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Jingle-Worms
I know all year we’ve been skipping them, skipping them, Whenever they shuffled into play – But now it’s December, and the whole world’s sipping them, And we’ve no chance to slip away. I guess it’s time to be shipping them, tripping them, Their timing is no longer quite so wrong – For now it’s December, and the whole world’s gripping them So best to simply shrug and sing their song. Let the tunes be ripping And the sentiment be dripping As we flipping-well must belt another verse. We’ve spent all year so chippy With the luxury of nipping them, But now we must embrace their joyful curse. Altogether now ! Sing a song of sleighbells, Tinkle tinkle, In the snow – When the choirboys sing high Then the baritones sing low. But we’ll meet-up in the middle. Where the fast shall meet the slow – And we’ll sing it all again, All the month – it’s all we know. Ho ho ho.
Après avoir brisé toutes les devantures des magasins by Eugène Damblans
The Jists & The Jets
We celebrate the Suffragettes – Those terrorists made good, Forgetting all the Suffragists As a passive sisterhood. Yet the former wanted only wealthy women To get the vote, While the latter wanted not just Chelsea women To make the quote. We also forget the unsung million Of women manning the factories, Who did far more to shift opinion That a violent few reaction’ries. Yet Emmaline the Tory succeeded Over Millicent’s thwarted pen – It seems what women most needed Was to vote for the same old men.
Do fishes school in shoals Or shoal in schools ? Who cares ? Who sets these rules ? And are they herrings or are mack’rels ? Sharks just see them all as sprat-kills, Be they hammerheads or bulls. And dolphins call them balls of bait When wolfing fins onto their plate With click-and-bubble tools. We ought to ask the swarming bunch, Except, it seems they’ve gone for lunch… The fools !
Poet Laureates may think they’re minstrels as of old, And the keepers of collective kinds of culture – But the power of such poetry has long since faded cold, Like the tides of sacred dance or idol sculpture. The heart of our society has moved-on into music And to movies, and to comics, and to memes – This is our shared heritage – collectively we choose it, And subconsciously it permeates our dreams.
The arts have work to do, And when it’s done, They must give way. The world must make anew Each hero son To have his day. And poems, once so true, Are now unspun, no more to say.
So poetry is rarefied, like opera and heraldry – Irrelevant to most, and barely missed. It’s hived-off into enclaves, where its swallows public subsidy Because a few elites and pseuds persist. The people are intimidated, left to feel inadequate For not relating to this ancient form – But quickly, and quite rightly, shrug it off – so let’s not overstate Its presence in the psyche of the norm.
From Troy, to Middle Earth, to Tatooine, The stories sway – They have to prove their worth, To keep their sheen, Or slip away. And poems, long in dearth, Are barely seen or heard today.
The names of dogs shall change and flex, With the rise and fall of Gus and Rex, As their names are called around the lido – Though these days, no-one calls Fido. Folks in the park are a diverse lot, And so are their dogs – but none is Spot. Some names, it seems, are truly over – Hello Lola, goodbye Rover.
Alas, this is yet another piece of art that looked away before I could note its author…
Passing Glances
If eyes are magnets, We all share a pole, When pupils meet With a stranger’s soul – On a train, in a crowd, As we sweep and dart, The moment so quickly Pings apart. Our eyes downcast, And slowly glaze – We’d sooner avert Than share a gaze. We censure our stares, And apologies, If our lonely vision Should meet your eyes.
So you’ve formed a band, hey ? A bunch of like-musicians have joined-forced with each other. Time to chase that fame And choose a name For all of your future fans to discover – One that sticks in the mind okay, Yet’s easy to say, And you won’t be ashamed to tell it your mother.
We’ve all of us kept lists as kids, Whenever we heard a future name In a turn-of-phrase or a parlour game. Well, now it’s time to make your bids, Set all those quirky titles free – They may just be your new identity, For all the times you joked with a whoop “Now that’s the name of my future group !”
Don’t call yourselves after one of your members, For therein lies an ego – I guarantee, of all career-enders, This is the bitterest blow. The public assume the namee is the main-man, Until the members think the same – And what was a band when you began Becomes a bunch of sidemen to the Name. And girls, this doesn’t just apply to the dudes – So insist you’re a we and an us in interviews.
Now, if it contains three words or four, It may be a mouthful, Pretentious bull, And more manifesto than proper noun – But it may be distinct and int’resting, With a definite ring like nothing around. If so, resist the urge to water it down. For ev’ry word you unpick from your thread Is a little less grand and a little more bland, As if to admit you couldn’t live-up to its stead. Till you’re just one syllable, Easily killable, By keeping-on cutting till there’s nothing to be said.
Yet make sure your moniker sounds like your music – Don’t play metal in the name of a jazz quartet. But whatever public-label you pick, You gotta make it stick By showing no regret. Whatever you choose, however you want, Inscribe it with pride in a well-drawn font. Before you can even play a note, your brand Is the first that the world will hear of your band.
It’s just as vital as your onstage-looks, As your lyrics and your hooks and your tattooed breasts. Imagine it competing with your rockstar brothers On your album covers and t-shirt chests, And your tabloid headlines of drunken arrests. Will the kids double-take when they see it From Vietnam to Budapest ? Inhabit your name – believe it and be it, It’s what make your music diff’rent from the rest.
I’ve heard it often said, That mediaeval folks would fall asleep As soon as the Sun went down. And then they’d rise from bed, Around twelve or one, as the dark lay deep, From the peasants to the Crown. And they’d spend an hour or three Quite wide awake, with nothing to do, With the fires and the candles out. And they’d sit, presumably, As they’d shiver the midnight through, Awaiting drowsiness, no doubt.
The church is dedicated to a saint I’ve never heard of – To a Supine of Sardinia (or possibly Southend). A mural might have shown him once, before they scraped the dirt off, While the stain-glass is a patched-up jumble showing “Christ with Friend”. A reliquary hold his middle finger, so the wall-plaque claims, And possibly an eyeball, (though it may have been a sprout.) I asked the local vicar what his story was, but he just blamed “the heathens” And said Supine was a martyr to his gout.
The organist was more forthcoming, gushing over miracles – Like turning water into thirst, or plague into the pox. He brought a locust back to live by breathing on its spiracles, And made an old Ionic column weep, and found lost socks. He even taught a fish to swim, and once out-stared a snail, And he claimed that worms were demons when they crawled from out the earth. He went upon crusade – and found, then lost the Holy Grail, And he prophesised the world would end the year before his birth.
I wondered why no other churches recognised the man ? Have we all become so cynical, insisting on the proof, Until we haven’t got the space to celebrate an also-ran ? Why, the next thing, we’ll demand on prophets only telling truth ! But in the end, he met his fate when challenged on a cliff, When he said that God gave wings to all those strong in their belief. And so he died for faith – and just as real as any myth, Now he’s patron saint of bucket-men, (or possibly false teeth…)
When I wrote this, I thought it was too flippant. So I wrote the fourth verse to give it a bit more weight. However, on reflection it feels like an anti-climax, so I cut it off and present it below:
Relegated Relic
The church is dedicated to a saint I’ve never heard of – And yet somebody still knows him – and today that’s me, and you. And there’s plenty more I could have told, and I barely know a third of All the things that come attached to him, (regardless if they’re true). And I wonder if they’ll still remember me, a thousand years from now ? And if they do, what strange, outrageous feats will I perform ? So raise a prayer to Saint Supine, who made a convert of a cow – And celebrate the pilgrims who have wandered from the norm.
Rhyming Couplets 