With their gilt letterheads And their bunting-clad dreams, Where the serfs are so happy Beneath their regimes – But history swept them From palace and pomp, When young turks and comrades Have drained the old swamp.
With a God save the king From the Mayan to Ming – So soon shall the peasants Once more kiss our ring.
Yet now they must sit out And mingle with riffraff In Kensington squalor And only three staff. They’re blind to the passage Of fortune and time, Like grand dukes and dames In a lost pantomime.
With a title and crest And a well-feathered nest And a son and successor Exquisitely dressed.
Their ancestors ruled With the richest of tastes, Those kings lived like kings – But they now must be chaste. Where once their great splendour Was cheered by the proles, Now their Swiss bank accounts Are all filling with holes.
With a hip hip hurray To the misty-eyed day When the jumped-up and bourgeois Are all swept away.
These make-believe monarchs In exile, alone, With their cronies uncrowned And their thrones overthrown – They long to return To their castles and knights Where the realms was unsullied By voters and rights.
With a curtsey and bow And a greater-than-thou, Oh, we’ll soon send these yokels Right back to the plough.
It always starts a ways away, Funny how it’s never close by – Up ahead and off behind, But over there, a little shy. It seems I’m in a bubble, In a force-field of my own – And not a wisp may enter in My fog-exclusion zone. It’s not like wrapped in cotton-wool, And more like in a ping-pong ball – I’m in the hollow centre here, And staring at the distant wall. So only at a certain distance, In it sweeps, like an afterthought – Like chasing the end of a rainbow, So the start of the fog can never be caught. I’m all alone, like a solipsist, In a world without a sun – But where I walk I clear the air, I drive it out, I make it run. I’m boiling off the sunken clouds, I’m pushing back the grey – So this is no pea-souper, But a crystal consommé.
It’s always strange to say goodbye, Especially after all the years I’ve known you. Of course, we do not hug or cry, And we both know I’ll never write or phone you. Just a matey slap on the shoulder And a handshake that’s a bit too strong, And a gradual feeling of being older – It’s all so brief, yet somehow still too long. But even in restraint, we say it all, Though we’ll never realise – The clues are there, however small – The nervous laugh, the sheepish eyes. And then it’s “Should be off” and “See you maybe”, “Give my best to your old mum”. I guess I’ll kinda miss you, vaguely, Now and then, for years to come.
Miss Haversham or Jilted John, With no clue what’s been going on – That’s me. When the hero comes bursting into the church To win back his one true love, Then I’m the one who’s stood at the altar. I’m the one who’s always left in the lurch, Who only exists to get the shove, Because my name is Chester or Walter.
(Hiring the organist, ballroom, and tails – The invites and rings and the horse-drawn chaise, Flying my folks in from New South Wales, For untaken photos and uneaten canapés.)
Forever Paris or Rosalind, Traded-in for the chisel-chinned – That’s me. The one who isn’t famous or pouty, I’m the beta who’s got no soul, The banker or techie or wonk who’s bland and nice. You’ll all have quite forgotten about me By the time the credits roll I’m just another shallow plot device.
(I won’t be getting out of here for hours – Shaking their hands, and arranging their lifts, And someone still has to clear out the flowers, And cancel the band, and return all the gifts.)
Alas, I have been unable to uncover the artist of this painting
Neoteny
Axolotls, axolotls, Uncorked from the strangest bottles – Ask a little, ask a lottl, I’ll explain it in a jottl. Giant tadpoles, stubbly legs, Just juviniles – yet still lay eggs – And having reproduced, each pup Shall cease all thought of growing-up. Their smiley mouths and baby faces Compensate for stymied stasis, (Never coming out as planned, And never walking on the land) – They’re salamanders who meander Never wanting to be grander. While most life is lived full-throttle, Time stands still for the axolotl – For whether it is dumb or clever, They make childhood last forever They quite refuse to lose their frills And put away their childish gills, They keep a fin upon their back And regrow any parts they lack – They do not blink at staying kids (Because they don’t develop lids). Yet with a shot of iodine They can achieve their tiger’d sheen, They can equip with tooth and lung – Yet living fast means dying young, While staying in their pond long-term Shall bring the everlasting worm. So golden, pink, or brown-with-mottles, That’s the facts on axolotls !
This poem is my attempt to write a bit like Ogden Nash. I’ve also addressed neotony in insects over here.
