"whippy" poems
Vanilla. Nation's favourite. In fact the world's favourite
flavour. So very versatile. From Mr. Whippy's with a
cheap chocolate flake, next to a warm apple
crumble, on a pancake or in a milkshake.
From hot days by the sea side to the
perfect ending of Sunday lunch
and every occasion in betwe-
en. The creamy, comfor-
ting deliciousness
I once fell
in love
with.
But now I prefer the
irresistible, amber, nutty explosion
of Butterscotch. My tongue [mind] craves it!
Sep 30, 2012
Sep 30, 2012 at 9:19 PM UTC
1.
there once was a poem
who climbed into a paper boat
and sailed on to the moon
not a moment too soon
for they came to lock the sun away!
2.
best not mount this whippy one
rock-a-billy wild carriage
ride me to the city's end
don't drive me round the bend
we can always try a bold bovary-move!
3.
look into the fire and sing a song
about the lonely, tarrying sea
oh sailor, make it sweet
then I'll put it up on tweet
and nary mind; make your children's lullaby.
4.
I gives ya posies bright and gay
come sit by me...closer, dear
she smells, then sneezes
oh, he didn't know how to please her
her floral allergies packed him off for good.
5.
there was a lazy man from Shadder
who said 'twas too cold to empty his bladder
so, he sent it a-walkies
off alone to the loo
well, it just drove his wife madder!
S T, 30 June 2013
Jun 30, 2013
Jun 30, 2013 at 12:51 PM UTC
The ice cream van
Has today reached
The melancholic realisation
That the only kids who
Chase clocks for Mr Whippy
And lick the exhaust fumes
In nostalgia
Are the kids who are not kids
But who prematurely aged themselves
With lipstick kisses
And cigarettes
Lowered themselves into nooses
Of sweet-sixteenths
From the age of six
We are a generation of
Peter Pan inversions
We ran ashore
And beached ourselves
Beyond the lure
Of Neverland
We are a generation of
Failed cloud-catchers
Aspiring rainbow-clinchers
Secretly slipping our hands
Back into a dead air
Of former innocence
In the hope we’ll be able to
Retrieve the pieces we left there
We queue and scramble
Like gulls for
Inches we can claw back
Preserving our age in
Wafer cones
And bleeding snows
That glue between our fingers
Each 99 flake
Is a time machine
Which we spin like a music box
And wait for the rewind
Copper coins and sea stains
And we hope we’ll find
Some of the things we lost
But we cannot predict or realign
The atoms or twist ourselves
Back into them
So we sit and watch
The incorruptibility we once possessed
Perished
Sexualised
Corrupted
Pool in the March drizzle
Someone once said
That youth was a process
Of being torn in half
By the past that pulls you back
And the future that tempts you
Being too big and yet too small
Longing but fearing
But an ice cream van tells me
That youth is a process
Of trying not to drown yourself
In what you’ve never had
And when that ice cream van tells me to
MIND THAT CHILD
I can’t help projecting echoes
Of its wisdom
On to all who pass me by
Mind that childhood
Before there’s nothing left to mind
Mar 26, 2015
Mar 26, 2015 at 3:50 PM UTC
slick, sturdy, undeniably burgundy
whippy, supple, but no need for more than
a couple
a needle, sharper than the sharpness of the ice cream snow, shrouding my metallic skin like but an extension of my ice fingers, so perfect, so wonderfully clear and clean
the bow is my mind and the strings my queen
Jan 13, 2015
Jan 13, 2015 at 2:24 PM UTC
Why am I chasing an ice cream van?
I asked, as after the van I ran....
Is this futility? I held out my hand-
Shall I ever be chased by this man?
Why does anyone chase an ice cream van?
No one is pursued by the ice cream man,
Running after a van in this heat is dippy,
Why sell our souls for Mr. Whippy?
With the crowds I did compete,
I bought soft serves, to survive the heat,
As that callous van drove down the street,
But, with ice cream, my soul is replete!
