thank you for reading my poem.  I hope that you liked it but your comment has appeared as a kind of computer code ordering a hooded jacket from Amazon, so I can’t tell.  I checked back to your home page and opened another comment you have left in the forums and that’s the same!  I hasten to add that I am a complete computer numpty so perhaps I am supposed to open the comment separately?  (On the other hand, I wonder what they make of your literary criticism at Amazon?)  LOL!!
 
Thanks for reading it anyway
 


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