Agit-Proper
To arms, comrades !
And hands and feet –
Let’s take this to the street,
Across the land,
By gang and squad and band.
Mile by mile,
And brick by brick,
We’ll build and style the future quick,
We’ll sling the clay to see what sticks,
We’ll string the wire,
We’ll raise the spire,
We’ll kick the soil to drain the mire.
Let’s use our teeth to smile,
Our claws to pick,
Our boots to walk on fire.
Comrades ! Raise the alarms
In foundries and farms,
To lay down our guns
And ready our arms !
The Ascent of Icarus
Now hark, my son, you take these wings,
And fly ! You fly, because you can !
You fly for all your strength is worth,
Until all lands are in your span.
And you see all that I can’t see,
And never mind what gods may say –
You fly on up, towards the sun,
And maybe touch his face some day…
You fly, and you become a god !
For gods are made by what they know –
So you learn what the gods won’t say
And you take what the gods won’t show.
Just like Prometheus before,
And just like Newton yet to come,
You are the god the gods most fear
Who spreads the word and bangs the drum.
They claim the sun will melt your wings –
They scoff, until your dreams are heard
By star-struck brothers on a beach,
And giant leaps beyond the birds.
There’s many let their dread of hubris
Quench the spark that’s just begun –
But others leap with open wings
And dare to fly – so fly, my son !
Referendum
A vote was held.
For all we say we do not like
The outcome it has spelled –
A vote was held.
It’s too late now to criticise,
Or grumble how the populace
Should leave such matters to the wise,
Or how they fell for clever lies.
Or claim opinion has moved,
And new votes must be undertook
To catch the latest public mood
To verify what polls have proved,
To show our ranks have swelled.
But no. A vote was held.
If we should challenger ev’ry time
A vote should happen not to chime
With what we thought it ought to say,
We’d be about the booths all day !
And though the outcome couldn’t be much closer,
Nor, to our outlook, grosser,
One side had a slightly upper hand:
Their hand.
So there you go, and here we are, you understand ?
The rule of law is far more precious
Than a little politics.
A cynic’s tricks are less than gracious,
And the outcome must prevail –
To undermine the vote would be betrayal !
We cannot say “we won’t obey,
For just this once, but never more –
Just once, and then we promise that we shall !”
Too late to slam that stable door
When pitchforks march upon the Mall.
The day was theirs – the future too, for now.
It has to be this way.
Don’t pull the “it was only to advise” –
You know that’s lies, to disallow their say:
We asked them what they wanted,
All these working-hard civilians,
And on the day, undaunted,
So they told us in their millions !
Advisory ? Then take advice:
It’s time to pay the price.
A vote was held, a course was set,
And even though we might regret,
The threat that half our nation has rebelled,
So be it, let it be.
For we, who claim to be their betters, lost the bet.
And if the future asks us why,
We can at least still meet its eye, and help it see:
“A vote was held –
And far, far better this, than anarchy.”
Bless You, Dammit !
Save a place for me in Hell
Should you get there first.
Get the drinks in, anyhow,
And coin a joke or two to tell,
Dress up in your fine attire,
(There’s not much point in skimping now.)
Cos soon I’ll hit that lake of fire
With a raging thirst.
Save a place for me in Hell
Cos I don’t believe –
Just like many cohorts swell,
Who lived it good and lived it well.
I reckon it can’t be so bad,
When friends like these are those who dwell.
It sure ain’t Heaven, so be glad –
And raise a toast to Eve.
The Shape of the Pear
Oh, why did you have to choose that one ?
Of all I submitted, my only enthral.
But that one is nothing, ’tis makeweight and fluff
A ditty so petty, so bluffing and rough
I sent my perfected, my searing-most stuff
And all were rejected, excepting this one
Which you rank above all,
Which you published and all,
Which you say betters all, ev’ry poem I’ve done.
Oh, why did you have to choose that one ?
Of all I submitted, they only appal,
Bar this merest jotting of thoughts best forgotten
With metaphors fraught and with sentiments rotten.