The town where I grew up, Well, the nearest town I guess, Though still a dozen miles away – But I digress… It’s a pretty sleepy town That I left as quickly as I could, But in a funny way, I just Can’t quit for good. I’ve still got family living round, And school-friends I still see, So even though I left the town, It won’t leave me. Like when that sleepy town had raised A minor personality, A DJ with a surname that was known By the likes of me. Ah yes, I remembered That the same was borne by a kid at school – In my year, though I hardly knew him, Hardly spoke, as a rule. Nothing against him, but separate streams, A single mutual friend was all, And I hadn’t even seen him since, And could only just recall… Now he wasn’t the DJ (who was a she), But maybe his sister was…? My school-mates and family nodded, and set The rumour-mill a-buzz. Not that they knew him any better, But they do still live there, it’s true… And she’s only three or four years older, So maybe…? It’ll do. It was a tale for dinner parties, An anecdote around the club, Or for singing for our supper, Down the pub. So then, a decade after school, A short-term job and an idle boast When she came on the office radio As the lunchtime host. She must have just played Ace of Spades With stuff to give away, When a co-working Swede saw a chance To make my bragging pay – “My colleague went to school with your brother” Her email to the station read, “So can I have a ticket please For Motörhead ?” In half an hour, the DJ responded, “I have no brother by that name !” By email – not on the air, thank god – But all the same… Well, I was in the doghouse for a bit, Though no harm done – But then that surname came around again, And far less fun… A few years back, an incident Brought unexpected high renown, And all the national news in packs To that sleepy town. Strange to see its familiar face, The scrap of grass where we used to lark That the sombre bulletins insist On calling a ‘park’. Two names leapt out – one victim With a last-name of a teach I had, So of course I got to wondering, Was Sir his dad ? But the other…the other was a woman, A right-aged woman, a woman with a name. (She wasn’t the DJ, who went unmentioned, They clearly weren’t the same.) The grapevine rustled, the gossipers gabbed, With the same conclusion as before – I was wary, but I felt the weight Of local lore. My own connection, even if correct, Is incredibly slight It feels wrong to be probing it – Rather gruesome, certainly trite. But growing up in a sleepy town, There’s precious little going on – So ev’ry little chance at something more Is seized upon. And that kid, that brother, who won’t recall me, Now has a strange kind of fame – For I’m sure I’ll always remember him, Or at least, his name.
Exclamations ! Provocations ! Explanations of excitations ! Some would say they’re overused, I disagree. Some I note refuse of late To punctuate their poetry – Not me !
Word elations ! Ejaculations ! Indications of stimulations ! The Spanish use them twice as much ¡ Caramba ! But are they just a crutch, dead weight ? Let context state the mood and timbre – Let our poems dance the samba…
Celebrations. Expectations. Declarations without notations. They feel as if they’re lacking, now… Too calm and bland. They need to somehow demonstrate The extra fate at their command, And make a stand !
Yes, I remember Egbie Corner, A girl who made a strange kind of sense – Let me tell you, before oldtimers’ Robs me of my stream of conscience.
I hope my memories will pass mustard And wet your appetite for more, And not be spinning an old wise tale That’s just a damp squid of a prize pub boar.
But way back in the mist of things, When we never knew what’d come down the pipe, We were biting our time on tenderhooks In a doggie-dog world that was oven-ripe.
My hormones back then were rabbits in head-lice, Rebel-roused by mixing-my-toadstools fever, When news of Egbie spread like wildflowers – And I had to meet her to disbelieve her.
Cos she wouldn’t be taken for granite, She was no social leopard or escape goat – Yet to all intensive purposes, She squeezed-out logical sound from my throat.
It wasn’t as if she were scandally clad, But she stripped my tongue to its birthday suit The response she’d illicit was hardly her fault – But given her affect, the point is mute.
She had free range with her daring-do, Which left me boggled-down and run through the mangle. But cutting to the cheese – on the spurt of the moment That night we learned it takes two to tangle.
I’ve always been an early adopter, Picking-up the latest cold or spot, Then spreading it round by helicopter To fam’ly and colleagues, the whole poor lot. Always running ahead of the doctor, Bringing the buzz – if they want it or not. And just when the viral trend infects – That’s so last month, I’m on to the next.
Ev’rybody blames me for giving them hives, For breaching their unhip sterile zone. The slightest sniffle and out come the knives, But it ain’t my fault they’re frightened and alone – If they only led more varied lives They’d catch some int’resting strains of their own. Sure, this world is dirty and rife, But nobody’s ever immune to life.
I should point out that I wrote this piece years ago, and as the third line says it is talking about colds and such and nothing worse…
I remember Sunday afternoons And watching classic black-and-whites, Though not so much for giant apes, Or top hats, kanes, or men in tights – But all my fascination fell On the opening seconds-worth, Wond’ring at that giant mast, And where its feet made earth – Novaya Zemlya first, for one, And Svalbard, I concluded, next, Then Ellesmere Island for the third, But the last one had me vexed… There’s nothing there but shifting ice, Though far more then than left today – It’s just as well they’d long gone bust Before the ice gave way.
Rhyming Couplets 