Lakeland progress

My rucksack creaking like a schooner crying


Under full sail in a sluggish wind,


We trod the narrow roads, with stormclouds flying,


On paths by thought and planning underpinned.


By Grasmere's foot, by Rydal's back we tarried


In old mine workings quietly over-awed.


From Wordsworth's house, along the track which carried


Them to Ambleside, its stones so deeply scored


By iron-shod wheels and feet, before our road


Was built in all its strength down by the lake,


Through cuttings, straight and quick, for comfort's sake,


So we need know sweet nothing of the hills


That former ages on their journeys strode,


Then unencumbered by our doubtful skills.

08/06/80

It started because I wanted to see whether I could write a sonnet. I'd start the review negotiations around "competent".

Computer progress 1

Your nature surging with a transfer frenzy,


Without scoffed bends in a British cruise,


Within the surface humps, not ledgers melting,


Up saucers sung and vaseline sirloined,


Through furthest cant, with Cupid's leaf all mated


At present scallops stalking leverets.


Before the miss, beside the trace which weathered


Off by localism's back and harpies' milk


And pygmy resin trained to wax their post


That saxophones its pool and forfeits dents


In doctors' humble, limber, perished vats,


And moons should feature gophers in their reach


So waxen traces on five pullets scarped,


We must precipitate some local rose.

Some time in the 80s

And then there was a competition to write computer poetry - not using a computer, because a human brain is cheaper, and possibly even more stupid.

Computer progress 2

My harem leading like a rumble tracing

Under wax ankh in a choral deep,

Along the flippant humps, with junkets meaning,

On prey by stead and versus fricasseed,

My hearing's pout, by seven's tribe we emptied

In wrong phrase armour trebly power-sawed.

From tiger's yard, along the dice which mated

Them to restaurant, its ghouls so often torn

By crisps through gussets talc'd by our van

That drafts in all its gun down by the perch;

Through shipments, surfed on fugue, let them cause gust,

So they ought rouse Sikh torsions of the yawn

That other rifles by their lobes were crumbed

Then fluorescing by our local print.

28/5/96

It's strange to be a computer, but it gets easier with practice.