Poetry Bus October 4th.

The prompt this week was to scrive about "anything or nothing, or write a poem about the Poetry Bus"

Just the Italian Job!(*)

You thought they heisted tons of gold? No! 'twas

Palgrave's "Golden Treasury of English

Songs and Lyrics," no less weighty, 

stowed where the sunshine does not reach -  

aboard the Poetry Bus, for the fastest 

getaway in Italy!

Too soon, too soon joy turned to wails of grief.

"We're doomed! We're doomed to tumble from the cliff

and splinter on the rocks below! Oh! Oh!"

See how they teeter on the precipice.

(The Wages of Sin is fun for the spectators.)

That'll teach the bandits not to hurtle

round Alpine hairpins weighted down with swag

penned through the aeons since the Dawn of Rhyme

just when they thought they'd got it in the bag. 

There's poetry back there from Good Queen Bess

to our impenetrable Laureate . . .

Even some 'concrete' poems, real heavy stuff,

and tens of thousands of dull pentameters,

the clunking standby of the English Muse

who "wanders lonely as a cloud" (that's only eight!)

But I digress. Come on, now! Who

can save this motley crew

aboard their rocking bus?  

I'm not knocking their intelligence, but guess

reading aloud won't make their haul weigh less

and tip the balance in the robbers' favo(u)r.

Has anyone out there got the flavo(u)r

of a really great idea however queer?

You at the back there!  What's that you say?

You think much more light verse would save the day . . .

Only nine carats worth, pal!  I don't think

the CrewCrook'sPlan now teetering on the brink

can be redeemed with funny stuff by Lear,

Belloc, McGonagall or Ogden Nash. 

They're going to crash

into the abyss unless they find

a way to load the bus's front

and right its equilibrium, unbalanced

by all those Palgrave volumes stashed behind.

So this is what to do.  All Bloggers, send

your usual weekly effort, marked

"POST NEAR THE DRIVER, NOT IN THE BUS BACK END" 

(*) Helps to have seen the 1969 Michael Caine version of the film