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Once a time, the clocks would tick,
Like any decent metaphor –
By slicing up the passing time,
And tolling out their hourly chime.
Pocket watches, chirping quick,
Longcase , slow and sure,
Tick-tock, clip-clop, out they’d trot,
When seconds were a noisy lot.
Yet now, they’re silent and they’re slick,
Just oozing moments from their store –
But still they serve to spread the word
How time is slipping past, unheard.
Tinny Tonic
When songs go on too long,
When six minutes should be three –
Well, that’s when they change key.
Your skeleton-solution,
Revolution-by-indentikit –
It doesn’t pick the lock, but bludgeon it.
Nothing says you’ve run out of ideas
Like modulation,
Crunch-changing gears by slurring-up the speed –
Won’t you spare my tears
From your pinched-throat oration,
Your goodness-me vibration to make my ears bleed ?
I wish it were an octave that you’d shifted,
Or used harmonies,
And not just drifted-up a third
For yet one more reprise.
And please, don’t start ad-libbing
Like a gibbering MC –
There’s a reason why they call this bullshit ‘scat’.
Your climax won’t excite me
By just singing out of key –
The sparkle in your tonic has gone flat.
John Bull Jack
1.
At least with patrons David and Patrick,
They visited the lands which went on to claim them –
But George and Andrew are strangers to Albion,
(We had local talent, but no-one can name them).
I bet they never heard of us, we’re just some hicks from out the sticks –
They’re busy being famous, they won’t return our call.
To patronising saints, we’re just fanboys with a crucifix –
Mini-me Man-U supporters, posters on the wall.
2.
But then, what does it matter, we say ?
Especially for England,
Especially on George’s Day.
The red and the white are only for fascists –
The Guardian insists, okay ?
And the bleeding hearts will wail –
That the flag is now the province of the Mail.
People, haven’t you heard
That patriotism is a very dirty word ?
The only time, the only time
That national pride can still be shown
Is during the World Cup alone.
And when they lose, that very day,
The flags must all be put away
And never more be flown.
3.
Ah, perhaps I’m being too hard,
But still the Left can’t lose the twinge
To see their homeland as only bland and scarred.
They never can relax their guard,
Or shake the shame and cultural cringe –
They love the stranger, hate their own back yard.
And yes, I know the old old stories –
Slaves and Empire, toffs and Tories –
Nobody’s disputing –
But still there’s Newton, Attlee, and the Bard !
So all the more the need, I say,
To set aside a National Day !
Forget old Georgie – let’s be cannier,
Make ourselves a Saint Britannia –
She can be our national birthday card !
Trick or Lure
I love the Union Jack,
Far more than any church or crown –
I love the way the patriots all wag.
I love it on a tea-towel,
I love to wear it as a gown,
Or on my underwear and pocket-rag.
I love the Union Jack,
I love to see the whites fade brown,
I love to see it limply droop and sag.
I love to snub the Welsh as well,
I love to fly it upside-down,
And call the flag a Jack and not a Flag.
Cornucopia
Ramshorn snails with ammonite shells,
A spiral without a hint of a helix,
They’re more like a wheel than a pyramid, I feel,
All adding variety into the mix.
Some look drunken with sideways shells,
Half flat-on-their-backs and half falling-off
Like a coil of rope – but they seem to cope,
And it’s still a home, and we shouldn’t scoff.
And honestly, they’re shaped much more like a ramshorn
Than any ram’s horn, which is more like a corkscrew –
Though any shepherd could tell you with scorn
That some horns’ spirals leave gaps you could walk through.
Unlike the snails, those geometric purists –
And yet they’re just tourists in the twist of fate –
They barely take a turn and let the helter-skelter churn,
Yet rams’ horns grow ev’ry which-way but straight.
But I know what you’re thinking: what about the hermit crabs ?
What of it will spring-loaded scavengers make ?
Will they recycle these torus-shaped slabs,
Or are they afraid that their body-skew will break ?
Is such shelly symmetry unnecessary gimmickry ?
Or circular efficiency for streamlining’s sake ?
Much better suited than the filigreed or fluted,
Or the messy-convoluted coilings of a snake.
