poetry

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, how I wiss ye'd na been hasty!
Ye'd still be eatin pyles richt tasty
An' rinnin roun'.
I'd then be laith tae scaith thee, mousie,
Like some daft loun.

I'm truly sorry man's unfeelin'
Did nick thy life with wee, fley'd squeelin'.
It leaves my senses all a-creelin':
Wae's me! I say.
I hope it schools thy fellow yealings
Tae keep away!

(to the tune of, and with apologies to, Bob Dylan's original)

1. Santa's at the north pole
Mixing up the present lists
Rudolf's at the punch bowl
Getting seasonably pissed

The man in the red coat
Beard out, hat off
Says he's got a full sled
Your gift could fall off

Look out, kid
Are you naughty or good?
He knows which
You know that's understood

You better not shout or cry
I'm telling you why
The man in the fur-trimmed hat
And a double chin
Wants a sherry left out
You only got gin.

You ignored all the warnings
About global warming
(Or climate change as we now call it)
You dismissed the statistics
As myth told by mystics
In favour of cramming your wallit.

All those air miles behind you
Expanding your mind? You
Know: brains aren’t things on which you sit.
So instead now you find
An expanded behind
That’s the size of the cloud you emit.

Now, given the rain
Fell again, and again,
And poor Yorkshire is all under watter
Then if you still deny
The state of the sky
You must be as mad as a hatter.

But if you’re not sure
Of the need for a cure

I went to see John Hegley
With a couple of my mates
John had one of his on stage,
A sort of Norman Bates
(Of the type inclined to violence only when directed against black rubber gloves and/or his own head)
He read some poems that I knew
And some that I did not
And of the latter ones there were
Quite a lot
Afterwards he signed the books
That I had brought along
I should’ve bought some new ones
I didn’t
Which was probably wrong
But I’m used to making such social gaffes
And the queues for writer and written were so long

Where do you think you are closing, Dr Beeching?
Is this how a railway’s run?
We are the ones who will suffer for your crime
We are the ones who won’t get to work on time
So how much of our network’s network are you closing,
How long till your work is done?

They’d ring the single bell in Christ Church:
it chimed for every student in.
They ring it still, although the curfew
  has faded long before the din.
A comforted old boy might wander
  with silent, ghostly, measured tread
Through colleges he still remembers
  While hearing words his friends once said.
    Beside the River C. he sits-
      the bench still bears his name-
    And looks around contented that