Smile, Smile, Smile, by Bill Lythgoe

We don’t know if he ever used
a lucifer to light his fag
but we suspect he never packed
his troubles in his old kit bag –
he’d far too many.

We don’t know if he ever asked
what’s the use of worrying
but when we read the diary
they brought back in his old kit bag
we knew he worried

about his loved ones back at home;
about the boys who went over the top,
the comrades he knew would not return;
about the hissing mustard gas
that would one day find him, cause
his slow and agonising death.

Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq;
it never is worthwhile
but we still hold great grandad’s old kit bag
and try to smile.

..

Bill Lythgoe has been writing poetry seriously for about seven years. He has won four prizes in Writing Magazine. He won second prize in the Sentinel Literary Quarterly competition and was published in their Oct-Dec 2013 magazine. He has also won prizes awarded by The Page Is Printed,  Fire River Poets, the Wakefield Red Shed and Nottingham Poetry Society and been published by Earlyworks Press, Strong Verse and Southport Fringe Poetry. If you Google Bill Lythgoe poems you can read some of his work.

There Is No Plan B by Bill Lythgoe

Exploit the world’s resources – yes you can.

Accumulate the wealth that sets you free

and help us implement the master plan.

 

A healthy profit’s more important than

a giant panda or a chimpanzee.

Exploit the world’s resources – yes you can.

 

Nuke North Korea, isolate Iran,

ignore fake news, bad deals, see what I see

and help us implement the master plan.

 

Forget man’s inhumanity to man –

that’s how it is; how it will always be.

Exploit the world’s resources – yes you can.

 

The shit will never really hit the fan.

We know the score, accept our guarantee

and help us implement the master plan.

 

There is no global warming frying pan.

No fire will burn the likes of you and me.

Exploit the world’s resources – yes you can

and help us implement the master plan.

The Greedophile by Bill Lythgoe

I creep through the clean, green, town-centre park,

eyeing rich pickings. What’s in it for me?

How can I use it to make my mark?

I creep through the clean, green, town-centre park.

I need to act quickly or some other shark

will move in, develop it, charge a fat fee.

I creep through the clean, green, town-centre park,

eyeing rich pickings. What’s in it for me?

..

Bill Lythgoe has been writing poetry seriously for about six years. He has won four prizes in Writing Magazine. He won second prize in the Sentinel Literary Quarterly competition and was published in their Oct-Dec 2013 magazine. He has also won prizes awarded by Fire River Poets, the Wakefield Red Shed and Nottingham Poetry Society and been published by Earlyworks Press, Strong Verse and Southport Fringe Poetry. If you Google Bill Lythgoe poems you can read some of his work.

Refugees by Bill Lythgoe

Number 3:
Someone’s mum,
everybody’s auntie.
Her round black face
beams in greeting
then fades, frowns.
We have no papers,
no passports, no ID.
When you see
your husband slaughtered,
meat on a slab,
you don’t grab your documents and run.
You grab your children.

Number 7:
Uprooted from his mountain village,
transplanted to a bare bedsit,
softly speaking foreign English.
When they hanged Saddam Hussein
they did right,
he was – what do you say? –
one of the mafia. Yeah,
a gangster.
You’ve  heard of Halabja,
you say Saddam killed
a lot of Kurdish people. Yeah,
he killed my dad.

Number 12:
A pretty face,
short black hair, tight curls,
a tear in her right eye.
An ugly bruise
on the left side of her neck,
parallel to her jaw.
Do you know about Islam?
You have friends who are Muslims,
you’ll understand
I’ve left him.
Last night he hit me.
Then he divorced me.

..

Bill Lythgoe has been writing poetry seriously for about six years. He has won four prizes in Writing Magazine. He won second prize in the Sentinel Literary Quarterly competition and was published in their Oct-Dec 2013 magazine. He has also won prizes awarded by the Wakefield Red Shed and Nottingham Poetry Society and been published by Earlyworks Press, Strong Verse and Southport Fringe Poetry. If you Google Bill Lythgoe poems you can read some of his work.