Tui Farm Folk Festival
85 Kms south/west of Nelson

Poems From Tui - the "one minute" poems continued

WIND

“That was a fierce wind last night,” I remarked to the company assembled there

The townies, fresh-emerged from battered tents, nodded to a man

But one old coot, a rangey brute, took off his hat, hawked and spat

And scratched his hair

“Wind? Wind?” he cried.

“That gentle puff last night just don’t compare.”

“For here in Tui, mate, we got winds’d make you pale!”

“Let me tell you about the blow we had last Spring” and he leaned against the rail.

This rakish chap had hooded eyes that fixed me with a stare.

A peeling, windburnt nose poked out ‘neath a mane of sunbleached hair. Steve McGlone

His dog, a mongrel beast, sheltered in the folds of his flapping coat.

He pulled the dog out for us all to see, and promptly cleared his throat.

“Old Bitzer here was chasin’ a stick when the blow came on”

“She came on real quick and you know that stick had barely left my hand

When the wind flew up and took it, overland!”

“Barking like mad, she took off but of course I couldn’t hear her.”

“As barking still, she chased that stick all the way to Tapawera”

“But on it blew and the stick she flew, with Bitzer in hot pursuit.”

“As they passed ‘The Glen’, the chase by then had rendered her quite mute.”

“Well, me brother in Auckland wrote to say he saw her passing through

As on and on the stick she chased and the wind she blew and blew.”

“Now what happened after that, I’ve no way to check

But she came home with that stick last week…”

“And a mandarin collar around her neck.”

THE ART OF WRITING A ONE MINUTE POEM

When ending off a poem it is common ally known

That to get a better ending one should make it rhyme

To finish off a rhyme at the end of every line

Choose a word before the end to make it sound quite good

So think about the ending before you start the beginning

And finish off the middle bit, that will help a lot

When you find the first part, some will use the fine art Roger Lusby

Of selecting something interesting to write before they start

Then once they have the first part, they will find the last part

Sounds better when poetic art doesn’t rhyme at all

So find a place up in the hills, count up all your syllables

Take a piece of paper and a pen

Lean back on your humpy, make yourself quite comfy

Let inspiration come along and then

Write anything you like or feels good to express, how you felt yesterday

When your cow stepped on your foot or your dog ate your shoe

Or your mother left you or love or hate or war or socks

Or sex or knickers or daffodils……….

Or anything you like.

A ONE MINUTE POEM

A one minute poem, I’ll give that a go

It should give me enough time to write about all that I know

How long did that take? Oh, not long at all

I’d better try harder but all my thoughts stall

Peter is lying beside me, his pen scratching away

And I keep thinking and thinking but strangely have nothing to say

Oh you may laugh and think that a rare treat

But this poem writing is quite a mean feat

Now Kathy is here and talking full bore

The pleasure is waning, my writing’s a chore

I’d better leap up, I’ve run out of time

And the more that I think, the less that will rhyme Jan Mayo

I’ve only got a minute left, that’s only time enough

To brush one row of teeth and forget the other stuff

ANOTHER MINUTE POEM

I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, since Roger set the task

About subjects I could use to fill a minute

I can’t start out on a story and then leave it in the air

‘Coz I’m always very conscious of that limit

I can’t waffle on you see, about Homer’s Odyssey

About War and Peace or William who conquers

I could do it musically ‘Bout the flight of bumblebees

There’s enough around this place to drive you bonkers

So I’ve admitted my defeat and I’ve come to grab a seat Peter Mayo

Before someone else has eaten all the food

And I’ll leave it to you lot, to ‘Reader’s Digest’ Camelot

‘Coz talking with your mouth full’s very rude

SHOWER TIME

It was early morn on New Year’s day

The crowd were starting to gather

The reason being, the new hot shower

They were all dying to get in a lather

The queue was long, the humour high

And Colin looked a fright

Armed with toilet bag and bleary eyes

Probably best first spotted in a very dim light

Forgotten names but remembered faces

We all waited for our turn

To turn the tap, apply the soap and feel that hot water burn Carol Rose

“Five minutes is all you’ve got, we’ve set the clock to ticking”

Man, the race was on, Camp Mother would give them a licking

Cause she was Carol (Caaarrrol)

And she was the fastest showerer at Tui Fest!

A MINUTE POEM

I thought that I would write a poem that can only last a minute

But I’ve always got such a lot to say, it seems an insurmountable limit

But I’ll do my best, as I usually do, to keep it short and sweet

I’ll leave out some words, truncate some vowels and chop it up like a side of meat

Yes my spiel today is all about time and it’s perception

How a minute can be short or long, or hard and fast

It’s dependent on your situation

If you need a wee and the queue is long

It’s an endless leg crossed eternity

But if it’s big slabs of chocolate cake

It’s over too soon, that’s a certainty

Your whole life can flash by in the blink of an eye

At time of danger and stress

As you fall from that tree or get stung by a bee

It’s all-relative, more or less Stephen Rose

But when in the arms of someone you love or a newly run chin deep hot bath

A minute is heaps, seems like an hour or more, ‘cos pleasure can just last and last and last

So take each minute of your god given life

Make it big and round and fat, fill it up with lov’n good vibes

And always eat servings of chocolate cake never smaller than the size of your hat

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Poems From Tui - the "one minute" poems continued