Twinge Whinge
If it’s true just as they say
That that which does not kill today
Shall only make us stronger yet
Then boy !- for all the bugs I get,
For all the lurgies, all the flus,
The injuries and aches and ooze –
For all of that, I should, I vow,
Be bloody Superman by now !
Endless Rolling Fields
All my growing years were spent
In villages and country lanes,
Alas ! For I was always meant
For city streets and busy trains
And all those years against my will
Would only serve to stoke my dream –
They stole my time and served me ill,
Depriving me of smoke and steam.
My parents thought it best for me
To live in rural peace,
But I was sick of cows and geese,
And waited for my destiny.
And so I suffered Summer days
With nothing doing but the bees –
I’d wander through the wooded ways
And couldn’t even name the trees.
Some had burrs to ruin jumpers,
Some I’d climb or hang a swing –
Some were conkers, some were scrumpers,
Some had dandruff in the Spring.
But otherwise they were the bars
Around my rural cage,
Their green and brown forever beige,
Their fruits forever trapped in jars.
But now and then, I got a taste
Of glamour, in the local towns –
But oh, it hurt to see what waste
My life had been upon the downs.
For here were markets for exploring,
Full of wonderments to buy !
And here were buildings, gleaming, soaring,
One, two, three, no four floors high !
And that was when those shining stones
Broke through my rural hold.
I knew the streets weren’t paved with gold,
But granite flags and herringbones !
It wasn’t till I finished school
That I was finished with the sticks
I mustered all my pent-up fuel,
And then I ran – I ran to bricks.
I left my folks upon the green,
For we could not be reconciled.
They love their world so small and clean –
I’m surely an adopted child !
But I still visit, for all I knock it,
Back to their rural lot
Just as long as I know that I’ve got
A return stub safe in my pocket.
Unto Those Who Have Shall be Given
Is Mammon then the new religion ?
Well, the wealthy always love a feast –
And even bankers care a smidgen,
Looking to the rising of the East.
Oxonites and Grantabridgians
Hail economists as modern priests.
But who will feed the hungry pigeons
When the gurus prowl with bigger beasts ?
They cast the runes and read the guts,
They tighten belts and order cuts,
They short on ifs and hedge on buts,
And half the time they’re nearly right, at least.
So is the market of the bull
The gilded temple of the Golden Calf ?
The debtors push, the futures pull,
And prophets lease the rod to pay the staff.
The brokers of the stock are full
Of warnings and of lunches and of graphs,
While sheep are fleeced of all their wool,
And dealers trade in bitter tears for laughs.
They watch the clouds and read the leaves,
They loosen ties and roll their sleeves,
They sup with kings and drink with thieves,
And all our prayers are now worth only half.
Volume to Area
A cube of side-length 1 tharg long,
Has an area of six thargs squared
And a volume size of one tharg cubed.
That’s one to six, when they’re compared.
But now let’s double up its size
To two tharg lengths, and suddenly
The area is twenty-four,
The volume eight – that’s one to three !
So scaling up the width each side
Will jump up what is held within ?
Well, in proportion, so it seems –
Except in truth it’s all just spin.
Let’s take that smaller cube once more,
And measure it along the side
And find it isn’t one at all,
But now six zorbies wide.
It hasn’t grown, it hasn’t shrunk,
But now it’s strictly one to one –
The lesson I have taught today
Is never trust statistics, son !
Mr & Ms
If ev’ry man’s a Mister,
Then ev’ry woman is a Miss.
Yes, even those in wedded bliss –
For single, married, we don’t care.
To ev’ry bro and sister,
We each have names, as is the norm –
Yet when we need the family form,
We add an honorific there –
There’s only two we need
So’s to speak to ev’ryone we meet –
For ev’ry face on ev’ry street
Is either Mister or a Miss.
If egos have to feed –
Be it Baron, Father, Dame or Sir,
I couldn’t care what you prefer –
We each are this and only this.
So shove your Highnesses,
And Justices and Reverends –
This snobby title-tattle ends,
So stick it up your upmanships.
We’re equals, nothing less –
We’re Miss and Mister, first and last,
We’re colleagues of a single caste –
For life’s too short for sporting pips.
The title should of course be pronounced as ‘mister and miss’.
Sonnet for the Shrews
Come, mistress, stay – no patriarch am I !
No zealous male, yet you rebuke me so –
I never wish to dim your spark of eye,
For not all men are as Petruchio.