Apr 30, 2016
Apr 30, 2016 at 3:33 AM UTC
I remember creeping reverently past
The yawning maw
Snarling braches, overgrown foliage
Sad eye sockets
The defeated roof
Listing drunkenly to the left
The black spirals on the ground
Where the fire had scored earth bare
Crouched from the sanctity of the sidewalk
Damp palm snaking back to
Clasp tight
My best friend’s hand
Fear skittering up our spines
We skirted past poisonous green weeds
That swayed in the yard
Unkempt and our eyes
Darted, seeking, feral
For movement in that open doorway
Her shadow
The witch
Years pass
Looking out into suburbia
Manicured green boxes
And cookie-cutter plans
From my own cracked window
My newly acquired reno,
I spot a flash of moving colour
From beyond the overgrown hyacinths
A tousled flash of curls between the green
Puzzlement ripples as
Three lanky preadolescent forms
Snake from the protection of my shaggy firs
Thin chests taking a breath before
Their whippy arms point accusing
And I barely see a flash before
The clutched rock leaves the
Stupid-looking red headed one’s hand
Crashing through my upstairs master
And I hear it
Witch, witch, where’s the witch?
And I feel it.
My eyes beadily narrow
Peering over my bulbous nose
Shoulders hunching
Toes curl
And I reach for
The broom leaning next
The painter’s cloth
Grabbing on with knobbly fingers
Hurling myself
Out
Of
The door
Their eyes widened
Disbelieving
As they spot me
And thumbs clutched between index fingers
They run
Leaving me cackling
Breathless
While my familiar
Looks up from
Sunning her black self
On the step.
Sep 2, 2009
Sep 2, 2009 at 7:49 PM UTC
I am a soft sandal
You are pebble beaches
I am a lace parasol
You are brutal high gales
I am a yellow sundress
You are sudden hail stones
I am scented sunscreen
You are cumulus clouds
I am Mr Whippy
You are a cloud of gulls
You are relentless
But I will adapt
Jul 26, 2023
Jul 26, 2023 at 5:05 PM UTC
Mountain ranges evident on old coyote’s back
Legs that buckle and mange standing on end
Scrappy snarls and chattering clack
Band weary of its brother, how moons expend
Pushed from its den; old dog’s final indignity
Young competitors keep ahead the pack
What time will take; a brutal insistency
For a dying dog cards be stacked
Skinny whippy coyote your days complete
Senility your friend and nothing you lack
One last howls to death; a verse to meet
When no moon in sight and all goes black
Apr 17, 2016
Apr 17, 2016 at 5:55 AM UTC
In the bubble were hopes and dreams.
Hopscotch, handstands, Mr Whippy Ice Creams.
The freedom of playing outside on the street.
Summer holidays, bike rides and pick’n’mix sweets.
Years swept past and the bubble was still there.
Now 13 more interested in clothes and my hair.
Music and dancing; cigarettes and *****
Never thinking ahead, just running wild and loose.
BURST went the bubble is his sly hands.
A past and present stolen; a future with changed plans.
Colour and glitter fell in horizontal lines.
Out went my sparkle, off went my shine.
Much time passed as I continued to grow.
Teens and twenties a blur but in my thirties I slowed.
I remembered the bubble; I remembered his hand.
The memory knocked me down like a wave on the sand.
With love I healed and began to blow, a fresh new bubble for my mended soul.
Filled with hope and forgiveness; love and light.
Books, food, nature; spiritually taking flight.
Yet I winced when I saw him once again.
Feeling sick to my stomach, almost feint.
He plagued my thoughts and dreams for a while after.
But truth broke me free as negativity shattered.
He took a part of me forever and that I can’t forgive.
But I have to move on in order to live.
My innocence was snatched but my future is mine.
I will live it to it’s fullest; forever I will shine.
