There ! There in the middle of my cheeks, I swear – I bear the mark of freaks ! These cavities my face must wear Just undermine my steely stare – These hollow hickeys suck the chic From out my compromised physique. Oh, why must I be cursed to share The pinched-in dimples of the meek ?
I’d sooner acne, moles, or freckles Than these intermittent craters – Hardly think my lips need echoes Just to show my cheeks are traitors. But now, such is their two-faced work, They turn a smile into a smirk. Alas, they’re written in my cells – The cheesiest of tells.
Why on me and not my brother, Nor my cousins, aunts, or nieces ? But the worst is how my mother Loves to chub my surplus creases. Hardly wonder all that froth Would drive my teenage self to goth. I felt far safer with a frown When their depressions couldn’t bring me down.
Damn ! I always promised that I wouldn’t let the beggars show, Or that I’d let my whiskers grow. But if you like to see such flam on me, Feel free – but never tell me so ! I guess we’re wrinkled when we’re born, Or else that’s how my face has worn. I guess I should maintain a scowl, Or slather on the botox with a trowel.
Dented, vented, wrecked, and rent Is really not my style – I guess this must be what is meant When faces crack a smile. Did I once gurn on a change of breeze To trap my grin within parentheses ? I wish my apple cheeks were fruitless From this taint of enforced cuteness.
Oh Carol-Ann, what’s the plan, Why did you do it ? Why wallow in the treacle, And swallow back the bile ? Poor Carol-Ann, scrape the pan Of stodge and suet. First among the equals, Or stuck in rank and file ? Oh Carol-Ann, it seems these days your worth Is turning out for weddings and for funerals and births. Oh Carol-Ann, do the bay leaves hide the stink ? Or does your pseudo-crown somehow affect the way you think ?
Oh Carol-Ann, make it scan, Don’t make it tricksy: Your patrons are old fashioned By sev’ral hundred years. Come Carol-Ann, praise the clan, Each fop and pixie, And keep your passion rationed As you swap your pals for peers. Oh Carol-Ann, just a lackey of the old elite Praising little princelings, and sucking on the teat. Oh Carol-Ann, all that bowing sure puts up your back – I hope you do not choke on your precious butt of sack.
My garden is a rabble Of the pushiest of weeds – I wander through the scrabble Of these self-selecting seeds. I really should uproot them, But in truth, I’m loath to scoot them, When they bring the place alive, alive, Where lesser blooms won’t thrive.
I love the weeds for their weediness, For their entrepreneurial greediness, With none of your hot-housey neediness. Keep all your grasses and sedges and reeds, Just give me a garden of nothing but weeds.
My rose-bush is no stunner, And my aster’s called it quits. My beans have done a runner, And my melon’s gone up-tits. But see my clamb’ring bramble, And my bindweed web and ramble, And my nettles stretching high, so high – At least they’re never shy.
I love the weeds for their weediness, For their never gone-to-seediness, With none of your quaint little tweediness. Keep all your caulis and marrows and swedes, Just give me a garden of nothing but weeds.
With maggots on the rise, And with aphids by the score, I hope to soon see butterflies, And ladybirds galore. So when the slugs come feeding, They just help me with the weeding. Those bugs may all belong, belong, But so does blackbird song.
I love the weeds for their weediness, For their naught-to-invasive speediness, With none of your lack-of-succeediness. Keep all your cultivars, hybrids and breeds, Just give me a garden of nothing but weeds.
One day in our science class, we trooped out to the pond And trawled our nets to haul a hoard from out the wet beyond. We jamjarred up our specimens, our trove from out the deep, And took our volunteers back to have a proper peep. The swimmers and the sediments were busy in their dance, Or squished between the slides beneath our microscopic glance. Tadpoles and waterfleas, fresh-water shrimps, Algae and flatworms and dragonfly nymphs, Rotifers, water bears, snails by the score, Whilygigs, boatmen and duckweed galore. But best of all, the hydra: the monster in our lake – One day, or so the rumour went, it turns into a snake !
Hydra, hydra, Now that I’ve spied ya, I can’t decide what I love about you more: Your proof there’s a Zeus, or Your looks of Medusa ? Not hard to deduce you’re a snake down to your core.
