Tag Archives: satire

WHAT I TOLD THE SUPERVISOR

WHAT I TOLD THE
SUPERVISOR WHO
ADVISED ME MY
EDITING WAS
SUBSTANDARD

yes, ruefully,
grudgingly
I do admit it
this time
I messed up

maybe i’m
not cut out for it
perhaps
    I should
stick to
what I am
good at, or
then again
try something
different

take poetry.
   there we have something.
comes naturally
to me
   possibly one
of the best
in the country
sort of
    like my
first language

for I seem
to suck
at editing, though
maybe not as
shit at it
as you are
thinking

not as
shit as it
as you are
at
  teaching

being a bitch
and a teacher
seems
   a bit of a
mismatch

don’t
seem a
good
fit

kind of, if you
can forgive
me for saying so,

need
some humanity
to get
through to
people

no, run
with what you
are good at

interior decorating,
playing power games,
arrogance,
        cooking
(though there the
worry being
     you may well poison
bodies
as much as you
poison minds)
                      
                

RESEARCH METHOD

RESEARCH METHOD

if I see another research onion
eye-balling me
from the page

I think I might puke
possibly in many coloured layers

why not
a research orange?

or, better even, a
research banana

best of all
research pineapple
you eat
    your way up through
the fruit until
you reach the spiny leaves

hard, tough,
that’s why you need
coding software

or a Likert Scale
choose one for good
two for bad and
three
      (obviously) for
ugly

now we have finished
this poem
   please be assured your
responses
   will be

kept confidential
protect you from punchlines
to this and
      other jokes

suddenly hitting you
with terrible laughter, mild
amusement

things outside
your paradigm
          that mess with
your categories
   and other bumps in the night

got
   your onion

be
sure to hold it tight!

FRAGRANCE

FRAGRANCE

arrogance
     your fragrance
of choice

(euphemism alert)
the android that frisked you,
sidetracked you
these
    last few hours

having Turing tested you
to your briny limits

blew you a fake
farewell kiss

snort that one
with some white powder
will make you
feel better
      get you in the mood
for nursery rhymes

shame you are become
so iconic
     last home for humanity
out the window

I see it now clear as the
pain, existential doubt
in any
   Jackson Pollock

this is the best that the fruit
of Eve’s tree
          could give, stoop
crawl
     roll over backwards
to provide

arrogance is
your fragrance

     it burns
like hot white phosphorus

lingers
like airstrike napalm

ELONGATED

ELONGATED

let me not
lower the tone
by cracking that
old. crude
buffoonish
cartoonish joke

you know the one
you don’t need to
retell it
   get myself into
a hole by
repeating that awful punchline

linking hereby
Elon’s glorious Martian terraforming
to the ultimate two syllables
of the oddball
sixth planet
        (you do
know it’s name
mos
   Greek god of
the Universe)

hole
wormhole
       must consult with the late
Professor Hawking
to get the 411
on the physics of this matter

things
    on the verge of
the age of Aquarius (ruled by
this 90 degree off-beam
vertical-spinner)
could not
be
   more anomalous
(and this
the ruler of
my
   rising sign as , I am
sure the reader
                  must agree. could
not be more obvious)

supposed to usher in
the brotherhood of sisterhood of
woman and man

not this
   brotherhood of billionaires
owning more money
than the
stars in the galaxy
(so to
   outdo themselves
owning
   the stars in every galaxy)

suddenly much musky
this transcendental wealth smell

but this
   is all about Mars
planet of the gung ho, most
masculine red war God

not this
      mad maverick whose
moon is Miranda
        (most moderately maleficent of
all my former
lovers)

but once
      terraformed, fully
terraformed

ripe for creating
fresh mythologies

Elton might
just figure
      it a glorious sight to see

some discarded orange
blue white wafting in the
first dawn
Martian
    breeze to inspire the
new settler inhabitants

(though doubt it will
survive
     the first
midnight hurricanes)

AH, PROFESSOR

AH, PROFESSOR

ah Professor, Professor
your students
eschew reading

see books
(courtesy of TikTok
science fiction)
as things
wholly alien
set on
    sublime modes
of mind control
even
   devouring as
yet unwired brains

and some of these books
are fat tomes of sheer boredom
too heavy to
carry
   impossible to read

unless you
   mentally photostat
each page skimming
through them
at lightspeed

or have
   the entire text
condensed

into
blue pill
    or red pill

to crunch like a
jelly bean
flavoured to taste

IN THE FAIRY TALE

IN THE FAIRY TALE

no the little boy
in the fairy tale,

didn’t stop the world
screaming the bare truth
the nakedness
of a beloved
Emperor
we had no wish to hear

no he screamed
like a Stuka releasing its bomb

that the Emperor
is riddled with holes
inside and out

and there we were
scales falling
from our eyes
desperate
    to stick them back

hear
the old nursery
rhymes again

sweet corporate censored
rap

BALLROOM (revised version)

BALLROOM

we Brits (was once Brit)
two centuries ago
torched
your White House

but now
the special relationship
all is forgiven
all is
forgotten

and now, anyway, you
hard at work
knocking it down
(Donald confesses to
loving that sound)

but soon
to be revised, restored,
resurrected
into a glorious ballroom,
divinely beautiful
fit not
   just for a King
but for a god

place
for the elite
to meet
meat of the elite

one thing
   about the true elite
will swear
to the media, to all
who might listen.
they are,
so bog
ordinary
      which terrible taste
kind of confirms
that they are
and here
     beneath this gloss
something exquisitely shabby

yet be
that as it may
everyone
will
    fall over themselves
to be
first
to proclaim it a people’s palace,

open
to all
   and sundry just
so long
   as they be corporate, so
long as they bank billions

fantastic fever dream structure
that simply
      pulls out all the stops

promises to give you
space to
    express yourself to
trip the light
fantastic
     waltz, tango, whiskey, Charlie,
delta

Lightnings, Eagles, Tomcats,
Apaches

whatever your wings
enough floor here to park on

rivalling
    the USS Enterprise for
deck
   to take off and land

returning from bombing runs
on incalcitrant blue cities
the governance
        of America
not
   leaving to chance

that no one
     will
dance
out of step
           play
different tune,

mess
   with the waltz

rewrite
    the text of this sacred script

that gave
     us the blueprint for
this insatiable dream

and in the realization
of which

because money isn’t real
you need so much of it

MY LECTURE ON SATIRE

MY LECTURE ON SATIRE

I was lecturing on satire
fancying myself
up on the stage
behind the podium

but
then

inexplicably
began to satirize myself

tear strips off
launch a monstrous attack
bombard with
vicious jokes about
my total lack of ability
limited intelligence

which I
would share with you

were it not
so viciously brilliant
beyond your comprehension
way outside
your linguistic abilities

far above
your mere mortal
everyday pay grade

SPECIES

SPECIES

maybe

     as they

deepen

these divides
and dichotomies
are

not going to plunge the world
into civil war
upon civil war

no
   we could
find ourselves
            saved from self-
annihilation by the advent
of the
    simple, planet-saving,
evolutionary solution

allowing us
     to species-split along
all seams,
    do the most natural thing

become
as many kinds of hominid
as there are stars
in the firmament

since it seems impossible
that such an
    outcome

will scarcely allow
us to
    treat each other worse
than we
do now

or as
   unequally, unjustly, and, yes,
genocidally