Ramshorn snails with ammonite shells,
So ambidextrous in their twisting –
Easy gliders or top-heavy sliders ?
Some are upright, and others are listing.
If snails have ramshorns then rams have crownhorns,
The biggest ones worn by the king of the dales –
And even when shorn, it becomes a shepherd’s cornet
To warn us of the wolves or the thieves or the snails.
A Halcyon Vision
A kingfisher glints like a galaxy,
We only see where he used to be –
A flash of white, a swirl of red,
But when we look again, he’s fled.
When searching with a lens, or two,
He’s there, he’s gone, a cloud of blue –
We scan the verge where the sparkles play,
As he dances in and out of the Milky Way.
Less Bohemian, More Czech
All great Artists have a vice,
But I’m a tepid type –
I try to keep my manners nice
And give no cause for hype.
I’ll never be a rabble-rousing rebel,
Nor a cad,
Just knocking back the trebles
On my way to going mad,
With my pockets full of pebbles
And a need for worship bad…
I’m much more pipe-and-slippers (less the pipe).
I guess I am a Larkin or an Eliot at heart
Than a Dylan or a Kingsley with a passion full of art –
I mean, I have a mongrel and a mortgage for a start !
And I always found Romantics over-ripe.
I guess I’m not an Artist-capital-A,
But that’s okay.
(And it really ain’t my mode, that way.)
I’m hardly a conspiracist, eccentric and uncouth,
I’m not a Goth or horny toad, or tender, tortured youth,
Or rainbow-dressed consumptive who is dying for some Truth –
That’s just a load of self-obsessing tripe !
A Small Tragedy
You gave me a bonsai, as a gift.
I don’t know why…
I surely hadn’t asked for it.
Alas, its decline was swift,
Was it too wet ? Was it too dry ?
So here it sat, sentenced to die.
Others had stolen its height away,
And spawned a lap-tree pet –
To start a forest on a windowsill.
My disrepair was on display –
Alone, neglected – yet I swear
I tried so hard to care and not to kill.
I know it wasn’t cheap to buy,
And ev’ry loss of another tiny leaf
Brought grief at failing you.
As ancient as a samurai –
And here was I, ungrateful thief,
Who stole its life in a month or two.
Kosher Slaughter
Why are there so many zombies on our screens these days ?
I’d say that they are testament to our improving ways.
We’ve beaten violence, beggared hunger, massacred disease,
And quarantined our lust for gore into our PG fantasies –
Safely evil, nicely ugly, non-stain blood in quick-rip veins,
Just round ’em up and mow ’em down in corporate campaigns.
Mumbling, lurching, fodder-johnnies,
Out-of-towners, dirty commies –
Revel in some mindless fun before they eat our brains.
Queasy over blaming Mongols for their famous hordes ?
Then let’s recast with green-skinned orks to quench our thirsty swords.
Coldly-logic androids cause no controversial mess
When we crush their next uprising – show no mercy for the merciless !
Shoot a Nazi, gas a pedo – harmless japes for kids to play,
Just regulation bogeymen without the shades of grey.
Exterminating creepy-crawlies,
Squashing greater-goods with trolleys –
Killing humans sure is fun when there’s no guilt to pay !
Mack & Mike
Some of us are lumpers,
And some of us are splitters,
Some are bulky-clumpers,
And some are little-bitters,
Some of us are big-tent stuffers,
Broad-brush roughers,
Close-enoughers,
Filling-up our grab-bags
Till there’s no more room inside –
And some of us are split-hair-threaders,
Sep’rate-bedders,
Excess-shedders,
Spilling-out and sorting-through
To further subdivide.
And honestly, we need both kinds of schemes
To help us to discover,
Masterplan and granular,
Millennial and annular –
Yet nobody can do them both, it seems,
We lean one way or ’tother –
Either rounding up or down,
With both the only game in town.
So some of us are throngers,
And some of us are sparsers,
Half of us are glommers,
And half of us are parsers.
I guess we cannot change the plot,
Our ways are set, alas –
But still, let’s proudly work our lot,
And classify with class.
Rhyming Couplets 