Just think – an anaconda with a plethora of heads To slither round the playing field and stalk the cycle sheds ! But Mrs Patrick told us no, the two did not equate, For hydras were cnidarians, and snakes were vertabrates. The former lacked a brain as such, and var’ous other parts – (Though snakes, our teacher told us, were likewise not so smart, And multi-headed mutants would attack their conjoined brothers) But hydra bred asexually to be both spawn and mothers ! And better yet, they’d learned a trick for ageing without ageing By morphing from their adult selves back to their childhood gauging – So, rather like The Doctor, but with tentacles and stem. I’d like to see old Herc attempt to kill off one of them !
They say you have a silent c – Well, not with teenage me ! Cknidarians, cknidarians, Aquatic antiquarians: Preserving ancient shapes and genes, Behold the mighty cknidarenes ! If only Greeks had known of you, Just think what legends would ensue ! Instead, your polyps are maligned – Medusae, sure, but not the Grecian kind. Contrarian cknidarian, You slithered through myth-infested mind.
I think it must have been a day When ants were flying In July. A long and hot and wingèd day When ants were flying By and by. And that was when we chanced to meet, With grounded ants about our feet.
Those virgin queens and horny males, On scorching days In late July. The queens fly fast to test the males On scorching days When ants must fly. The lads were swarming when we met – But then, one shot is all they get.
The lucky males take turns to mate With picky queens In late July. Upon the wing, the ants shall mate – As jacks and queens Shall fill the sky. And I met you beneath their flights, With royal weddings in our sights.
The girls bite off their wings to reign As wingless queens In late July These girls will never fly again – But hey, the queens At least don’t die ! And you and I were changing lives, As queens got down to digging hives.
“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard.”
– John Kennedy, written by Ted Sorensen
We went to the moon and we wondered in awe, For now there was nothing, but nothing beyond us – If we could go there and could see what we saw, Then how could we come back to famine and war ? Just think of the challenges still to explore, The missions to finally bond us. We stood on the moon and we finally shone, We tested our nerve and we found we were equal – Now climate and poverty prove a tough sequel. But conquer we shall !, to learn from discoverings. We went to the moon, now it’s time to move on – It’s time to be doing the Other Things.
Sometimes, we feel, That we’ve given quite enough, And we’ve nothing more to spare, And we haven’t got the energy. And sometimes we feel That we’re running out of love, And we’re running out of care, And we’re running out of memory.
But those are just the times When the going’s getting steeper, That we need to dig the deeper, That we need to cheat the Reaper one more time. We haven’t got much left, But we need to heft together Or we’ll never get a better score – Unless we pump from ev’ry pore, We’ll only ever be okay. And that’s okay, I guess, Though it feels a little less, Like we sorta oughta try for something more.
Are we what we thought we’d be ? And are we disappointed That we’re only as expected ? Or are we double-jointed, Reconnected, K-selected, fancy-free ? Undaunted by the egotisitic, narcissistic Nature of each wannabe ?
It feels like half-time, two-nil down To Nowhere Town, Yet still we’re strangely optimistic – We’re not yet out the Cup, We’re warming up, We’re either brave or masochistic… But this ain’t all that we can get, And we ain’t even finished yet ! If we can’t go ballisic, Then let’s fix our bayonet !
Now to rise to the occasion, Now to mount a pitch invasion – Now to be less realistic, Now to spit at caution and regret. Time to muster all persuasion, Time to equal the equation – Time to be more Hellenistic, Time to make the inner Spartan sweat. Till, one day, they’ll write our names in Trajan In a Roman alphabet.
Let’s take another go. Maybe this time, I don’t know, We’ll catch a wave or hit our stride – At least we’ll get to say we tried. And maybe we can jump a little higher And can burn a little hotter than before – I guess we’ve gotta stoke the fire, Raise the steam and prime the core, And hustle ev’ry muscle Till they scream with something more !
By ‘mount a pitch invasion’, I mean by the players, not the fans.
The football books all said it, And they wouldn’t make it up – The more-than-hat-trick scorers In the world of the World Cup.
