Two Lime Green Cars comic poem 519 by Angela Lansbury

Angela Lansbury with her lime green car. Photo by Trevor Sharot. 

 My lime green car looks smart,  brand new

Drivers wave if they have one, too

Though really a very old car

Reliable, it takss me far

My speed's a conservative pace

An old car but with low mileage

I loved the zipped  parcel shelf space

Its small boot takes too much luggage

Alas one day on the M4

A car behind like tanks in war

Rear-ended me, (no rain to blame)

Hit barrier, stopped in fast lane

A lorry driver ran to help

I gasped, 'I'm ok,  block this lane!'

He turned his truck diagonally

Seen for miles, so no added pain

My car had spun right around

And scattered green metal on the ground

And there I stopped

My fault? It was not

My husband still says

It was your fault, driving too slow

He wants to share, but wasn't there

So he could not know

The AA drove me to the station

I was glad to hear what they thought

A car behind must leave room to stop

So the car behind - it's their fault

We looked for a new old car

we looked high and low

On the intenet

And, what do you know?

My husband says lime's a darker hue

I should call mine pistacchio

Just imagine a luminous green

Mine was the cleanest car you've ever seen

We found a newer old car in lime - or pistacchio

A BBC voice tells we where to go

I do not use the zip up space for maps

I use Satnav or google apps

It's another car, but looks just the same

Every day I feel like I've won life's game.

The colour still thrills me, I don't have to drive

Just looking at my green car makes me feel alive.

When you lose something, what to do?

Soemtimes a chance to try what's new

Sometimes, you'll find you don't complain

If you replace it with the same.

-ends-

Lorry is British English and truck is American English but truck is recognized.

Please share links to your favourite poems.

Tree Pantoum Revised comic poem number 367 by Angela Lansbury

  In Singapore I went to a Toastmasters club where a speaker who is bilingual in English and Malay told us about the Malay form of poetry, the pantoum. Afterwards I looked it up online. In Wikipedia and other places.

 I looked in my own poetry book, Poetry Workshop and discovered I had listed the form in the appendix where I gave the structures of sonnets, haikus, pantoums etc.

 Later I discovered that I had actually written a pantoum. However, here's my latest version, based on the English oak tree.

A Tall Tree  a pantoum by Angela Lansbury

A small shy seed grew a flower

Small acorns grow to tall oak trees

Over time the hidden bower

Is the tower all our street sees

 

A little acorn grew a tree

Higher and higher, never timed

A place where squirrels built their nests

Big boys with ladders and ropes climbed

 

Higher and higher never timed

A nest for birds, a lure for cats

Big boys with ladders and ropes climbed

Rooks, parakeets, owls, maybe bats

 

A nest for birds, a lure for cats

Until one day a giant storm

Rooks, parakeets, owls, maybe bats 

Scattered all to earth fearing harm

 

Until one day a giant storm

Struck down the old oak tree's bower

Scattered all to earth fearing harm

Each small seed grew a new flower.

The swing swung round, the hammock tipped

The climber fell and broke a bone

When I see trees I have one thought

That's don't climb, leave trees alone.

Climbers all risk broken bones

On this subject I could write tomes

Yes, please, climbers, leave trees alone

Let Mum and I sit safe at home.

-ends-

This was originally wirtten as a classic variation on the theme of small acorns growing into tall oak trees, and small seeds growing into flowers. On revising, I lost the pantoum effect, but gained a humorous cuationary verse.

The tall oak tree is in the garden of our neighbours the Serby family in Hatch End, London, England. 

When they were children, Paul Serby used to climb regularly. Occasionally unbeknown to me, my son would join in, alhough I had told him not to. My son assured me that nobody ever had an accident. Years later I heard they gave up climbing after an accident.

The last line means I and my neighbour, whose garden has the tree, sit safe because we are not climbing and feel safer and more content if our children don't climb.

I have a sample pantoum and the rhyming scheme in my book  POETRY WORKSHOP which you can buy from Lulu or Amazon.

Copyright Angela Lansbury. 2024, January

Please share links to your favourite posts.