First Past The Post
Roll up for the Chiltern Hundreds,
Try to catch the gerrymander,
Ev’ry safe constituency’s
Always worth a gander.
Fetch the rosette off the lamppost
And strap-on your parachute
The borough may be rotten,
But the bribes are full of loot.
Then off to the Lords you toddle
With your handshake dipped in gold,
They’ll barely even notice you
In sleepy Sarum Old.
Rosetta
She knocked on my door in hustings season,
To canvas support for her tribe –
Her eyes were so full of enthusiasm,
She held such a positive vibe.
She briefly ran down some policy bullets,
And proffered a leaflet or two –
For sixty seconds, I stood transfixed
As she painted a world anew.
My cynicism was ducking for cover,
My probing questions were lacking flesh
As she sparked a fire for change, any change –
Maybe hers, maybe others’, but something fresh.
And then she was gone to my neighbour’s door,
And I slowly recovered myself,
As I shuffled back into my hallway,
And dropped her flyers unread on the shelf.
Rotting in the Wrong Job
How did I end up here ?
This was never the job I wanted.
It’s not just that I’m disappointed –
I’m living in daily fear !
I’m out of my depth, you see,
At this role I somehow managed to land,
That’s willing to pay me a few more grand –
At least, till they rumble me.
Could I not step back a role ?
But no, my former job is gone ,
And I must be seen to be moving on,
Or failure will haunt my soul.
How many others would love this chance,
Whom fate has equally un-blessed ?
So many of us are bored and stressed
As the Market does its dance.
I don’t want to be a slob,
Or a leech who does sod-all all day
And doesn’t care, just pockets his pay.
I want to be proud of my job !
I want to make a difference,
To labour hard with dignity !
To feel I’ve earned validity –
Or at least, self-confidence.
I daily desp’rately apply
For ev’ry begging vacancy,
To ask them, “whaddaya make of me ?”
The answers terrify:
“You’re not our sort, by far.
You aren’t already one of our crew,
So why should we take a risk on you ?
Just who do you think you are ?”
“You think your job is wrong ?
Then that just makes you damaged goods
So don’t come around our neighbourhoods –
Get back where you belong !”
The Soviets were equally daft,
Controlling who worked where at what,
And no dispute of the jobs they got –
And how the Free West laughed !
But from my dead-end track,
I may not be so centrally-planned –
But I’m pinned-down by the invisible hand,
Just waiting for the sack.
Till then, my bonds are fast.
And what have I achieved round here ?,
But the bloody waste of another year,
Till my prime is long long past.
Gotcha Gawkers
Hypocrisy should never be in season,
And schadenfreude is no excuse
I don’t care how self-righteous the reason,
I don’t care how ironic the noose.
Don’t tell me that they had it coming
As you jettison all your principles.
Why the rush to be gutter-slumming ?
Why the lies to convince the fools ?
There is never a right time to welcome sleaze,
And the means are never absolved by the ends.
If I hate such use from my enemies,
Then I hate it so much more from my friends.
Collaterals of Feminism
Medea was born in privilege
Who was then done bad by men.
And boy, does it drive her over the edge
As she whinges agen and agen.
She expects the world by dictum,
Who has worked not a day in her life.
She lectures how she’s a victim,
As she murders her ex’s wife.
She is offered escape to a five-star joint
To be bitter in peace, as it were.
Yet she butchers her kids just to hammer a point,
And to make it all about her.
The most tedious kind of psychopath
Who’s two-hour rant must run.
With the audience chastened for wanting a laugh,
And daring to hope for some fun.
To Have & To Hold-Off
When I was nine, they told me,
I would marry,
Some day, long away.
I wondered who she’d be,
Whom I would marry –
Would I get a say ?
I knew I’d have to wait,
And so I waited –
But was led astray.
I thought my future fate
Was overrated –
I would rather play.
When I was seventeen, I learned
That I could marry
There and then.
I was of age, the right was earned,
To marry
Sue or Imogen.
Not that I knew of Sue,
Or Jane, or Kate,
Or any girl like that –
I had exams to do,
They’d have to wait,
I hadn’t time to chat.
When I was twenty-two, I felt
No hurry,
I had long enough –
I played my hand as dealt,
With not a worry
’Bout that marriage stuff.
I never doubted I
Would still succumb
To walking down the aisle.
But not today, I’d sigh,
Though not so glum –
Best put it off a while.
When I was thirty-three, my oldest friend
Got married
Out the blue.
I wondered if this were my end ?,
And tarried
On the best man’s pew.
Should I be busy scouting out
A wife ?,
Had I now come to this ?
Was I now forced, despite my pout,
To share my life
With wedded bliss ?
When I was forty-four,
And still not married,
I was short of time…
I could delay no more,
For all I parried,
Burning through my prime.
