sonnet
poems
and so to bed
We don’t abide by your pettifogging rules / in any of the ancient, most honourable schools / we’re too busy flogging in the vestibules / acquiring the emotional and spiritual tools / to perpetuate the Divine Right of Fools
I’m sorry, old chap, I don’t mean to lecture / but in the exalted realm of the executive director / we follow a much more dynamic vector / wealth creation, privilege protector / morality’s just philosophical conjecture / wholly confined to the public sector
So forgive me if I seem obtuse / but you’re really such a silly goose / surely you see there’s just no use / in asking us to introduce / measures to rein-in our abuse?
It’s the natural order, ad infinitum / I know all the terms and can easily recite ‘em / or fetch me some parchment and I’ll happily write ‘em / at a ceremony in the city to awe and excite ‘em / if you have rich friends be sure to invite ‘em
So pray to your maker and drop to your knees / stick pins in your cute little effigies / you working class nonentities / please! / if you’re hungry I’m sure there are charities / to keep you in cake and crudites
Honestly! / All this moaning about disparity / is a cause for lordly hilarity / certainly not humanity / just settle down please and enjoy your austerity / do you think it’s easy living in prosperity?
And so forth, and so on
Remember what nanny used to sing?
early to bed
early to rise
makes a slave
behave
or what was that other one…
night night
sleep curled
don’t let the bed bugs
rule the world
big dog
there was major alarm
down on the farm
someone ratted the animals out
the pigs all squealed
while the chickens appealed
fussing and flapping their wings about
the sheep muttered privately
the donkeys stood quietly
a crow looked down from the roof
the ducks on the pond
peeped out from the fronds
while the old horse stamped its hoof
save big dog!
cried an elderly hog
he doesn’t deserve this fate!
it wasn’t his plan
when you all overran
and kicked a hole in the gate
big dog was silent
watchful, defiant
he’d find out who sounded the warning
for now he’d sit tight
sleep through the night
tear out their throats in the morning
incident at the 7/11
a man ran in for a banana
he was wearing a banana print bandana
banana slippers and banana pyjamas
but anybody could tell
from the fella’s yelling & generally hyper manner
he was ‘bout three wigs shy of the full Hannah Montana
so anyways – he takes said banana
hurries outside to the smokers’ cabana
and gobbles it down in one helluva alarming manner
with this weird kinda side-chew, like a crazy llama
but anyways – whatever
pax humana, man
pax humana
no worries & no drama
yours – officer Roxana Fontana
ep. 1: the paper crane killer
I’m an edgy killer
in a dark modern thriller
and I wear me some fancy boots
my calling card’s an origami bird
that I fold real cold whistling Mahler’s third
then drop on the floor
as I stroll out the door
saying ‘thanks for a stimulatin’ evening, Clem
give my respects to St Peter when you see ‘em’
or some such shit
then stroll back to my shack and shoot crack for a bit
I’m a flawed detective
drunk but still effective
and I got me some fancy angst
I live in a condo with my lizard Belmondo
that I saved from a shootout in Ol’ Colorado
I think like the perps
but deep down I hurts
now the force want me back on the paper crane case
so I stand at the mirror and study my face
the lamp at an angle
then sigh and tie a small Glock to my ankle
welcome to the anthropocene
the universe is big and pretty intense
filled with cataclysmic events
black holes busy tossing back planets
like squirrels in a tree of pomegranates
the whole thing such a source of strife
you’d never think it supported life
but when that asteroid struck catastrophically
the dinosaurs didn’t take any of it personally
they could see it was just a hunk of granite
as it wiped their asses off the planet
which is why they’d have thought it so unfair
that humans supposedly so smart and aware
they could see themselves in the reaches of space
were clueless they were trashing the place
frankly – to the embarrassing extent
they’d be calling us the next extinction event
abolition condition
here’s an interesting fact
the Slave Compensation Act
1837
question:
who d’you think got paid – the abusers or the abused?
if you think it’s the latter you’re sadly confused
and before you say it’s a historical scene
we only stopped paying in 2015
raj rage
but we gave them so much
schools, sanitation and such
I mean – good heavens!
look at the evidence!
from a few steaming elephants
to forty gleaming regiments!
boxes of quinine! stacks of clerks!
public buildings! shady parks!
and much, MUCH more than that
more than a lord in a feathery hat
more than tiffin, and the rules of cricket
more than flags and a steam train ticket
more than hunts and royal visits
no – something more patriotically exquisite
the honour of sending us their cotton and tea
branded East India Company
so – I beg you – enough with the hate
India helped make Britain great
and raise our worldwide profile higher
but if you want to enquire
a little more about this stuff
tough
all of the documents that tended to show otherwise
were carefully burned when we abandoned the enterprise
the prosecution rests
members of the jury
I put it to you
that it is perfectly
and incontrovertibly
true
that a certain scruffy you-know-who
namely Stanley
did fully and most fervently
evidence with the utmost opposite of urgently
dappy ears divergently
snoot sonorous and snoringly
tail end unnaturally flatulently
twitching and glitching improbably
worryingly white-eyed and zombily
smiling enigmatically
wonkily orthodontically
as I say – the very INSTANT the defendant landed horizontally
he did deign to demonstrate demonstrably
most mongrelly and monstrously
that he would somewhat implausibly
cause himself to pitch all-four pawsibly
into a perfectly innocent and instantaneous snooze
the SECOND you sat down to watch the news
all that evolution for THIS?
Five hundred and fifty five million years ago
(which really is one helluva long time ago you know)
lived a worm the size of a grain of rice
the first of its kind with a mouth that bites
and a butt that squeezed out all the waste
from the endless snacks it ate with its mates
and it’s name?
Ikaria wariootia
(which may or may not be new to ya)
my point is
this cute little joint is
our earliest common ancestor
(according to scientists at the research centre)
and from this worryingly wormy beginning
you get an Attenborough
plethora
of fauna
swimming and flying
running and diving
leaving and arriving
jumping
or humping
or just slumping
in front of the TV
like me
and Stanley
stretched out in a food coma
on the sitting room sofa
two distinct species but arguably one loafer
as motionless as any fossil you’d hope to knock
from some sedimentary Australian rock
jim clayton 