Hey, Mr Sunshine,
where are you today?
Rain is falling heavily,
the sky is dark and grey.
All the kids are stuck inside
with nowhere to play.
Hey, Mr Sunshine,
please come back one day.
Hey, Mr Sunshine,
welcome back today.
The sky is blue and clear and bright,
the rain has gone away.
Now the kids can run outside
to laugh and sing and play.
Thanks, Mr Sunshine,
sure beats yesterday!
What about recycling?
That’s something you can do
to save the planet every day
and save some money, too.
You could take up gardening
and grow veggies in the yard,
or start a steamy compost heap,
it isn’t very hard.
Maybe you could buy less stuff,
not use so much plastic,
and more refillable containers
would be just fantastic.
However you go about it,
whatever you might do,
please just do something,
because it’s up to me and you.
Photo by Vlada Karpovich
They say my words are quite absurd,
my poems most preposterous,
my rhymes are poor, my rhythms wild,
my metre’s all quite monstrous.
But I don’t care what they say,
one day I will be prosperous,
because I am the world’s only
poetic rhinoceros.
I wrote a poem for you,
straight from my heart,
to say how much I loved you,
right from the start.
But now it is all over,
our time was short, but sweet –
my double choc gelato,
you were wonderful to eat!
Father Christmas lost his whiskers,
riding in his sleigh.
He went too fast and then a blast
of wind blew them away.
Father Christmas found his whiskers
a long way away.
Stuck them on and sped along
in time for Christmas Day
Hey!
Inspired by playground rhymes
If a Thesaurus
came before us
would it claw us?
Or even gnaw us,
as soon as it saw us?
Not really.
A Thesaurus is a book
stuffed full of words,
so it would probably
just ignore us.
(As published in The Dirigible Balloon)
What if ‘mince pies’ were your eyes?
‘Barrier reef’ your ‘teef’?
If ‘Onkaparingas’ were your fingers,
or ‘plates of meat’ your feet?
‘Ginger beers’ might be your ears,
a ‘loaf of bread’ your head.
What if your hips were ‘battleships’
and ‘wooden pegs’ your legs?
Well, then all your body parts would rhyme,
though you mightn’t even know it,
and whenever you did anything
you’d be a rhyming poet.
NOTE: rhyming slang is a form of folk word play in which all sorts of things are
given usually whimsical rhymes.
One willie wagtail sang a sweet song,
he was joined by another
before very long.
Two willie wagtails built a snug nest
with feathers and flowers
and leaves softly pressed.
Three willie wagtails perched in a tree,
mummy and daddy
and baby makes three.
Now UFOs are UAPs,
can someone please explain
who was it who decided
UFOs must be renamed?
Of course, I do not have a clue
who might have been that author,
but I have a question for them:
what’s wrong with ‘flying saucer’?
Note: Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs, are now officially known as Unidentified Aerial (or Anomalous) Phenomena, or UAPs.
I had a little robot
and it was very smart.
It could tell me anything
but it didn’t have a heart.
Below are a few links that may be of interest if you’re looking to find out more about Artificial Intelligence.
Australian Children’s Poetry 