I had to face the fact
It’s now or never –
I was flabbergasted !
Had to get my act
Quick up-together,
While the music lasted…
But now I’m fifty-five,
And still unmarried,
Yet am quite content –
I found that I can thrive
When left unharried
By the Big Event.
No more anticipating
To propose,
And life is no less good.
I am no longer waiting –
But who knows,
One day, I guess I could…
Tom, Dick, & Hooray !
Why are we still telling tales of Tom Jones ?
A Georgian lad with a leg to get over –
So honest and randy and easily led
Beneath ev’ry petticoat, straight into bed.
Wide-eyed and panting, they call him in moans,
As he’s shagging through shires like a journeyman rover –
But deep down he’s pining for saintly Sophia,
And wouldn’t you know it, he’s really a squire !
Why are we still making love to Tom Jones ?
A privileged lad who will caution for nothing.
Where women are scheming, with wanton presumption,
Except for his virgin, who’s lacking in gumption.
But is he a victim to his very bones,
Whom the wealthy corrupt when in need of a stuffing ?
Yet he’s too busy romping to care for abuse,
As the good-for-the gander has plucked him a goose.
I should point out that I always understood that in the 1700s (or indeed the 11700s), ‘Sophia’ did indeed rhyme with ‘squire’ (as long as your accent wasn’t rhotic, which was lucky, as the better sort were shunning such yokel diction, and thought all such Somersetters were talking arse, so to speak).
As for the novel, it is a fascinating record of the times – the tale of a boy from nowhere who is exiled from the green green grass of home, only to fall prey to many a delilah and sex bomb. Of course, as such tales go, it’s not unusual, and certainly not what’s new, pussycat.
Too Many Winks
Some nights, I swear I wake up far more tired
Than when I went to sleep
As if my dreaming mind is overfired
With all the thoughts that leap.
I blame the Moon, who’s too full and romantic,
Sending me his glow –
He makes my nightly visions so gigantic,
Putting on a show.
Some nights, I swear I live a year inside,
Upon my sweated bed.
All Summer long, with blinds and windows wide –
But nothing cools my head.
I blame the Moon, who’s far too round and bright
And keeps my slumbers stressed.
I need to hang some curtains, dim his light,
To get some proper rest.
Season’s End
Another season over, hey ?
There’s no more football after May,
I think the FA Cup was Saturday.
Oh wait, this is an even year,
So the World Cup or the Euros must be near,
Within a month or two.
I doubt I’ll watch it much or cheer,
But hear results from colleagues, as you do.
I’m not so much a fairer-weather fan,
As a blue-moon pair-of-eyes, I guess.
My attention span is twice-a-season, maybe less.
It pops up on my radar
In a pub or in the press,
Or I maybe hear the sports news in my car.
Two-nil, three-one, goalless draw,
But don’t ask me the offside law.
However, at those moments
When it bubbles up again in-mind,
I wonder how the local team are doing ?
Have all of their opponents left them far behind, once more ?
All administrated, relegated, powerless to score ?
Or are they flying high this time,
Pursuing record-signings, epic cup-runs, in their prime ?
And am I missing out on must-see viewing ?
But then the next song plays, and I forget.
And all their efforts pass me by to no regret.
I might yet catch a casual match, or maybe not
But either way, it’s soon forgot.
So, no more football after May,
Not that I’ll really notice that it’s gone.
Another season over, hey ?
And someone won and lost, and life goes on.
Counting Forwards
Imagine, if we like,
To the Earth when it was younger –
Let’s go back in our minds
As Rodinia accretes and binds.
Imagine all the life,
With its breeding and its hunger,
Is all within the ocean wide,
While all the land is dead and dried.
Go on back a billion years
To when the Tonian began,
And the first alga brave appears
In the inter-tidal span.
And let’s call this Year Thousand in our plan.
Now imagine, if you like,
A thousand million later –
To Britain, as it will become,
Through evolution’s endless sum.
Let’s use the past to take a hike,
To be our ad-hoc dater –
With ev’ry year that we explore
That’s adding-on a million more.
Ready ? Well then, come with me !
To Year One Thousand, long before,
When Vinland Vikings rule the sea
And early green specs dot the shore –
And let’s see history expand once more.
1000-1280
The Tonian is a long old stretch,
From Ethelred to Longshanks.
We’re not sure when things happened quite,
So none of these are strong ranks,
But sponges would appear to appear
Around the Fourth Crusade,
Just as we leave the Dark Age,
As the Boring Billion fade.
1280-1365
The Cryogenian grows cold,
As the mediaeval warmth recedes –
The plague upsets the status quo,
As animals succeed.
The monks and fossils leave their records,
(Fewer than we’d wish),
As peasants rise-up, and the jellies –
Both the combs and fish.
