Poet's Corner

POTTER’S WHEEL

23-07-2007

The latest Harry Whatsisface book came out this weekend…and the flood of publicity wasn't the only unwelcome deluge to attract the attention of The Stirrer's poet laureate Brendan Hawthorne.

There seems nothing

in the wizard’s brew

to stop the queues

from forming

at bookshop doorsteps

along a bit

to street corners

and beyond

Meanwhile

motorway car parks

form wayside communities

and market place

flood alerts

wash along verges

with the regularity

of late buses

We have scored

another point in

the art of saturation

A nation now sinking

under the weight

of complacency

where reality

is a pale shadow

of fantasy

lost

in the popularity wars

Perhaps if interested

parties could dress up

as a personified

ailing planet and

mimic characters called

Armageddon

Flood Plane

Thaw and Sea Level

revealing

true tales of disaster

global warming

could then be fitted in as

a valuable interlude

between so-called

reality issues and celebrity

Of course if you don’t

want to know what happens

in the end switch off now

Others have already

Don’t look to the final page

or follow the lemming-like

campaigns

leaving carbon footprints

along the pavements

to the dark abyss

those well-trodden

pathways

where great

forests once stood

in case it offends

traumatises

or indeed ends

our period of existence

on a warm rainy night

at one minute to twelve