Concerto for Air Guitar
Here comes the good bit, so as we rehearsed:
Now form-up the stance and keep that head bowed
With your instrument horizontal at first,
And once or twice peek through your hair at the crowd.
Now throw your head back as you work with that plec,
Then lean to your right as you let your left rise –
Now slide it on down that invisible neck,
Saluting your fans as you open your eyes.
Hundredfoots
Centipedes, ah centipedes, with more legs than blood veins,
Not like the millipedes – they’re rounder, you’re flatter.
Among the weeds are centipedes, articulated trains –
So how can you walk without causing a clatter ?
You gain two more segments each time that you shed –
That’s four legs per moulting, with more moults ahead.
So I don’t know, centipedes, quite how you succeed
When the insects can make do with six feet per tread.
Is it to lengthen your gut, or to strengthen
Your grasp on the earth, causing limbs to accrue ?
And if so, you sly lot, I’m wondering why not
Have billipedes, or trillipedes, or squillipedes too ?
Nat’ral selection, of course, has you firm in her grip –
It’s legs verses food, and at some point your fortunes must slip –
Though how many legs does it take for the balance to tip ?
Centipedes, ah plentipedes, with more legs than brains,
Though more brains than millipedes, if far fewer pins –
Bullet-headed batter-rams who plough through remains,
They’re moving slow by gearing low, to help sync their shins.
Silly slow millipedes, high in torque and low in speed –
Faster though than rotting leaves, upon which they feed.
You race them and beat them, you chase them and eat them –
But how many, Centipede, of legs do you ready need ?
Perhaps it’s your body that’s less planned than shoddy,
And just goes on growing till one day you pop.
You keep budding segments and each comes with legments,
All far too far back-there behind you to stop.
Centipedes, ah centipedes, you’re runners and dancers,
You’re bolted together, you’re slaloming chancers –
So rich in appendages, always – but so poor in answers.
Just-So Grammar
If you ever stumble on pronouncing a tricky word,
Or if you’ve often seen it written, but it’s one you’ve never heard,
Or if you find this language arbitrarily absurd,
Well, that’s because it really rather is.
The thing about this English, and the reason why it’s so,
Is just to show who’s truly in the know, oh doncha know,
And that’s why there’s still esses in debris and apropos,
It’s often less a language, more a quiz.
The spellings show the origin – the past, not present tense.
And even if the origin is wrong, that’s no defence –
For if we change the spelling, they will hate our common sense –
We’re punished with the snigger and the snub.
Well, pedants gotta pedant, and scolds gotta scold,
They make up all the rules, and the rules they then withhold,
And if we have to ask them, well, it’s too late to be told –
They’ll never let us join their little club.
No Sinjun
Sir John St.John the Sixth esquire,
Is strictly iambic and strictly a Saint.
He won’t stand for slurring his old money surname –
His Saint-hood is sacred, so ‘Sinjun’ he ain’t !
Sìr Jòhn Sàìnt Jòhn (to use sprung rhythm)
Was knighthed for service to country and queen.
It isn’t a parvenu baronet title
That’s passed-down with silver and eyes of grey-green.
Sir John St.John is a John at the double,
Whose handle is firing both barrels to boot.
The hyphen’s still present, though these days it’s silent –
The fam’ly tree’s old, but it’s still bearing fruit.
Sir John St.John is a doctor, also –
Dr. Sir John the surgeon, no less.
He once sojourned on a journeyman’s journal
In old St John’s, with its permanent ’s.
Sir John St.John has a inborn condition
That makes him assume that we jolly well care.
His symptoms assisted his self-diagnosis:
The syndrome of Sinjun Sinclair.
Sir John St.John, (like his father, Sir John),
Insists as the firstborn, his name gets full worth –
He claims both his Johns by the right of tradition,
And claims he’s a Saint by the right of his birth.
The High Cost of Knowledge
Life is full of spoilers – there’s no way to avoid them,
However much we try to shut our ears and plug our eyes.
Upon the ether, through each chink –
These rumours reach us out-of-sync.
Life is full of spoilers – we just have to abide them
They leap out of the bushes and they creep up in disguise.
It’s rarely cruel, it’s never fate,
But sometimes warnings come too late.
We’re creatures with a mouth and with a will,
And if the price for censorship is never letting banter slip,
I’d rather keep the quips, for good and ill.
Life is full of spoilers, from those who steep the boilers,
And don’t cut back their stoking to preserve some heat for later –
And from these spendthrifts, gossip comes:
Sometimes whispers, sometimes drums.
So life is full of spoilers, and unintended foilers –
Annoying, yes, but don’t assume each blabber is a traitor –
With so much on the telegraph,
It’s no surprise we blow the gaff.
We are a talky species, let’s recall,
And if the price for ignorance is sharing no more than a glance,
I’d rather take my chance and hear it all.
Attacat
There is a cat who watches trains
And makes his home in signal boxes,
Lives beneath the weathered gables,
Catches rats who chew the cables.
Grey, he is, with smoky grains
That fleck his coat the way of foxes,
’Cept the tramlines down his back
Which earn his name of Clickerclack.
They shine out silver, brow to rump
They even bear the marks for sleepers –
Branded thus, his fate assured
His working for the Railways Board.
So where a plague of rodents clump
Within the homes of signal-keepers –
Unannounced by midnight freight
Comes Clickerclack to extirpate.
He bites, he claws, he chews in half
And shreds them into vermicelli –
Drives them out and leaves his scent
To fright them off resettlement.
And when his work is done, the staff
Will feed him fish and rub his belly.
Then it’s off to boxes new
Aboard the 07:22.
Breathless
And a great stillness then knew me,
As a lightness of thought did rock me then.
I thought how the Lord had come to me;
Alas, it was but lack of oxygen.
ONE two THREE four
Don’t you play that song again –
Really oughta be so funky,
Shame the drummer just ain’t spunky –
Plodding, stomping, session flunky,
Pissed-up, coked-up, beat-seat monkey.
He don’t get above a stroll,
He don’t got no rock and roll,
Don’t got rhythm, don’t got soul,
Don’t got mojo – goddam troll !
Stick them drumsticks, stick them drumsticks,
Stick ‘em up his glory-hole.
Thrash and prang with each kerrang,
He thumps them stumps with crash and bang,
And so from rock to plastic pop,
Your four-on-four will dick and dick and never stop,
And still the beat goes on.
So don’t you play that song again –
Backbeat’s back is broken, smashed up,
Merchandising sell-outs cashed-up,
Doped-out, hashed-up, secret stashed-up,
Shagged-out, lashed-up, nasty rashed-up,
Only beats in tedium,
Parties like a lady bum,
Groupies strictly medium,
Rocking strictly stadium.
Stick them cymbals, stick them cymbals,
Right up his palladium.
He pounds each skin with shovels in,
His adequate won’t quit this din,
And so from dude to burned-out pock,
Your four-on-four will suck and suck and never rock.
And still the beat goes on.
Unravelled
Seamstresses, it seems to me,
Have played us for a mug
In their wares we wear and buy –
The clothes in which we’re dressed
Are not so snug
In button, toggle, hook and eye,
When all can fall to pieces
Through a simple bug
In how they hem each cuff and fly:
It only takes a hanging thread
And gentle tug,
To show how lockstitch is a lie.
The Battle For Midweek
What can I say ? He’s just this guy
Who had his dreams, but not the will to make them fly –
And so he settled more and more for less and less, and by-the-by
He never did achieve that very much – he didn’t even try.
Rhyming Couplets 