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.
The Knockers
Buckled-up backbones and crippled-up lungs,
Slag-covered faces and slag-covered tongues,
A long social ladder with negative rungs –
Who’d want to be a miner ?
The pit-pony sappers and donkey-work crews,
Collapses, explosions, and cancerous ooze,
Loyally coughing up union dues –
Who’d want to be a miner ?
Better to sweat in a mill or a diner,
Why, even the farmhands live finer !
Who wants to trudge out for an hour each way,
For a pitch-black and unpaid damn hour each way –
Well, maybe for Orwell, but hardly today,
For much has got better since then –
There’s gadgets that monitor gases, you know,
There’s baths at the pit-head, there’s lights down below,
And children were banished a lifetime ago.
So much has got better since then.
Of course, I’m just an outsider,
So what can I say ?
And yes, I see all of your pride
In your hard-digging day –
But is this your hopes for your kids
When it’s their turn to play ?
From Maerdy to Maltby, from Pittsburgh to Perth –
The sweatshops of Hell in the bowels of the earth.
Much has got better, but much is the same –
It’s ev’ry bit deadly and harsh as they claim,
And given the choice, who would stay in this game ?
Who’d want to be a miner ?
They’re breaking their backs as they’re earning their brass,
And working the hardest of all working class,
To lose out to the North Sea and natural gas.
Who’d want to be a miner ?
Ton after ton till your body is done,
And when will you next see the sun ?
Jet-black the spade-men – yet shining, their eyes,
From the guts of the planet they’re grubbing their prize,
In filthy conditions and filthier skies,
Let’s bring them back into the light.
They’re digging-up carbon from safe in its berth,
They’re warming our hearths as they’re warming our earth,
They don’t need to kill us to show us their worth.
Let’s bring them back into the light.
Of course, I’m just an outsider,
So what do I know ?
And yes, I see all of the pride
That your town has to show –
And were all the pits to close down,
Well then, where would it go ?
For deep underground there lies captured your soul,
With nothing left topside ’cept bleakness and dole.
I wrote this a few days after Margaret Thatcher died. As one of the first politicians to take climate change seriously, can we imagine her destruction of the UK coal industry was all to save the planet – or a cynical piece of union-busting ?, particularly when it resulted in having to import coal from abroad to keep the lights on.
The knockers of the title were spirits in the mines who would knock the walls ominously just before a cave-in.
A Great British Tradition
The banks all held a holiday, with ev’ryone invited:
These pin-striped bowler-hatted gents were thoroughly delighted
To paddle in the briny sea with crowds of day-trip workers,
And hike the green and pleasant hills and join the mansion-lurkers.
They greeted bakers, plumbers, teachers, ev’ryone from ev’ry measure –
Watched the doctors, taxmen, postmen, ev’ryone about their leisure.
’Cept for those, of course, who had no need for such a lazy day,
Because these reckless banker shits had stolen all their jobs away.
News Snooze Cues Muse Schmooz
I met her in the silly season:
Ace reporter Lisa Leeson –
Met her in the Summer, as it moved from high to late.
She said she newly had the time
For chilling with a gin and lime,
And meeting with a stranger for a secret steamy date.
Until the proper news arrived,
She churned-out waffle, faffed and skived,
To dodge the z-list luvvie-spotting at the village fete.
And so we spent the Summertime
Away from wars and wonks and crime,
And nothing went on happening in law and trade and state.
Not a love-nest, romp, or threesome,
Just myself and Lisa Leeson,
While the ever-greedy presses must procrastinate –
And so we joined our choice of queues,
With not a thought to check reviews,
For visits to the restaurants, the movies, and the Tate.
But Summer changed to Autumn brown,
And cooler breezes teased the town,
And she could hear the calling of the headlines and the hate.
So Lisa Leeson bid farewell,
And broke our silly Summer’s spell
By quitting idle drifting for a world that would not wait.
Skywriting
Infact, they both used pencils
Up until Nineteen Sixty-Seven,
When a privately-researched pen was announced
And NASA and Cosmonauts quickly renounced
Those flammable, lead-shedding pencils –
Americans first, with Apollo 7.
They should be so proud, that commie space-guys
Are writing with Yankee-most free-enterprise.
The Gravity Pin
Paperweight, paperweight, glorious paperweight,
Balanced on letters and jottings and files –
And whether beneath you are crooked or straight,
They are anchor secure in obedient piles.
Caveat Emptor
You need saving, I think, you need saving –
I don’t know from what, but you need it, and I got it.
I choose to lease myself as investment in your craving,
(Though nothing gets refunded, as your credit-rating’s rotted.)
You think I look expensive, and you think you can’t afford it –
When your faith is unsecured, and your int’rest rate obsessed.
With all emotions overdrawn, your hope is due an audit –
Now you’re out of guarantee and about to be possessed.
Expensive ? Me ? Most surely yes,
And very very dear –
I will cost you ev’ry single thing, and nothing less –
I will cost you all you know, and all that you express –
Your ev’ry laugh and ev’ry scream,
Your ev’ry try and ev’ry guess,
And I will cost your ev’ry lie, and ev’ry truth sincere.
Your ev’ry insecurity and neurologic mess –
They all belong to me, you hear ?
Mine is your perdition, absolution and confess,
Mine the power to repress,
Mine the power to redeem.
I shall be your angel engineer,
To grease your thread and mesh your gear,
And shine your rusting soul with my caress.
You need saving, I think, you need saving –
God knows as from what – you don’t know it, but you’ll get it.
I choose to bond myself upon the markets that you’re braving,
Expose my soul to risk until we’re equally indebted.
You think I look expensive as I gilt your fraying edges,
But you’ll enter into contract on my exponential sureties.
My platinum promissory shall underwrite your pledges
As you finally take stock of all your life-assured securities.
Dizzying ? Me ? Forever yes,
And very very sheer –
I shall cost you ev’ry single thing that you possess
I shall cost your ev’ry hope, and watch them coalesce.
Your presentide is mine to gleam
Your morrowment is mine to bless
And though I know this terrifies, I’ll help you persevere.
For mine shall be your ev’ry waking thought and sleeping dream,
Mine your ev’ry failing scheme,
Mine your ev’ry sweet success.
Guilt and joy and lust and fear –
They cost far more than money mere,
And these are how you pay for me – by bushel, peck and ream.
And then, what is more, I press
My darling with an added stress –
For not just shall you suffer this to give your love supreme.
But see, you must attend my tear –
For like you, I too revere –
So now you must accept the very same from my extreme.
Give my passions safe address,
For we are quartz, my love, and we are steam.
I intended this to be a metaporical contract near the start of a relationship where one side is saying that they will monopolise all of the other’s attension, but when shown to friends they saw it differently – one thought that it was some pretty hardball divorse negotiations, while another saw the narrator was money itself. Hey, if these work for you, have at it.
Versificator Regis
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.
Hazardous & Dangerous & Greatest
“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.
Rhyming Couplets 