THE CHAPLAIN AND CHIEF LEE

Chief Lee, concerned, with his people,
Is inspired inside a steeple,
On top of his favourite church,
Within which the congregation perch on creaky pews,
They hear their minister spews,
Owing to his constant intoxication
The chaplain will sway and lurch,
While preaching about leeching and negative traits,
His alcoholism is funded by the weekly collection plates,
He urges feelings of love in people he hates.

One night in his bed, some anonymous man lay down beside him,
‘Who are you?’ He asks him, but the stranger is dead.
Next morning, mourning, he consults his most loyal parishioners.
Can the chap who’d lain next to the chaplain the previous night be identified?
No, they shake their heads in unison,
‘No, no,’ so many of them cried.
Could their chaplain—while drunk, perhaps—have killed a stranger in his sleep?
A stranger who might have prayed that if he died the Lord his soul might keep.
Was the chaplain to be believed?
They suddenly began to speculate, after years of being deceived.
The chaplain shook his hung over head,
Then—as was typical in the mornings—heaved.
As a youth, he’d felt consumed by the Holy Spirit,
Now, blinking bloodshot eyes, he consumes, wholly, spirits.

'WACKO JACKO' WON'T BE BACKO!

The untimely demise of Michael Jackson has precipitated a media-fuelled process that is becoming strangely familiar. A process involving mass grieving in public, hysterical overreaction and the phenomenal enrichment of florists; a process that first occurred, and most visibly, with the death of Diana. A process involving repetitive cycles of news bulletins with clichéd sound bites from celebrity friends, linked with footage of fans gathering in places connected with the deceased. A process that has no clear rationale behind the prioritisation of its coverage; causing Diana’s death to overshadow that of Mother Teresa and MJ’s to outrank Farrah Fawcett’s.
On TV, admirers relate their feelings of devastation with apparent sincerity, incongruous with their status as, often, complete strangers to their late icons. As superlatives are added to sentences of increasingly exaggerated praise, disproportionate to the achievements of any human life, marketing forces capitalise on relevant merchandise with the unselfconscious abandon of a swarm of locusts. Media mantras mesmerise members of the public into reactions of a Pavlovian nature. Discussions between people include the half-dozen or so catchiest headlines and quotes, becoming confused with their own thoughts.
There is much hypocrisy with this process of virtual deification—in Jackson’s case people seem afflicted with especially short memories. Forgotten are their previous impressions of the performer as a complete weirdo. ‘Wacko Jacko’ was the phrase most typically used to describe the eccentric star in life. In death, the same tabloid that coined this derogatory phrase published a 32-page commemorative souvenir in a vulgar display of obvious double standards. Although Jackson was cleared of child abuse charges, there was a widespread and general feeling among the public that there is ‘no smoke without fire.’ While Jackson’s reputation was tarnished by these suggestions—they would have irrevocably destroyed that of anyone else, famous or not—he appeared to bounce back. To survive suspicions and accusations of the type of behaviour that is universally condemned and considered so heinous it is irredeemable makes MJ unique. A fact as notable, perhaps, as the one that he produced the best-selling album of all time, ‘Thriller.’
Naturally, his death is sad—as sad as the loss of any life. How many millions of other people died around the same time is a hard to guess figure. Equally hard to figure is how public figures have come to figure so largely in the daily lives of significant numbers of people, leading pedestrian lives out of the limelight. Is there any shared sense (among anyone ‘out there’) of urgency behind the desire to understand this?

