Gramercy of this aroint,
doth she come?
Sirrah crown cries well met,
doth she come?
Ye wast in a hurry.
Aroint! Thy heads were seel.
Aye, thou art nay dispatches.
Aye, thou art woe.
Thou wouldst be dead.
Hark now hie!
Hark now hie!
Thy mouth dripping with drool.
North blisses and quick-witted doth unfool.
Thou shalt seclude from middling teenth.
Plummeted into a hornet tool.
Wailed as eerie as a panicked fetus.
Didst thou stay fed in the crumbs of mool?
Times beest tough about shimmering graves.
Grumbled, tucked, hadst a mischievous lol.
Thy lure hath evil jagged, full of witch writhes.
Thou began to shake, shrieking by the bleeding pool.
Squirm bosom disheveled and screeched with fear.
Whispered oddly and burst the sweet aroma of bool.
Unison of hoof drank fluffy white icing scream.
Scraggly faith and toothed heart not cool.
Haunted and rhyming a couplet kills.
Sirrah and the mistress prayed to the zirrahed hazrat tool.
To be. To feel.
To feel, to love,
To love. To rage,
To rage, to die
Like a good Romantic, or to sleep like this,
Ghosting about
Like a loose plastic bag
That flaps on a windy night
Under a sodium street lamp’s
Eerie all-submerging light.
O Shakespeare, pity us,
O Wilkes, O Pope,
O Voltaire, O Heine,
O Byron. O Shelley,
Shed tears for us.
We have mislaid the liberties
You fought for.
And the truths you taught us.
The Board of Standardisation
In the interests of this nation
Will suppress the imagination.
Like ranters at Hyde Park
We’re still good for a Sunday lark.
Our patrons are benign
as long as we are innocuous.
They’ll allow a little room for satire
(as long as we keep our hats on)
Just to show what sports they are.
Toothless protest’s just a cliché,
But don’t let slip a waspish quip,
Or “Sirrah, Sirrah, the whip!”
Tow the line. That’s fine.
“Douse that prophetic fire by nightfall, sir,
Or the neighbours will complain.”
A D-Notice served on the brain
deadens every joy and pan.
Cross the heart with this red pencil
And with this stencil write:
THE END OF ART.”