EVIDENCE INFORMED
It has now been scientifically proven
that telly is better than poetry.
Psychologists stuck a load of people in a room
with both a telly and a poem –
on average, they spent about two minutes
disinterestedly glancing at the poem
before settling down for the remainder of the hour
to watch Homes Under The Hammer.
This proves that telly
is better than poetry.
So burn your books, people!
Grab those comfies and settle down
in the name of science.
They still call it Leo’s Room,
even though Leo hasn’t lived there
for thirty years. What once
was a baby’s bedroom is
now a study, yet still they call it
Leo’s Room. I know this because
my mum saw them in Sainsbury’s
a few weeks ago, and they got
chatting about old times. How things
have moved on. How the lawn
got paved over in the 90’s
and how Leo now lives half way
across the world. But I guess
no one ever truly leaves the land
that births them: I can still hear
those distant layers of laughter
echoing through the decades
behind these very walls.
I was just getting on with my job, see,
and there seems to have been a mistake.
I was doing my deed for the land that I lead,
then – ambushed by a cake.
I was hunkering down for the nation.
I knew there was plenty at stake.
I couldn’t foresee what would happen to me,
yes – ambushed by a cake.
I’ve spent billions on our defences
and weapons to make our foes quake.
The provisions for this, well they’re somewhat
amiss – ambushed by a cake.
But I guess you all knew when you voted
of the shambolic mess I would make.
Yes I’ve let you all down, but it’s only a clown
who gets ambushed by a CAKE!
Tomorrow I am visiting Belvedere Junior School, where I will be working with Year 3 classes to produce poems about pirates. I am really excited about this! Whenever schools book me to run workshops on a specific theme, I try to write a special poem on that theme, just for them. Well, it's not just for them, since I often put the poems on my blog too. With this in mind, here is Belvedere Junior's Year 3 Pirate Poem! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
[I removed the poem coz it's gonna be published in 'Welcome to My Crazy Life'. You'll just have to buy the book won't you, you schnorrer.]
ANALYSIS
His analysis
with Dr. Freud
wasn't entirely
successful;
everything the patient said
went in one ear
and out the mother.
STORY
They say a story has to have:
beginning; middle; end –
and maybe this injunction
isn’t wrong.
But if a story mirrors the
trajectory of life,
the start and end are short;
the middle’s long.
By night, they say, he scours
the streets incognito, fighting crime.
They say he can drive a tank
and that he’s highly trained in the art of kung fu.
Some say he was sent from the future
to purge the planet of evil; others claim
he’s a Viking reincarnated, summoned
from the past to avenge his kin.
They say he can shoot laser beams
from his eyeballs, that a single punch
can destroy a building, and that
he converses regularly with the gods in the sky.
They say all this, but I don’t know why;
he seems like an ordinary school caretaker to me.
OPERATION: LOOK OVER THERE
Look over there! It’s a migrant!
He’s trying to enter our land!
And look over there!
It’s the BBC!
Things truly have got out of hand.
Look over there! It’s Sir Kier!
He once had a beer at his desk!
And look over there!
It’s some junior aide!
The cut of his jib is grotesque.
Look over there! It’s a paper
on ‘Levelling Up’, and it's white!
And look over there!
It's some unemployed wretch
whose presence round here is a blight.
Look over there! In the distance!
Keep looking, and don’t make a fuss.
Yes, look over there!
Or in fact anywhere
just as long as it isn’t at us...
