Any time is a good time to go on holiday, to travel, explore new horizons, enjoy the pleasures of warm and close companionships. Up until very recently, anyway.

I was sick of works demands,
I wished to see some idle hands,
So I booked myself a sea cruise,
Well, what did I have to lose?

A life out on the ocean wave,
A licence to frolic and misbehave,
To stroll in Speedos with tanned chest,
Pull in the gut, leave the lasses impressed.

To what depravities I sunk,
Every night in a new bunk,
My lustful life was never finer-
I love life on an ocean liner.

But come one fine morning I awoke
Feeling like when I used to smoke,
But the ships Doc’s there for such ills-
Plus, I needed more lil’ blue pills.

The Doc’s voice took on a worried note
As he peered down my ticklish throat,
And as we approached American waters
I found I was confined to my quarters.

No more late-night fun and games,
No more early morning walk of shames,
Into my teeny tiny cabin I was shown
To spend a fortnight all on my own.

I’ve got a Gideons bible and a battered paperback,
Grand Cruise brochures litter the magazine rack,
Free Living and Disney channels are all very nice
But I wish they’d arrange Wi-Fi for my De-Vice.

I don’t mind being forcibly detained,
I realise a nasty virus must be contained,
The Cap’ns bound to put in protective measures
He doesn’t care a toss about my fleshly pleasures.

Here we’re moored, off San Francisco Bay,
And what to do to while the time away?
It’s ten more days till I’m back on deck,
Idle hands mean I’ll be a physical wreck.

 

©Obbverse

 

Welcome to a blended extended thermo-nuclearly unhappy family. Not to mention, family planning.

A Few Hard Home Truths.

What a grand and great relationship
We’ve forged lovingly together,
We’ll not let our moorings slip
Despite bouts of inhospitable weather.

We’ve now been married for a year,
They say the first one is the worst,
But most who hold us near and dear
See we’re so loved-up we could almost burst.                                                                                                  ,
I’m grateful for this little home we share,
Your family is largely accommodating,
But believe me, I’ve been made painfully aware
That some pleasure in my company’s dissipating.

Every day our love grows stronger
Than it was the day before,
But, Love, it won’t last much longer
If I must abide with Mother-in-law.

I do so love my lovely wife
Yet it feels we still live in sin,
Yes, we’re blessedly Wedding Mass sanctified
But these humble walls are paper thin.

So here we are on our anniversary
And as my darling leans in for a kiss
Through the wall I hear my old adversary-
In the kitchen, hear the steaming boilers hiss?

So let’s not stay celibately in tonight,
Lets sneak out and celebrate our wedding day,
We’ll luxuriate in the Hotel Grands suite delight-
Sometimes we all need to get off and away.

 

 

©Obbverse

What did you do on Valentine’s Day? Or on Valentine’s night? Flowers just might not cut it or quite do the trick on this occasion.

Be My Valentine.

I have my love and she has mine,
She tells me of her love, deep and true,
How rare ’tis for two hearts to intertwine,
Oh, my sweet love, I give my heart to you.

I brought her red roses on Valentine’s Day,
I thought to lay them on her sweet bed,
Oh, but why is she not at work but at play?
I crushed those roses till my hands ran red.

So, my love, give me back my broken heart,
You took my trust, my love, you lay and lied,
Outside the door I hear the hopeless pleading start,
When you break it down you find we’re all dead inside.

 

PS: The car radio was crassly playing ‘Dear Doctor’- on Valentine’s Day!- and the lines ‘Help me Dear Doctor, I’m damaged, there’s a pain where there once was a heart,’ sounded ghastlily inspirational.

 

©Obbverse

Roses, wine, chocolates, gooey texts, sweet words of love on Valentine’s Day. Then, sometimes, the magic will be unleashed and love will have its way. Them rare sweet days when pure logic takes a back seat. Gotta love ’em!

Valentine’s Day Masala.

Tearily I recall that night after Valentines Day, I
Pulled Cavalierly into that cold unromantic lay-by,
After a rich meal spiced up with cheap sparkling wine
Surely my beloved would melt in these arms of mine?

Casanova had found it particularly galling
When he found he was hopelessly falling
For a Catholic girl who felt honour bound
To go up the aisle pure and white gowned.

The light of love and Moscato filled her sparkling eyes,
As chocolate liqueurs served me in my dark enterprise
I leaned in, desperately keen to express the love I felt…
Ain’t no getting past the cold shoulder or chastity belt.

 

 

PS; I know the last couplet might sound uncomfortably close to Chuck Berry’s, but with some rhymes there’s only one particular way it can go. So, close, Chuck, but no cigar.

 

©Obbverse.

Thinking back on them good(?) ol’ school days, of pimply adolescence, tough lessons and first silly soppy juvenile teenage love.

Greasy Kids Stuff.

It was the first day of February and one thing was clear,
I was never ready to face this bright new school year,
A step up towards High school, and higher learning
Left this poor student with his poor stomach churning.

A spotty youth, a third former, the lowest of the low,
Puberty was kicking in, and it was beginning to show,
Pimples and blackheads blighted this once fresh face,
As soon as one eyesore faded, two more took its place.

I did learn three things on my first day at Hagley High,
The first was to say ‘yessir’, and never ever question why,
Second, the Headmaster held more authority than God above,
Third, I fell for a girl, with all the pure passion of puppy love.

This girl was The One, the one I worshiped from afar,
This girl lit up my darkest nights, like a shooting star,
My last thought before I slept, my first come the morn,
I was besotted by a girl who didn’t know I’d been born.

I wondered how and when I could chance to meet her,
I practiced the perfect words with which I would greet her,
I alone could see she her realise our stars were destined to align;
So sad, the dreams of a short-pantsed pimply Frankenstein.

I made my approach, in the lonely corridor there was only her and I,
I tried my long practiced patter, but my throat was bone dry…
To see the one you want to want you with all your being
Waltz past you, eyes all a’sparkle, oblivious, unseeing…

It is better to have loved and lost, some do say. I say, ‘yeah, right.’

Anniversary Blues.

Sometimes it’s the simple little things;
The way a new sprung sparrow witlessly sings,
Now, what a hollow feeling that birdsong brings
And dark thoughts of a sunny day and wedding rings.

…On the beach, on the sand,
A gleam of gold on her left hand,
A joyous time for our happy band,
And did we not say ‘ain’t love grand?’

Of one thing we two were sure,
Our love was unadulterated and pure,
For evermore she’d be my one amour,
Our love was truly bound to endure.

Winter came, left me chilled to the core,
The cold I hold in my heart has yet to thaw,
The view we’d shared, of that golden shore
Offers me not warmth nor comfort anymore.

It might be the sight of a gull wheeling on high,
A touch of white, up in a clear bright blue empty sky,
Down here I’m alone to hear its stupid senseless cry
Cruelly tail off in the wind, to drift, to fade, to die.

Attraction, emotions, romance, true love, love proven… a period of waiting… marriage, then happy ever after. Ain’t love grand?

Post Nuptial.

I’m special, not the sort of person
Who’d marry any old sort of person
Pregnant or not to him.

We could never become that sort of people,
The kind who find they resort to other people;
Tied by the trusty knot, me and him.

But I became another person
When he came in another person.
This widow’s well shot of him.