Demergence
How long should we leave the Lego built
Before we break it down ?
How long will the sandy castle stand
Before its turrets drown ?
How long should we sit back and admire
The finished jigsaw puzzle,
Till it’s taking up the table space
Where other things could bustle ?
Time then to embrace the entropy,
Disrupt the orthodox,
And smash the status quo with relish
Back into its box.
Britannias
What ho ! I’m Ali,
Born in Cairo –
True-blue British, doncha know ?
Like squire Sanjay –
Mumbai-bred,
As English as a phone box red.
And then there’s Chang,
From County Down,
By bowler hat and Chinatown.
And Elzbieta,
Glasgow gal,
As fish-and-chips as any pal,
And Welsh Pierre
Of Montreal,
So fluent in the bat-and-ball.
The best of British,
Tweeds and cap –
As much as any other chap.
Fads & Fangles
It started with vinyl,
Then moved to cassettes –
Now cameras use film,
And our watches use springs.
For all we progress,
So we harbour regrets –
The world has gone wireless,
But we long for strings.
We’re too young to ever
Remember those days,
But we switch-out the hoover
For artisan brooms.
I wonder what’s next ?
A typewriter craze ?
A love for old diesels,
Because of their fumes ?
We’re questioning science
Like never before –
We’re leery of vaccines,
We’re losing our spark.
I hope it’s a fetish,
And not something more –
We’ve no use for luddites,
Or Ages of Dark.
It started with vinyl,
Then moved to 5G –
It used to be fun,
Till the humour was gone.
But if it’s just fashion,
Then let’s let it be –
Be retro today,
And tomorrow move on.
Fascists
The Nazis used to be quite rare,
With few who earned the name –
But now it seems they’re ev’rywhere
And free speech is to blame !
These random people on the net
Who think they get a say –
I call them out as fascists, yet
Their views leap by the day
I put them down, but still them come,
Replete with facts and stats.
I can’t believe how many scum
Are lurking in the chats.
They should be rounded up, the lot,
And left to rot in Hell –
And if you disagree, a spot
Gets found for you, as well…
Lying in State
I fully admit, I don’t understand
This waiting in line.
Hours and hours, as if it’s a test,
Come rain or shine,
To be a part of history, they say,
To mark the moment –
To prove themselves her loyal subjects ?,
Or maybe beg atonement ?
I fully admit, I don’t understand,
As the World looks on –
We’re not all doing this !, I cry,
Till my voice has gone.
I scoff and rant and pity them,
But I’m one of a very few –
And nobody’s lis’ning to me, of course,
They’re all watching the queue.
I fully admit, I don’t understand,
And I never will.
I hope this brings about a change –
No more standing still.
But right now, the status is in the quo,
The ink won’t leave the pen.
I’ve never felt so alien
To my fellow countrymen.
Qwerty Sonata
I can hear her fingers dancing, dancing,
Over the keyboard, rat-a-tat-tat.
The tempo always five-to-a-heartbeat –
I clock her typing, wherever she’s sat.
Her fingernails, a little too long,
Her bangles jangle, an octave higher,
Grounded by the bass of the spacebar,
And leak of her headphones bringing the choir.
I can hear our fingers dancing, dancing,
Stretching for shift, then back to home –
The double-letter quavers, the patter of delete,
And the rhythm of return as a metronome.
But not all keyboards are tuned the same,
Staccato or reverb in stroke-length and gauge.
I like it the most when we harmonise together –
An orchestra of typists, filling the page.
God save the Queen (but the Devil take the Plebs)
And so it begins, the Toady Race,
The public performance of grief –
Saccharine and suffocating,
Preaching your True Belief !
Posters declaiming official tears,
Tributes gushing with pomp.
Change the stamps and coins and anthem –
Such a jolly romp !
Get that sobbing good and loud,
And really have a bawl !
Hope your knees are in good shape
For the curtsy and the crawl.
Show yourself sufficiently sad
For ev’ry arse-licked toast –
Bow and scrape and bob and tug
Till the knighthood’s in the post.
Vive la République !
In other news, I see we’re going to get a bank holiday for the funeral. But we will continue not to receive a bank holiday for Election Day. Priorities, I guess…
#NotMyKing
Brick for Brick
I grew up with castles and churches and manors,
Their architecture feels like home –
While Indian temples and Chinese pagodas
Were glorious aliens in stone.
It all made sense that Kublai Khan
Had not one dome in his Pleasure Dome
But when I saw the Great Ming Wall,
It all felt too familiar –
It looked like something the Romans might have built,
Had they reached this far
Rounded arches, crenellations, arrow loops –
All quite bizarre.
The only telltale signs were in the watchtowers,
And their roofs –
Simple saddelbacks, slightly concave,
They were hard-hill-hatted booths.
Not like the four-square hips of the Romans –
Projections providing proofs.
Except…on many of the towers we see,
These structures are robbed away.
And we’re left with familiarity
That’s out-of-place, astray.
Was it built-up piecemeal, really ?
At this point, who can say ?
From what I can see in images, the watchtowers had roofs that were a mix of hard-hill and hanging-hill, the difference being that the latter had slightly overhanging eaves as in the image below.
To be clear, saddleback roofs (aka gable roofs) were not unknown to Romans, but not I think used atop their watchtowers.
Breezeblock & Plasterboard
(In reply to Little Boxes by Malvina Reynolds)
I live in the suburbs
In a box made of ticky-tacky –
It’s small and it’s samey,
And won no award.
It’s not to conform,
And it’s not to be strange or wacky,
I live here because here
Is all I can afford.
I grew up around here,
Then I went to the university
And I came out with a large debt
And I found my first job.
And it paid not a lot,
Except for in uncertainty,
So I tried for a mortgage
For a key on a fob.
There’s a Barratt, there’s a Redrow
There’s a Wimpey, there’s a Jubilee.
Where’s the woodland, where’s the meadow ?
Oh, please don’t ask me.
Alas, all they sold me
Was a box made of ticky-tacky,
But it’s dry and it’s plumbed-in,
If no pleasure-dome.
I raised up my children
And worked as a gopher-lacky,
Trying to get by
And make it a home.
So spare me your distaste
How I went to the university –
And spare me your prejudice
Of me and my peers.
I don’t have your millions
Or a co-operative nursery,
Yet I struggled and I made it
Despite all your sneers.
Blame the council, blame the builder,
Blame the bubble, blame the rising-sea.
If it all seems out of kilter,
Then please don’t blame me.
Audiences Participation
Ooh, they’re singing a song…
And I think we know this one ?
Aren’t we clever ?
I say, why not clap along,
To show we know this one ?
Now altogether !
Ignore the grumps among us
Who just think it rather rude –
Come on, let’s shout !
I bet the cast will thank us
For our effort to intrude
And drown them out !
Rhyming Couplets 