Ten were these men of honour, From ’38 to ’94, Though mostly pre-the 60s, When they still knew how to score.
Back in the days of black-and-white, And the studs were more like claws – Before the need for penalties To settle the goalless draws.
Leônidas, Wilimowski, Wetterström, it said, Schiaffino, Ademir, and Kocsis, so it read –
And Just Fontaine was next, And then Eusébio was last – And nothing more for twenty years – Those stars were in the past.
But then, from out of nowhere, Butragueño made his 4, And then Oleg Salenko Made it 5 to up the score.
And this was universal, It was there in ev’ry book – But then the list got shaky When they took another look.
Match reports from early days Were sloppy things back then – No camera to play it back, Just notebook and a pen.
So hard luck Leônidas, You were scored a goal for free, And likewise poor old Wetterström, Your storm was only three.
And Schiaffino, even worse, Was left with just a brace – And on those all-time scorer lists, These three leave not-a-trace.
Are four goals one-too-greedy ? Should a teammate get a chance ? But the Great-Man view of history Is all in the romance.
I’ve always thought there should be a specific name for four-in-a-game. Boot-trick ? Quad-trick ? Maybe top-hat-trick ? I hear the Spanish refer to it as a póker. And if a ‘perfect’ hat trick is one scored (in any order) from the right foor, left foot, and head, what would a ‘perfect’ fourer be ?
Sir Lucas Drake was a dragon of a knight: His scale-mail always polished bright, Charging headlong into battle, Stalling left and swooping right To circle round and dive again – His wind-filled cloak, his flying mane, His sword as sharp as any talon, Raining over foes with death To make their sabres rattle. He also had a fiery breath From quaffing claret by the gallon.
Sir Lucas Drake was a dragon of a knight, Yet his coat of arms would dishonour a sergeant: Not for him a griffon argent, Nor a wyvern passant gules – His blazon, rather, came a cropper, Listing not a battle-stopper, But a shield befitting fools: ‘Azure, a mallard with head vert, Naiant contourny proper’. Oh, how that blazon hurt ! A green-headed duck upon a blue ground, Swimming the wrong-way round.
Sir Lucas Drake was a dragon of a knight, But never one for courtly prattle. Back at home, he spread his wings Across his mountainous estate, And hunted game and sheep and cattle, Anything to fill his plate. Never one for kissing rings, Or hearing yet again the jest The ladies made at his family crest, So he’d retreat to his hilltop clouds Away from kings and madding crowds. Depressed, he’d often spend his days Within his keep, atop his gold, Asleep against the winter’s cold As jealously he’d guard each chattel.
Sir Lucas Drake was a dragon of a knight, Though he bore much wit from his brothers-in-sword Who rebuked his arms with much delight – “It seems our Drake bethinks he a lord: For look: Sir Luke, by his shield, is a Duc !” Sir Lucas would curse “That’s just my luck, To share a name with so artless a bird. I’m one quack away from a chicken’s cluck ! What forebear had I who was so absurd That such a pitiful nickname stuck ? It should be a lion or a viper-snake, Or a dragon – then they’d bloody quake ! But no, I’m a Drake – I’m a ruddy duck !”
I’m not quite sure about the third verse – does it interrupt the flow ? I still like it though, so it isn’t quite a lame duck yet…
By the way, the best pronunciation of ‘Duc’ is <dook>.And can I just say how much I hate the language of heraldry – write in in English, or write it in French, but this weird Norman-middle-English hybrid is…well, come to think of it, it’s the kind of snobbery we’d expect from people who still think that coats of arms matter. I love them for their history, but we’re not living in history. Well, okay, yes, we are allpart of history, because history never stops (despite what Francis Fukuyama may think…) But it only always exists in retrospect.
The facing-right bit is rare, and I’ve touched on it elsewhere. Since most knight were right handed, they held their shield in their left hand, so for the charge (which is the super-sniffy way to describe a depicted animal) to be looking forwards, it has to face to the left. Fine for in battle, but when hung on a wall or used on a letterhead, it always looks like it’s facing backwards, and possibly retreating !
