A Legacy in Bits
Ev’rything I’ve ever written,
Ev’ry poem, ev’ry play,
Are strings of ones and zeros on a flickering display.
Permanently hidden
In a hard-drive or a cloud,
So hard to leave behind for work so proud.
No-one knows my password,
Save my hacker and myself,
Since I never passed it on to someone else.
This security we’ve mastered
Will leave all my work unread –
It might as well be locked-up in my head !
Less Polymath, More Monomath
Leo, Leo, heavenly man,
A mathematician who became a priest –
You knew about sin, and cos, and tan,
And the factors of the Number of the Beast.
But you favoured Logos over logic,
Never counting the chromosomes of the Son –
So now you teach a numeric bodge
By claiming one plus one plus one is one.
Habemus Poppycock
The Pope gave a blessing in Latin,
To a rapt and clueless crowd,
Nodding along like they understood
This showing-off spouted aloud.
He might as well have spoken in Klingon,
To please a handful of nerds –
It would have done just about as much good,
To the un-understanding herds.
Perhaps the Pope is one of those pedants
Who cannot accept things change –
And thinks that holiness is got
From the old, exotic, and strange.
Though maybe he spoke in Latin
So to reach the ears of the Lord –
But does that imply that God is a monoglot,
Stubborn and easily bored ?
Incels
The world belongs to the charismatic –
The ones who grab the eyes,
Who get the jobs and get the praise
As the rest are shrunk to size.
They’re the ones who get the lovers,
And who get to say their piece,
Who limber-up the shiny pole
Before they’ve poured the grease.
Not like we losers, dumped-on and ignored,
Who you gladly shun.
I could write a thousand poems,
And you’ll read not a single one –
And I have ! I’ve put myself out there,
For the whole world to ignore.
Always the tenth choice, always forgotten,
And kindly shown the door.
Not even my family bother. Not even my friends,
Those few I have.
You don’t even trouble to mock me,
You don’t even point and laugh.
And when you notice at all, it’s only in hate,
At my loneliness –
You stoke-up your loathing, and relish your spite,
In panicked phoniness.
So spare me your pity, but also spare me a thought
Without disdain.
The world is cruel, but I’m not gonna go
On a killing-spree to complain.
I don’t hate women (sorry to disappoint),
I just want to connect –
Yet the world has labelled me as a weirdo,
A friend of a friendless sect.
The world belongs to the charismatic,
And even I am charmed.
For all I try to help-out likewise-souls
Before we’re harmed,
I get sidetracked by a beautiful smile
Or a loquacious mate-to-all,
And I send my eyes where a million others are looking,
Forever in thrall.
The STRUT-SCHWA merger
Phoneticians claim there is a diff’rence,
But it’s lost on me.
The sounds they make all sound the same in this sense,
But they disagree.
I’ve always found I put my putts in as I should,
With no mishap.
They ask me how I say ago, but that’s no good,
It’s all a TRAP
To make me cook my FOOT-ing – but I got away
With other sounds –
And though unstressed, my parrot has a LOT to say,
My MOUTH abounds.
I have no schwa, yet they insist I’m nothing but,
And lack the other.
That’s the wrong way round – my STRUT vowel loves to strut –
So hear me brother !
Dun’t be tut-tut muttering,
And shut-up huff-puff stuttering,
Cos mums and bucks and toughs and loves,
Come cut-a-rug just uttering !
Our skulls are humming, bloods are drumming,
You can’t smother us now, guv.
We sure ain’t parlous cos we’re schwa-less,
Under and above !
Kismet Cat
Felix the feline is one lucky cat,
When he’s flexing his whiskers and flicking his tail.
He flows full of favour wherever he’s sat,
As his belly is fed and his wishes prevail.
He’s better than strays, he thinks, when stroked and patted –
This fortune’s no fluke, but his fate, he infers –
For this Felis felicitous, flea-less and fatted,
The flux of the fluence is heard in his purrs.
Kae-Tlihn
Katelyns come in many shapes,
Though speak with just one voice –
For Caitlinns like to pulls such japes
And offer endless choice –
In just a pair of syllables,
Their spellings can’t decide.
They like to play us all for fools
And force us to decide.
But don’t they ever tire of all
The errors of their name ?
But at least whenever others call,
They’re all pronounced the same.
Parasites
Out there in the wood
Is the old oak tree,
Just lapping-up the sunshine,
All of it for free.
But there in its branches,
There lies the mistletoe,
Just sucking-up the sap
Of its clueless host below.
And there on this shrub
Is a little caterpillar,
That’s munching on the leaves
Like a cute and stealthy killer.
And inside of the bug there lurks
The grubling of a wasp,
As it chews-through the organs,
Squatting like a boss.
But inside the grubling
Is another, smaller maggot
Of a teeny-tiny wasplet
That will wear it like a jacket,
And inside of the maggot
Is a nematody worm,
And further inside that
There is a microscopic germ…
So they each are chowing-down,
And they each are getting fatter,
Till they burst-out of the body,
That they leave in such a tatter.
But the enemies of enemies
Don’t turn-out to be friends agen –
Just ask the plague that bit the fleas,
Then bit the rats, then bit the men…
Silicon Britons
(A Tale from the Fifties)
We’ll see them, on the bus,
Or cheering-on the football,
Or traipsing-round the National Trust,
Or belting out the Proms.
They’ll read The Times and join our clubs,
While adding to our footfall,
As they jostle in our lunchtime pubs,
And polishing their ROMs.
Maybe robots, maybe androids,
Meeting humans, kissing, breeding –
Raising mixed-race cyborgs
In the family Morris Minor.
They proudly learn to get-to-grips
With walking dogs and Sunday weeding –
British to their very microchips,
(Though made in China).
Custodia Golgothae
“Say ye, ‘his disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept’.”
– Matthew 28:13
“You what ? You want we let you take
The very thing we’re here to guard ?
And claim we couldn’t keep awake,
While you came by to simply shake
The boulder from the tomb ?
Have you a notion just how hard
And noisy that would be ?
Or how to fall asleep on duty
Likely means our doom ?
Keep your shekels, keep your plot –
And we shall keep our heads.
For losing corpses, like as not,
Is something that won’t be forgot –
And fatal to behold.
It’s late – best be off to your beds,
And let the fallen rest.
Remember him when at his best,
Not when he’s lying cold.”
Rhyming Couplets 