The Oldie: Sleepers (was Bouts Rimes)
 

Badil-Ransome-Davies, Gail White and Bill Greenwell all mentioned in dispatches, Martin Elster and Jerome Betts worthy winners. Still none of us havevgot our hands on that tea-set. Come on, people.

The new competition promises well. Go to Competition to see the full results.

Competition No 123 Sleepers

Google, I see, has just put on line a 150 hour video of the trans-Siberian Railway. This suggested to me a poem called 'Sleepers' which you can take in any sense. Maximum 16 lines.
email comps@theoldie.co.uk. Don't forget your postal address.

oldie comp
 

I did get the tea-set, though prior to becoming an eratonaut, & very welcome it was.

bazza

Werll done, Bazza. Describe it. What exactly is it? Oh, and while I'm here, a rhyme.

Sleepers

Gog and Magog, giants sleeping,
All the wealth of Albion keeping,
Guardians of proven worth
Buried in our English earth.
Gog was such a lovely geezer,
Lived before the days of Caesar.
Magog was his duplicate,
Flourished at the selfsame date.
They were scarcely Mona Lisas,
Ugly buggers, beezer geezers,
Great guys, straight guys, on-the slate-guys,
Taking-Courage-by-the-crate-guys,
Gog and Magog, heavyweights,
Gog and Magog, perfect mates,
As this rhyme reiterates.

Nobody was more surprised than I was to see myself on the page. Nearly didn't enter when I saw what I was up against, but glad I did! Very gratifying to know that I can tickle Tessa Castro's chuckle muscle now and again.
Well done Martin; well done Jerome (I love the topical banking slant).
Best wishes to all,
Joan Butler
(I haven't been around for a while. When the block strikes I turn into a bumpkin.)

tea set
 

As I recall, a couple of nice mugs (one since dropped & broken by me, like much else in our household), a tea towel, cake, Yorkshire tea & a packet of those amusingly T-shaped biscuits.

I've seen EREME about, but I did not know you were Joan Butler. We are EVERYWHERE, I tell you. We will TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!!

Well really. Is no one else going to try this? Perhaps it's because I didn't title the thread 'Sleepers'. How do I correct this, Oh Clever ones who KNOW? Meanwhile - another Sleepers poem.What about this one?

The Sleepers

Vampires of velveteen sleep in the shadows.
They hang from your ivy with toes to the moon,
Row upon row of such sweet little faces,
Each wizened and shrivelled and black as a prune.
Listen, oh listen, you good little children,
The Velveteen Vampires will come for you soon.

(How they croon...)

Open the windows, you scrump-ti-ous children.
We want you to cuddle us ever so tight.
Better than teddies or hot water bottles,
A Velveteen Vampire will see you all right.
Sleepytime, kiddiwinks, beddybyes, cuddlekins,
Naughtikins toothiboots coming tonight

FOR A BITE!

After John's beastly baby biters some sugar sweet sleepers. Have you ever wondered where the birds sleep?

The birds that have the daylight shift
The twitterers and singers,
The little hatch, the speedy swift,
And robins, spring’s harbingers,
All find a perch when darkness falls
In ivy growing up on walls
Or hidden in the tops of trees
Protected from the cooling breeze,
And there they snuggle up and keep
Each other warm and go to sleep.

The heron and the egret,
The willet and the stilt
Have hides in places secret,
In clumps of reeds and silt.
With plover, loon and curlew
They rest till morning’s dew
Lies heavy on each blade of grass
And glints like tiny shards of glass
in early morning’s rising sun.
Then all the birds know day’s begun

Birthe

Way to go, Joan! And you, too, Jerome!

All the best,

Martin

sleepers
 

Is this now formally the sleepers thread? Here goes anyway (I presume I don't have to explain to American eratonauts that Anglo 'sleeper' = US 'tie') :



They say that life goes on in sleep
as phobias and fancies creep
like rats from the unfathomed deep
of chequered human minds,
that in our psychic cinema
a movie – often quite bizarre
(The Sound Of Music meets film noir?) –
dramatically unwinds.

This odd nocturnal celluloid
encrypts the issues we avoid
when waking (thank you, Dr Freud,
the king of one-eyed jacks).
Our sleep's not innocent, it seems;
it seethes with worries, hopes and schemes;
but sleepers who are free of dreams
lie dead on railway tracks.