Apr 26, 2018
Apr 26, 2018 at 8:36 AM UTC
Here come
pairs of legs
riddled with cellulite
accents
stuff the air
Neuwcassul
Burmingum
stores reek
of cheap tat
bargain last-few-quid items
Irish music
no-one gives a jig about
Mr. Whippy's
for sale every seven/six
make that five cafés
women packed
like bubblewrap
into denim shorts
middle-aged men
plagued with tattoos
Irn Bru tans
back at the chalet
kids thwack
plastic *****
with plastic racquets
next-door neighbours
puff on their nineteenth
*** before midday
come night
karaoke floods towards us
like a murky tsunami
don't stop believin'
hold on to that feelin'
but the girl
in the museum
had a ponytail
another one
dipped in gold
like a fancy chess piece
and I walk around
in a Norwich shirt
lick sea-breeze
and know
this isn't
home
Jul 29, 2014
Jul 29, 2014 at 3:29 PM UTC
Whippy willow-branch crowns
and crystal-cold pool water -
grass-tickled bare feet
and breathless trampoline bouncing -
comfortable, starlit darkness
and hours spent amongst the trees.
These are the memories that return with the summer sun,
and I cannot shake their carefree presence,
or how they pierce my heart.
Summer was always our joy.
Jun 10, 2018
Jun 10, 2018 at 1:21 AM UTC
Houses held up like puppets.
Pylon-wire branches spread out;
assuring the land wont drift far out to sea,
or melt into the earth with subsidence.
Cotton-wool-candy-floss caught up in cranes,
wind-whipped, white-wash, wispy, whippy clouds.
Do you remember when we waited in line for 99s?
The sky was busy with boats, the sea so blue. No, I mean...
And I had strawberry syrup dripping down my cone
and a multi-coloured sticky chin.
We watched the boats going out, coming in;
then we joined the rest to say goodbyes.
All the hands were wagging; electric flapping.
Water splashing up against the dock.
The arms propelled the ship.
Gemmed fingers dancing farewells;
the jangle of bangled wrists;
waving in the air, propelling the ship away
to retirement paradises,
honeymoon bliss,
champagne seascapes.
Always in the middle this place,
on the edge of a million-gazillion other worlds.
The rumble rattle of engines as I walk along
to look out at the reeds; on search for quiet idleness.
Leaves rustle, tickled by the breeze.
A train passes in-between;
on its way, on its way...
I sit on a bench nearby and hear a hum of life amongst the hedges.
Then,
walk back
with orange light bouncing in and out
of windows' winking eyes;
watching the chalk line,
aeroplane trails in the sky
cut through the blue.
Oct 23, 2017
Oct 23, 2017 at 7:01 PM UTC
two penneth of chips and trips t' bay
school's out for Summer
we're all on holiday
and
the budgie died last night,
but dad said,
it flew away.
The Beatles on the telly
some
yellow submarine,
being young back then in Lancaster was
just like living in a dream
and ice cream after dinner
from
the man called Mr Whippy,
he sells his cornets every night
just outside the chippie
where Rita and her husband
make fresh batter to coat the fish
and I wish that I were back there
in the passages of time.
May 3, 2017
May 3, 2017 at 4:37 PM UTC
Here in Oz, they're banning fairy tales,
Indeed, a giggle did not fail,
Children's lit must be correct politically,
Here's the new style ode for thee,
Listen up and you shall see.
Skippy has two mummies,
Their boyfriends spat the dummies,
Now Skippy's mums got preg,
Their boyfriends did renege,
So along came little Skippy,
Hopping off to eat Mr. Whippy,
Yes, totally correct politically,
New fairy tales for the kiddies,
Skippy has two mummies,
Our norms do change, it seems....
Apr 6, 2017
Apr 6, 2017 at 4:48 AM UTC
Woke up at sun up
as the night burned
in Bacup.
Lancashire bred
no use for t'bed
'cept for occasional slumber
and if she calls my number
the less occasional
fumble.
It looks a nice day
for *********
on a boat out
from t' bay
or just for laying and
for lazing on sand.
It would be grand
if thee'd come and join me
for a dip in t'pool,
then lunch from the chippie
and afterwards a walk down
the prom' with
a Mr Whippy along
for company.
I'm off now
wi' nets,
no answer from thee
I guess I'll be
********* today.
Jun 18, 2017
Jun 18, 2017 at 1:34 AM UTC