Dear Mrs Hester

Goodwin Makes Unwanted List

Wall Street Journal, 31 January 2012

Mrs Hester,

            dearest Mater, it shames this loyal

and proud servant of the Royal Bank

of Scotland to be mindful of the forty-eight

percent your shares have fallen on my watch,

and, I must be frank, to further disappoint

you, Mother dearest, by admission of a forced

change to our holiday itinerary. What

with the Prime Minister's leaning on

the committee of remuneration, and

the Daily Mail's unholy lunge to the left

inciting the envious moaners to noisy dissent,

I was forced to forfeit a sizable deposit

on that new and larger yacht and may even

have to cancel the jet. Lord it's hard being

poor, the injustice of it stings, like tequila.

Good heavens I’ve done my bit for the ailing gal:

she was barely breathing, her vitals failing, when

I took the helm, and who knows she might

break even yet, with luck and a following wind.

Didn't I cut the waste of thirty thousand jobs?

Didn't I lay to rest the entire investment

banking arm? Believe me, Mother, I've tried.

But the ghost of Sir Fred chides me,

he chides me, from the empty trading floor.

So, Mrs Hester,

            we will have to tighten our belts,

Barbados is out of the question, but I've heard

that Devon is nice, at least in August.

Do you by any chance know where it is?

Well anyway, please excuse this hasty

scribbled note and tip my driver well

(but not too well), there's much still needs

be done here on the bridge; I'll not be home

before seven.

Your loving son,

Stephen.

X

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

The Mystery of Mortuary Mews

Woman jailed for using six-year-old girl to burgle

The Independent, 24 January 2012

The tidal Thames breathed a bitter mist

hiding all but the gas-light glow of mock

Victorian street lamps along Mortuary Mews

that January watch.  

A disassembled scream oozed through the fog;

denied by sealed sash-box windows, fended

off by Chubb-locked doors, its prying fingers,

ice-cold to the touch,

left breathy prints on glass and lightly gouged

the windowsills of every floor, and was gone.

No one saw these signs nor read their gravely

coded message till

the night outside began to throb with a blue

light the curtains let right in, and being

wary, occupants edged back curtains, the bleak

street scene to reveal.

Now TV and radio sets were muted, CD

players put on hold, and from every slit

of light at every darkened Georgian sash

prying eyes gawped.

Even then the icy scratches went

unnoticed, only to baffle the residents when

Inspector Carter pointed out the way

the very glass had warped.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

Dorian Gray

Millions to get energy refunds

Sunday Express, 22 January 2012

There is a law which states the total pot

of energy is fixed and will not flex,

that my long-nurtured lethargy will be

not overcome by action nor by rest,

that my silted reservoir of joire de vivre

can only be refilled at the expense

  of someone else's grief.

I wish no stranger suffer for my needs,

and less again my wants, and anyway

my tiredness overwhelms. He who'd live

forever needs the hubris of Dorian Gray,

at once unable to pass a mirror without

a glance, yet terrified of what he'll see,

  his karma staring out.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

A Piece of America

Branson tells MPs to end the war on drugs

METRO, 25 January 2011

Hanging over the gate
like the green Virginia staked
up in the curing barn
daydreams weaving with the creaking corn;

their coming thundered out
of the ground as if the beets
were straining to meet them
in battle, and stalks of corn
clacked out a warning
long before they were sundered.

We’d known they were coming,
hunkering down with neighbors watching
smoke rise over the horizon,
columns like scores on a gatepost
marking off the days, we knew
Nicaraguan soldiers were coming to raze
our cash crops to the ground.

What have we done to them?
What have we done?
To them what must we have done?

They say our leaves enslave their young.
They say our leaves pay organized crime.
They say they come for God.

We’ll melt into the blue grass hills
and live like the people
who made this great land;
behind us the gate-rails splinter,
a new sun reddens our necks,
the vermin swarm in barking alien sounds.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

One too many bulls

Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge

Wikipedia.org, 18 January 2012

The keeper of the quiet books
has risen, thrown the lock across
 her darkened door, and rallied
 to the polar cause.

Yes, they've closed the library.
Between those charging bulls, eternal
 life and waning hope,
 the matador of learning

stands, naked, tilting for
a larger slice of some day's pie
 from unborn mouths. I watch
 through one unclouded eye

the trembling sand darken then still
before a dusty shroud descends
 to bury the scuff marks left
 of the matador's remains.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

Note: The key word here is 'polar,' which refers to being of an extreme, as in a polarized argument.

Olympian rents

Hotel prices soar by 300% for Games

The Sunday Times, 15 January 2012

Dust off Vaughn Williams,

Handel, Elgar and Holst;

what need for a German

Ode to Joy, we grow our own;

it’s the Dunkirk spirit,

don’t you know?

Over meadowed hilltop

sways the circus caravan;

gypsies spill from tenements

like pig tripe from a bucket

lured to a pied piping melody:

easy money! easy money!

Mrs Dodd has let her

beechwood garden chalet

to the Samoan relay squad;

the Council says it’s a shed,

but with the tools removed

who are they to say?

Liam and Amy set

a wedding date

several years ago.

They’d have hoped by now

to save and squander the price

of a wedding breakfast,

but there is no room

at any inn. They’ll keep their cash

and marry in Vegas:

a Parisian paid in advance

a white wedding sum for a week

in their Council flat.