Yet all were rejected, excepting this guff
Which you rank above all,
Which you published and all,
Which you say betters all; this one poem’s enough.
Oh, why did you have to choose that one ?
Of all I submitted, you favoured the small.
No really, no really, if only you’d hear me,
I hate that one dearly, if only you knew.
I’ve others a-plenty, oh let me send twenty,
For that one torments me, it’s not what I do.
Yet still they’re rejected as less than this trite,
Which you rank above all,
Which you published and all,
Which you say betters all, ev’ry poem I’ll write
Oh, why did you have to choose that one ?
Oh, why did I ever submit it at all ?
Between the Grooves
Paul is dead, man. Miss him, miss him, miss him !
So I call out to the devil, and offer him my bed –
I tell him “Sleep with me, I’m not too young;
But bring my lover back, put his words into my head.”
Satan he hears me, he has me believe:
“Just play all your albums, and listen where they’re slurred.”
He says “It’s fun to smoke marijuana,
It changes all music and the way you hear the words.”
So here’s to my sweet Satan –
I hear, against the flow, hidden in the track
The voice of Paul. Turn me on, dead man.
He speaks to me once more when I play the records back.
The odd-numbered lines are examples of backtracks, or backwards-masking, that people with more time and less care for scratches have found hidden in their favourite albums.
An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles
Two wings for casing,
And two wings for flying,
Mouthparts for feeding,
And feelers for prying,
Six legs for crawling,
And two eyes for peeping –
Scuttling and swimming
And buzzing and creeping.
Hundreds of thousands
Of species most fine,
And all of them based on
One winning design.
It’s All Good Stuff
Hear the dozen tongues that trip
Around the top of ev’ry bus –
They’re London’s latest membership,
As once the immigrants were us.
Not whence we came, but chose to dwell
Is what defines our each success –
And though we are our past as well,
It comes to matter less and less.
We’re changing daily, ev’ryhow,
As our subconscious makes its choice –
So we belong to London now,
It’s in our eyes and in our voice.
Each Word is a Species
Un·in·ter·es·ted – so dictionaries claim
Has meaning specific, restricted by rules;
Dis·in·ter·es·ted – it now means the same
To ev’ryday users of linguistic tools.
So Dis has migrated to Un’s patch of speak;
Is language more poverished ? Meaning dis-hanced ?
Nat’ral selection defavours the weak,
But look how im·par·tial is grabbing its chance.
Arachnophilia
Little Miss Schneiders has always loved spiders:
From miniscule monies to long-leggèd striders,
From purse-webs to orb-webs, to nursery sheet-webs,
From cobbled-up cobwebs to fussily-neat webs.
With eight legs and eight eyes (unless they have six eyes)
And just the right size to pose no sort of threat.
She loves all the spiders, does Little Miss Schneiders,
And thinks that tarantulas make a fine pet –
Who needs a red setter when eight legs are better ?
(Her parent won’t let her, but she’s hopeful yet.)
Little Miss Schneiders is smitten with spiders,
From burrowing wolves to ballooners and gliders.
But best of all, surely, is knowing how Britain’s
Are pussies – as cute and as gentle as kittens.
Imagine Australia ! What lurks inside her ?
There’s trapdoor and funnelweb, huntsman and redback !
But not for Miss Schneiders, who’s safe to love spiders –
For all of her widows are false, and not black.
Ev’ry September sees Little Miss Schneiders
Go searching the skirting and combing the coving –
For this is the season when spiders go roving,
The scent-spinning ladies and amorous lads,
All looking to hook-up as mammas and dads.
From bath-tub and cellar to guinea-pig hutch,
And under the pelmets there’s eggs by the clutch.
They dance on the walls and they sprint ’cross the rugs
For eight gorgeous eyes and for eight-leggèd hugs.
Little Miss Schneiders has always loved spiders –
They’re bigger than beetles and faster than slugs !
Rhyming Couplets 