Flymènco
A single clap, a sudden slap,
A thud against a desk,
A backhand swat, a black-red blot,
A mid-air Arabesque.
Someone let the flies in,
Let the flies invade our day,
And now we’re exercising
An impromptu cabaret.
So jump up to that buzzing sound,
And waltz your tiny partners round –
Until we run these flies to ground,
This dance will play and play.
The accent is just intended to show that the middle syllable is the one that should be stressed.
Hogwash
To the Anglo-Saxon world,
A deer was anything than ran,
A fowl was anything that flew,
A fish was anything that swam,
A lily, anything that grew,
A fly was anything that buzzed,
A louse was anything that crept,
A worm was anything that crawled,
A spring was anything that leapt –
That’s just what they were called.
But scientists then came along,
Insisting we had got it wrong
For centuries.
And we must never mention these.
I guess the world has specialised,
But why are smart lads still surprised
By broader use,
Or giving modern speech a goose ?
They’re self-fulfilling pedants, keen to snub,
These sneery science boys –
They build their lab beside our pub
Then whinge about the noise !
A weed was anything of herbs,
An apple, anything of fruits,
And bug was something that disturbs
Your modern blooms with ancient roots.
The Noble Art of Treachery
To defeat one’s mortal enemy,
Approach him as a friend
And speak the honeyed words of peace
And fawn and twist and bend.
In time, once his guard is down
And slower to defend,
Then draw him even closer still
With bridges on the mend.
Confuse with favoured trading rights,
And treaties by the tome,
And offer cunning compromise
Beneath his pleasure dome
By breaking bread instead of bones,
And quoting “when in Rome…”,
And beating ploughshares from your swords
To bring his harvest home.
And waiting for the trap to spring,
He will not understand
You sprung it years ago, back when
You shook him by the hand –
And now he’s caged by friendship
With no anger to command,
As your lovers take his city
And your children work his land.
But best of all, he cannot strike you back,
He is too late –
For now his precious kin are settled
All throughout your state –
For he has also conquered
When he opened up his gate,
And now can only sit and watch
His people grow-up great.
Poesy Posers
When did poetry become so small ?
When did we all become about the ‘me’ ?
Self-centred pseudies up our own arses,
Full of minutia we’re bursting to free.
I blame Romantics for swooning and moping
While other folk got on with stuff.
We’re just not that int’resting – nobody cares !
So spare them our whiny old guff.
When did poetry become so small ?
Obsessed with the truth, when it used to tell tall…
Free-Zoning
We don’t need Miscavige, see,
To run our audits, rig our fates –
We’re moving up the bridge all by ourselves.
We needn’t wait till OT3
To learn of Xenu’s DC-8s,
Now Teegeeack’s escaped your secret shelves.
We’re the methadone to their crack,
The thirteenth sign to their zodiac,
With a finger-wag to psychiatry,
And a less-homophobic piety –
We’re still in the zone, but at least the zone is free.
We’ve shed your cult, we’ve sunk your navy,
Quit your billion-years a slave,
Although we all think LRH is swell.
Yet still the core is true, unbeaten –
Still believe in body thetans,
Just like Quakers still believe in Hell.
With solar-powered e-psych probes,
We’re the white-shirt face to their cult-black robes,
Lightly tutting at SPs,
But never disconnection, please !
We’re an altogether healthier paranoia, with no fees.
Tumbleweed
If you want a Russian Thistle,
All you have to do is whistle –
In they tumble on the breeze.
An 1880s stowaway,
A foreign sprout who’s here to stay
By blowing ever West with ease.
Not a thistle, but as hairy,
From the steppes to claim the prairie,
Infiltrating cowboy lore.
Full of thorns and full of seeds,
These drifting immigrants are weeds
Just made to be a metaphor.
The first recording of a Russian Thistle in America is from 1877 in South Dakota, but ‘seven’ has too many syllables…
The High Cost of Living
Diesel-hungry four-by-fours,
Draft-dodgers dodging wars,
Betting on the football scores –
Well, that’s the price of freedom.
Christmas Cards on sale in June,
TV news all afternoon,
And folks who claim we faked the Moon –
Cos that’s the price of freedom.
Despots have it easy,
They can do away with clutter –
But me, I’ll take the messiness
Of ev’ry geek and nutter.
So tune them in or tune them out,
But never for a second doubt
That we can ever do without.
Sticky kids on talent shows,
Tattooed arm and studded nose,
Neighbours’ hedges come to blows,
And that’s the price of freedom.
Metric units here and there,
And lots of artificial hair –
It isn’t always right and fair,
But that’s the price of freedom.
Dreamers have it easy,
They can make the world anew –
But me, I’ll take the old one
Cos it’s here and now and true.
So make it sweat or make it blink,
But never for a second think
That freedom is just pen and ink.
Dream On
Sleeping is our right,
It is our patriotic duty –
And ev’ry dream is freedom,
And our freedom is to dream…
Sleep, my fellow patriots,
For sleeping is our beauty –
And dreaming is our industry
In which our twilights gleam.
Storm Warning
The temp’rature is stalling,
And the air is tinged with tin,
The mercury is falling,
And the front is moving-in.
The cumulus is clumping,
And the sun is shafting gold,
The Ninety-Nines are slumping,
And the mugginess turns cold.
The temp’rature is dropping,
And the singing birds are stopping,
And the ringing ears are popping,
And the air is tinged with tin.
The woodpecker is calling,
And weathercock is squalling,
And the mercury is falling,
And the front is moving-in.
The chimneypots are whistling,
And the flies have stopped their buzz,
The static cling is bristling,
And the cats are balls of fuzz.
The thunderheads are stacking,
And the grey is turning black,
The sun is wholly lacking,
And the rumble starts to crack.
The temp’rature’s adjusting,
And the herald-winds are gusting,
And the anvil-tops are thrusting,
And the air is tinged with tin.
The heavy drops are splashing,
And the lightning-bolts are flashing,
And the mercury is crashing,
And the front is moving-in.
Via Metallum
There is no metal in the metalled roads,
But still they’re made of steel –
They take the feet and hooves and loads,
And the ever-turning wheel.
The dust and ruts and highwaymen
Were swept away in dale and fen
By smooth and fast and tarmacked threads
With footed feet and watersheds.
But these have all been laid with stone
A century or more –
The job is done, the back is bone,
The soles are growing sore…
We surely now have roads enough
To leave the wilds unpaved and rough,
And only build our future trails
As metalled roads of shining rails.
Rhyming Couplets 