Doctor Downs put in

for thirty thousand pounds

of prime Olympiad.

How galling must it be

for his family to receive

but one tenth their need?

The prayers of Reverend Meek

must have raised a smile

up there. Tickets drip-dripped

through the leaky church roof

for the opening, the closing

and all in between.

He could rightly sit

beside the Parisian, watch

Samoa steel to victory

in the crucible of truth.

Or sell the tickets on e-bay

for black market lead.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

Gloriana

Gilded Barge to be Given to The Queen for Her Diamond Jubilee

London Evening Standard, 12 January 2012

Lord Sterling, who knows how to float

(so rare a knowledge, both bold and

quintessentially cut of an olden

courtly jib) his monarch's boat,

contrives to consort the Jubilant Diamond,

upon a rowbarge hewn from wealden

chestnut greenwood graced with golden

leaf, in Tudor flourish to Richmond.

Lord Redgrave, viz Olympian Sir Steve

to erstwhile peer and liege, shall weild an

oar of forty-four and row the dhow down-

stream this June the third, the river

pinking at the passage of Old Bess

on so sycophantic a pageant of excess.


(c) 2012 Slush Poet

Scraping not the sky, but by

Worst areas for child poverty are in London

The Independent, 10 January 2012

Your eldest brother, whom you'll know

by the dried scent of my tears, awaits

you on the distant bank, my fleeting child;

beyond the towers of Barclay blue

and Citi red, a kindlier place

than those you've known, where floors and walls aren't cold

and damp, where supper costs a smile;

so sweetly sleep and in your dreams

around you fold my lullaby, and warm

fresh tears I'll shed upon that veil

that he who waits beyond the Thames

shall know you for his kin as you shall him.

The rain has stopped, I've heard that frost

is coming to this shadow land;

where no sun lights the grassy cracks no March

could come too soon; we'll feel full force

this Winter's spleen before respite's at hand.

Remember us, oh fleeting child, the wretched

who must hourly bear your loss;

there’s nothing spare to keep the fire

alight, nor sate the bailiff’s avarice;

he’ll have the bed from under us

and repossess these rags we wear;

for bread and wine we’ll take the Eucharist.


(c) 2012 Slush Poet

The infinite, the absolute

Eureka no more: Is the moment of discovery becoming ever harder to pin down?

New Scientist, 7 January 2012

Winter of discovery come

inflating the continuum, moments stretch

over light years and eons, neither here and now

nor there and then; even a dying sigh distend

the universe’s belly, then, like homeopathy,

its infinite expansion renders absolute

the vacuum.

The whole world race away

from the chaser whose grasping vision foils

his feeble cast; the price of living more

than the scattering parts be worth. And who to feed

the defeated, or toss succour to the sparrow

of first snowfall, lost in the infinite,

the absolute?

They say neutrinos overtake light,

they say Higgs boson was sighted at CERN,

they say placental stem cells speed

the cripple’s step, the blind man’s sight, they say

oceans shall froth with methane; and yet, among

this absolute infinity, might this world not be

the blesséd one?


(c) 2012 Slush Poet

Roll the final credits

DRUNK HUBBY BONKS TURKEY SANDWICH

Sunday Sport, 1 January 2012

What would you do if you knew that all
was doomed, the credits due to roll?

Race back over the time line, erase
this headlight knowledge from my gaze!
I only bought the Sunday Sport
to check the form and lighten my load
but there, in the midst of bountiful breasts
(the nipple count put them at seventy six)
was a journalistic scoop so bleak
the Greek black hole seemed less alarming,
Japan’s tsunami a minor leak,
Korea’s new leader queerly charming.

And what dire news had so rosied my specs?
The Sport’s correspondent in St Moritz
revealed that world leaders had laid final plans
for the last episode of the story of man,
and like Pat Butcher’s last croak on Eastenders,
the mysterious Bilderberg Group, whose members
include Henry ‘Strangelove’ Kissinger,
Melinda Messenger and the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
is keeping the script a close-guarded secret.
But thanks to the Sport—Oh I wish I hadn’t bought it!—
the truth has been outed. There’ll be looting, utter panic,
when a year from today Earth collides with a planet!

The opposite page gave a glimpse of the depth
of depravity to be unleashed at the death
of the world: a certain Jeff Collins was caught
in flagrante ‘stuffing’ the family turkey.

Well, what would you do if you knew that all
was doomed, the credits due to roll?

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

Gold goes to Samoa

New Year Cheer Starts Early in Samoa

TIME, 31 December 2011

Nafanua sivas
on Mount Matavanu —
gold goes to Samoa!

The night sky flowers,
lava garlands honour
victorious Samoa.

Eat our surf, Rapa Nui!
Flail in our wake, Christmas island!
Hawaii, here is the moon!

The mantle of power
has slipped from America’s
cadaver. Aloha!

Apia decrees
no Samoan shall die
on the thirtieth day

nor shall any be born.
Come on, Tokelau,
we Tardis to Asia!


In 2011 Samoa and Tokelau passed legislation that moved them across the international Pacific date line, and they were thus first to see in the new year in 2012, the year of the London Olympics. Nafanua is the Samoan goddess of war. Mount Matavanu is an active Samoan volcano. 'Moon' in the third stanza refers to the practice of displaying one's arse as an insult.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet