My younger brother just sent me a text from Morocco with the following poem. Quite how he remembers it, I don't know. I must have taught it to him. It was written by Dominic Hardman, aged 11, in 1987, at Addingham Middle School.
Going up in a plane, gulp
Thinking about crashing, being knocked into pulp.
Try not to be worried with all my might,
I hope we land safely in Paris tonight.
Aargh, woosh, wow! We're in the sky!
Bleuurgh I just regurgitated my meat pie.
When this poem was affixed to the wall by the teacher, the last line was expurgated, rather like the meat pie. It was however accompanied by a rather nice picture of a plane.
Dominic eventually went on to a career in the financial services industry and I wish him well. But I believe that his talents were utterly wasted. This is my favourite poem of all time. It is as perfectly funny today as it was 23 years ago.
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2 comments:
My favourite poem is "The Tortoise"
It goes like this:
"The tortoise goes movey, movey."
It was in a poetry book that I had to study for my exams. The story behind it is awesome.
The poet Paul Muldoon was asked to judge a poetry competition in Northern Ireland. He selected the tortoise, penned by an 8 year old as the winner.
Other entrants and teachers were outraged that such a simple poem had won, not to mention that "movey" isn't a word.
Muldoon wrote a letter addressing this in which he stated that he could never look at a tortoise again without thinking that it was going movey, movey. It's simply the perfect way to describe the tortoise's movement.
John, you didn't need to teach me it - my then nine-year-old brain was so delighted to hear it, that it reverberated around the auditory loop of my brain until it had left a permanent impression on my memory. Like screen burn, if you like.
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