OCEANS

Sometimes the Atlantic Ocean is referred to as the pond.
It’s not an expression of which I’m fond.
I don’t usually see eye to eye with people who use that expression.
It could be said that we’re oceans apart.
Talking of oceans, the Pacific to be specific,
Isn’t it amazing how its southern waters share their name with a popular musical?
What an inspiring sea!
None of the others share their names with a smash hit show.
Current thinking among oceanographers suggests that oceans and seas are vast bodies of water and that there’s more liquid on Earth than land.
So why they should be expected to inspire musicals, as well as being big, is hard to understand.
Ocean liners, it strikes me, must create the most fleetingly ephemeral and shallow lines…
We all know how water behaves, moving so fast when it’s displaced that it can’t be traced.
Allegedly, the Red Sea parted for Moses but when it drowned the Egyptians on his tail he didn’t give a damn!

SKELETAL(L) STORIES

‘Pick the bones out of that!’ I exclaimed to the defeated palaeontologist.
‘You can’t cut Dinos with a dinosaur.’ He feebly replied.
‘I surmise that you’ll fossilise with fossil eyes.’
This, one of my replies, was met with no surprise.
‘Extinct, your ex-stink, of something old and obsolete, leaves you incomplete—like ankles without feet. You might be neat, but you can’t stand up…’
‘I’ll not stand for this,’ he indignantly sounded.
His mouth agape, his eyes rounded.
‘In your field of expertise you’re sufficiently grounded.’
I decided to concede.
‘I must push on, I’ve mouths to feed.’
Interjected the bankrupt restaurateur who’d retired in Nuneaton, masturbating repeatedly over images of Michelle Heaton.

RELAYS

To relay the message about the baton, Shirl picks up the phone giving the receiver wire a twirl.
Steamed up, the chiropodist made her toes curl.
‘A sauna,’ said Shauna, was unlikely to straighten things out. ‘But no doubt you’ll give it a whirl!’
‘Hello, Tommy Greenears here,’ Tommy picks up the phone.
‘Hiya, Tommy, it’s Shirley, dear.’ She says as he starts to groan.
Had he upset her putting his foot in it with the chiropodist?
He sighs relieved when, without sounding peeved, she talks about a stick for guiding musicians.
The orchestrated responses of ponces pounce on ounces of his grey matter as they continue to natter.
The patter of little feet passing the premises of dodgy chiropodists provide percussion in the mental soundtrack of the mind affected by concussion—
The result of a blow to the head with a telephone receiver wielded by a malicious deceiver, who’d lied about the results of a relay race that actually had been tied.
The draw having been denied, a line was drawn under the deception by the mastermind of its conception.
Smugly, the liar circulated a flier coupling the false results with ads for dubious foot care, which results—for Shirl—in a scare.
Shirl’s girls inherit mistrust for pedicures and seduce reflexologists and the like, so as to break their hearts and, with those called Mike, impale their feet on a metal spike.
Systematic and cruel, Shirl’s daughters make foot fetishists drool.
Taunting foot masseurs, they play the fool—serving revenge cold, they are both hard and cool.
Getting loudmouths to put a sock in it by putting lead in a sock, for use as a coshing tool, they indirectly and vicariously vent Shirl’s spleen.
Washing their hands of them, former friends—horrified by their acts, so mean—keep clean by steering clear.
Everyone senses about them something that’s queer.
Except for their hapless victims—heel, sole and toe specialists whose special lists list specialties special teas spilled over and stained.

THE FLU JAB

The flu jab is a greatly feared punch,
Grapes are hospital-visiting clichés in a bunch,
Quasimodo rang the bells of Notre Dame with a dorsal hunch,
Alfresco diners at noon each day are really out to lunch.

For whom the bell tolls, Quasimodo cares not,
Cruising for a bruising on a sado-masochist’s yacht,
Edgar Rice burrows deep in the land that time forgot,
When bondage freaks get married they truly tie the knot.

The Grapes of Wrath, The Wrath of Khan and the blackcurrants of indignation,
Patriotic gravediggers call a spade a spade in ‘dig-nation,’
Monarchist Doug, out in the dugout, reviles talk of abdication.

William Tell fell foul of his son, the apple of his eye,
All aquiver, he’ll shoot that apple or have a damn good try,
Targeting fruit on his boy’s head, his mouth feels really dry,
His Adam’s apple bobs up and down—he then begins to cry.

