Vanity
“Van Go”, he said, thus mangling it
Quite in the American style –
Yet in the accent of a Brit,
From maybe Preston or Carlisle.
So natur’ly I had to cough
And stem this slovenly display –
“I think you’ll find it’s said ‘Van Goff’,
Misspoken in the English way.”
Too Fast
Pop tunes reckon that they haven’t got long,
So they splash their chorus in the first few bars –
They’re terrified of the fingers that skip,
They’ve got no time to take a trip.
The ear-economy for any song
Must reach us in shops and lobbies and cars –
There’s no slow build-up any more,
Just one-two-three, then four-to-the-floor.
Static
Ev’ry hour on ev’ry radio,
On ev’ry station, Beatles, Bach or Blues –
Upon the hour, come what may,
They force on us the news.
We come here for the music,
But we have to hear the gossip and the noise.
And even worse, the traffic, sport and weather –
What a buzzkill, boys !
And in an hour, then up it pops again –
Just the same with nothing changed, just comfort food.
Headlines full of factoids – got no time,
Yet long enough to wreck the mood.
I don’t mind DJ chat –
At least a human’s in the process somewhere –
But this sounds like an algorithm
Padding out the wavelengths, filling up the air.
Well I’m no luddites, I can read the papers –
Keep abreast as best I can.
I don’t need constant interruptions
Thinking I’ve got no attention span.
Give me a station full of talking,
But let’s keep the others where the music never stops –
No news is good news, so save it for the Albert Hall –
And the top of the hour for the top of the pops.
Challenging & Worthy
Ballet, op’ra and poetry –
Loved by luvvies and the BBC
But otherwise ignored by all and quite right too.
Up their own arses, these brown-nose arts
Are permanent’ly trapped in a bubble of farts
Just like the upper-chattering classes talking poo.
Please, oh please, let me never be trendy,
Keep me away from the cognoscenti,
Shovelling tax-pounds into their bottomless troughs.
I’ll take my chance with the free-will market
Than crawling on my belly on a critic’s carpet –
They may be lefties, but trust me – they’re just a bunch of toffs.
Those Who Can’t
So you say you don’t like my fill-in-the-blank,
Well okay grandad, off you trot,
So you think my taste is ‘square’ and ‘rank’,
Well God bless you and off you trot,
And love what you love and leave what you don’t,
And tell what you will and spare what you won’t,
But if you can’t wait to gossip what you hate,
Well groovy, daddy-o, off you trot,
Don’t let me stop you, but hold on there,
Just let me work out how much I care
While I crank my fav’rit song upto ten –
WHAT’S THAT ? SAY WHAT ? COME AGEN ?
You were prob’ly calling it a ‘din’ and ‘rot’
Cos these days, whinging’s all you got –
So I guess you don’t like the whole ‘darn’ lot,
But don’t worry, geezer, off you trot.
Scanning the Last Words of Lines
Street, white, hand, song – No rhymes there, best move along.
Roots, come, page, near – Shan’t be lurking long ’round here.
Found, sharp, luck, role – Nothing there to lurch my soul.
Pen, sighed, when, tide – Go on then, I’ll take a ride.
A Wilful Child
Here comes Abigail,
Searching for the Holy Grail –
She looks for it in Mark and Luke,
She looks for it in John
But once she sees it’s all a fluke
She learns what’s going on.
Abigail, Abigail,
Making all the rabbis wail,
Making all the imams hush,
Making all the vicars blush.
Here comes Abigail,
Grabbing scripture by the tail –
Tearing through the Psalms and Acts,
Incase it’s all a con –
She’s chasing down elusive facts
To suss what’s going on.
Abigail, Abigail,
Making all the abbés quail,
Making all the prophets cry,
And simply by her asking “why ?”
Et Ego in Ego
Poets: we’re never too subtle or shy –
We’re big on the drama, on even the small days.
The all-knowing pen of the all-seeing I,
In the first-person first, and last, and always.
With a couchful of angst and a sleeveful of heart,
We splinter all meaning, we trample all art –
For we are the masters of words,
And are well-worth the fuss.
Depend upon it, from old boy to upstart –
For all of our sonnets to lovers and birds,
Our verses are all about us.
Brain of Thought
How do we know
How we know what we know ?,
When we haven’t a clue
How we do what we do ?
And how do we think
When we think in a blink ?
In a faster-than-short,
We have caught us a thought.
They hustle and tout
And they wheedle and shout,
Like rumours and tracts
That have somehow crept out –
Till we realise there’s mountains of facts
That we swear we weren’t taught.
I do not know
How I know what I know,
But I know that they flow
As they come and they go.
Cos there’s stuff I’ve forgot –
Don’t know what, but a lot –
And there’s thoughts that will sow,
Lying low till they grow,
And they scatter and spread
Through my depths of my head
As factoids and fluff
That take root and embed.
Till I realise there’s jungles of stuff
That I happen to know.
All Life Is Here
They group all life with near-the-same –
To keep on track, they’ve got a list.
A rose by any other name’s
Still Rosa to a botanist.
I stole this joke from noted Trilobytist Richard Fortey.
Rhyming Couplets 