I plead, do not agglomerate my sex,
And score the mixture only by its worst –
When many brothers scant deserve this hex
Of deeming women-passionate as curst.
If chauvinistic authors grumble loud
And laud a brute as model for our kind,
Then know of we who wish you still unbowed
And retch at thoughts of taming such a mind.
Far better shrews, for shrewdness thence hath sprung
In women sharp of wit and swift of tongue.
Free Mulling
“No Free Will” can mean two different things –
The first of these is in our brains
That we’re simply biological robots,
Thinking we’re free but forever in chains.
The second is that the Future exists,
It already exists, so it has to arrive –
And the only way from here to there
Is to give up choice and to let fate drive.
According to boffins, it’s out of our hands,
That we’re all algorithms just floating in space,
And the only uncertainty’s not us, but quantum,
And anyway time is all over the place.
Now I know pressure, and I know predictable,
And I know duality – a body and a soul –
But minds are physical, products of biology,
Not separate from bodies, but under their control.
And yet…And yet…
Honestly ?
I mean, yes, I get what they’re trying hard to say,
But it doesn’t sit with me.
I don’t feel a slave even on the dullest day –
You know, I’m feeling pretty free.
And yes, we could be programed so we never notice anyway,
Or maybe we’re just bluffing.
I mean, we’re self-aware – does that count for nothing ?,
Not that the universe would care.
But when it’s down to tails or heads,
To blues or reds,
Or jazz or blues,
That barely even matters which we choose –
Well…have we still the power to refuse ?
And as for that time thing…what’s there to discuss ?
How did the future even get ahead of us ?
They say it isn’t set,
That we still get to select,
Except, of course, except,
That the causes haven’t happened yet,
But all of the effects are in effect.
But come on, we all know that it’s bollocks !
Of course we all get to make a choice,
We’re not all living in a virtual simulation,
And there is no cosmic script that we must voice,
Now normally I show respect to scientists,
But normally they have to prove their stuff –
So I’ll rely on common sense and take responsibility,
And I’ll be free, at least – or free enough.
Fewer & Less
Actually, I think you’ll find,
For nouns of the countable kind,
We shouldn’t say there’s more at all
But manier bricks in mucher wall.
Sleep of the Blessèd
I don’t know why I’m gifted so,
To sleep as tightly as a tree –
To close my eyes and just let go,
And slip into eternity –
Where aeroplane nor car alarm
Nor deep pneumatic drill
Can rouse me from my safe-from-harm
Before I’ve slept my fill.
I’ve heard it said a guilty soul
Will lie as skittish as a foal,
And never find repose.
Now I, I never was a saint,
And yet I dream without constraint
When sweetly comatose.
I don’t know why I’m fortunate
To sleep as soundly as a stone,
Until my eyelids raise the gate
To marvel how the night has flown.
Oblivion is long my friend
Who waits in Timbuktoo.
I swear, the World and all could end,
And I would sleep on through.
I’ve heard it said that peaceful minds
Have little need for warmth and blinds,
When tiredness prevails.
Now I, I am not pure and deep,
And yet I still could harvest sleep
Upon a bed of nails.
Harlequins
They started coming over here a decade back or so,
A few at first, and hardly noticed, where the good winds blow.
Of course, the many coats they wear have helped, despite their glitzy show.
At first, we thought how marvellous to find such guests as these –
A touch of the exotic in the roses and the peas,
And something to replace the sorry absence of the friendly bees.
But now we hear they’re taking jobs from seven-spotted lads,
Or that they breed too many kids compared to local dads,
And even claims of bullying, from roaming gangs of bolshy cads !
And sheltering through Winter in a corner, in the gloom,
We find them huddled with their kind, at twenty to a room –
A lack of integration with the natives, is what we assume.
They offer services for thrips, which two-spots can’t compete in –
The gardeners are overjoyed, the unions are beaten.
And does it really even matter, if the aphids all get eaten ?
The market does its work, with consequences untoward –
They gobble up their rivals to monopolise the board –
They’re less a friendly immigrant, and more a raging mongrel horde !
Yet maybe we’re reacting to a non-existent wrong –
Let’s leave the species to it, and they might just get along,
With more than plenty greenfly shared among this multi-cultured throng.
But let’s not read too much comparing ladybird and man,
For beetles run on instinct, with no higher thought or plan.
They cannot make a compromise – but we are humans, and we can.
Rhyming Couplets 