A Ganesh can enmesh with Hindi vision,
Sikhs who seek—because they’re weak—religious fragmentation and division,
Medical gurus’ surgical intervention results in the excision of cryptic texts
In holy books undergoing substantial revision,
While bystanders stand by their decision.

'Trick or Treat?’ Is how brats greet their neighbours on Halloween,
Wearing a mask to join some kids, we see one shallow teen,
Demanding money with menaces, their threats are quite obscene,
Deprived of cash or sweets these bogus ghouls look mean.

Inflated egos inflate their own worth,
Attracting admiration, criticism and mirth,
In equal measure during their time on earth,
Scared of dying—they seek rebirth.

Ulysses, Yul Brynner sees, is a book that few have read,
How he sees no one sees because the actor’s dead,
But talk is cheap when no one listens—
However rich the words that are said,
Don’t follow John the Baptist or you might lose your head!

NEPALESE DYSENTEREY MUTANTS

Nepalese dysentery mutants on University Challenge—
Non-starters for ten, then breaking for elevenses,
Ill at ease, they drink antifreeze,
Wheeze with radioactive breath,
With self-induced rigor mortis, they mimic death.

Holidays in Chernobyl provide them with their memories,
Breast cancer research units provide them with mammaries.
‘Mammy, please,’ sing Al Jolson impersonators for their entertainment,
They give up their saliva for Lent.
‘A coin is wasted that is not spent,’ they taunt numismatists by chanting but soon repent.

They revere the silhouette of Bamber Gascoine and project it onto maps,
Confusing shadow boxers with their weirdo, manic traps,
They campaign against Turkey and think it should be banned,
Because the name describes a bird, they suspect it wasn’t planned.
Besides the Turks are berks, they swear,
Posting their shaved hair to MPs in protest.

Collecting marbles to squeeze and lick,
For them—tonguing spherical glass does the trick.
Putting their bald heads together,
They dabble in the occult to outlaw the name Trevor.
Leather jelly suggestion boxes foxes their detractors,
Who they chase with selotape (while playing tubas) riding tractors,
Weighing the odds, assessing the weather,
They gauge these and other factors.

PROPS or BRACES

Bracelets, as adornments for a wrist or ankle, can be charming.
Brace-lets, as struts for hire or rental supports, are quite disarming.
Braces, let down, can let trousers down too,
Making work difficult, especially embalming.
Dental braces let teeth grow straight, which is great,
Until you get the dentist’s bill—
Then you have to brace yourself.
Financially, dentists don’t need our support.
Nor does the average builder.
However, the latter gets fatter working on construction,
While dentists use smaller tools and suction.
Coincidentally, both parties use various drills but, lest they sound too boring—
There the similarity ends.
Builders insert struts and, where needed, metal supports.
Dentists, conversely, strut about with hygienists sharing their thoughts.
Miners, like builders, sometimes used props,
As do actors, but theirs are just flops—as useful in building as a farm without crops.
Atleast actors know the show must go on,
Whereas the average builder showing up on time—
After propping up bars all night—is the exception.
A show of hands, of actors say, casting a vote,
On how to keep a milkman afloat,
Make builders chuckle and dentists gloat,
Over their profiteering, which we find sticks in one’s throat.
Extractions and excavations in adjacent properties,
In the dental surgery, the receptionist is a proper tease.
Builders make mess and noise while they fart and wheeze,
As dentists fill their pockets filling cavities, making jaws freeze.
Actors troop past in the street outside, on their way to rehearsals,
Their dramatic pace so fast, they dream of acclaim—
But will their fame last?
Mutual support with (-in) all three groups is lacking,
Lip service payments are swapped over backing not forthcoming.
A builder whistles, a dentist sings while a smelly actor’s humming.
On it goes as it ever will until the Second Coming.