1365-1460
The Ediacaran, through the Hundred Years War,
Is a pregnant time.
The Agincourt slaughter sees new forms of life
Are on the climb.
We’ve so little idea what,
Though likely all the phyla we know
Are going their separate ways back then,
As the trade and prosperity grow.
1460-1515
Bang ! The War of the Cambrian Roses
And Henry Tudor the Trilobite.
Bosworth Field is awash with early fish,
As eyes first see the light.
Predators prey, so the shell evolves,
And the codpiece probes the way to dress –
And we know so much of those olden times
Because of the Burgess printing press.
1515-1555
The Ordovician sweeps the monks away
And ends in the great divorce –
The Little Ice Age causes mass extinction,
Though with a patchy force.
Most of the phyla shrug it off,
As do the merchants of the day,
While plants colonise a whole new world of land,
Down Mexico way.
1555-1580
The Elizabethan Silurian
Sees vascular plants grow bodice and ruff,
While armoured fish develop jaws
As Catholics have it tough.
The millipedes creep onto shore
While Mary Queen of Scots must flee,
And Francis Drake sails round the world,
While scorpions swarm the sea.
1580-1640
Awaiting the tetrapod armada in Plymouth,
Comes the Devonian span –
Sharks and ammonites emerge
In the Tempest of Caliban.
King James writes his Bible
On the wood of the early trees,
Till the Civil War extinction
Brings the shallows to their knees.
1640-1700
With the Carboniferous Restoration,
Amphibeans arrive.
There’s giant dragonflies in the endless forests,
Where spiders thrive.
They lay-down future coal, of course,
As London is aflame –
Till the Glorious Revolution,
When the reptiles change the game.
1700-1750
The Permian now joins Pangaea
With the Hannoverian line –
Dimetrodon and future-mammals
Have their chance to shine.
But from the North, a Great Dying
Sweeps them from their heights –
The lava traps of Siberia,
And the pikes of the Jacobites.
1750-1800
The Triassic sees a trident of firsts –
Pterasaurs, crocomorphs, dinosaurs.
The sea’s full of plessies and ichthies and turtles,
An empire stretching to distant shores.
But American lizards break away
From rule they call draconian,
And a great extinction’s coming-in
That’s all thanks to Napoleon.
1800-1855
The Regency brings us the Jurassic,
Victoria sees placentas get birthed,
While the Chartists challenge the old big beasts,
As the sauropods shake the earth.
The allosaurs fight stegosaurs,
While archaeopteryx soar above
Of the Valley of Death as India splits,
On their way to becoming a dove.
1855-1935
The Cretaceous next, but where to start ?
Pangea well-and-truly splits,
While flowers bloom for Victoria’s weeds,
And spinosaurs are Edwardian hits.
Veloceraptors perish in the Depression,
But T-Rex jazzes the town
With Triceratops to the very end,
When the asteroid comes crashing down.
1935-2000+
Into the Cenozoic we go,
As the atom bomb sees things get hot.
Mammals and birds diversify,
As hippy grasses grab their shot.
Hominids climb down from the trees
As Tony Blair brings-down the freeze –
Then Christmas Day in ’99
Sees farmers plant communities.
Imagine, if we like,
Where our journey goes from here –
What might the next long thousand bring
To life that’s ever-quickening ?
And when extinctions strike,
Then new forms suddenly appear.
History shows progress all the while,
Though fashions change the style.
But here, for now, our trek is done,
We’ve counted up the years we hold,
From an Anglo-Saxon simple son
To multi-cultured forms so bold.
They tell the greatest story ever told.
Happy birthday ! Yes, it’s true, Rhyming Couplets is turning six, so here’s a special treat for anyone who’s still out there.
Similar to my championing of the Holocene Calendar, I hate counting backwards, and can’t wrap my head around the numbers. Therefore I propose the Paleontology Calendar, which can either begin at 0 (equal to 2,000 MYA) when the Great Oxydation Event was coming to an end, or at 1,000 MYA when the first algae was colonising the land. The latter is more useful, as it results in three-digit numbers rather than four, as we don’t have much evidence for what happened prior to the Ediacaran fauna emerging (they’re not called the Boring Billion for nothing…) However, I’ve adopted the former here so that the dates can line up with European history to make conceptualiseing the events easier, at least for me. By happy coincidence, 1000 MYA is also when Bicellum first appears, which might just be the earliest evidence we have of animals evolving away from algae…
Note that all dates prior to the Cambrian are tentative and likely to change in the future. Just when the animal phylums diverged is unclear as there are very few fossils, and rely on DNA analysis and molecular clocks. Furthermore, the current estimated dates may be a few years different from their historical counterparts for the sake convenience (for example, some think that algae first poked its head out of the water as early as 1200 MYA). Come on, this is a poem, not a textbook !
Rhyming Couplets 