Small Ads
Have you got backache or bunions or pimples?
Have you got cellulite, bulges or dimples?
Perhaps you are jobless or carless or friendless?
Look in the small-ads, the options are endless.
Do you need some-one to unblock your drains?
dig up your weeds or inter your remains
If you need a loan or your house is infested
look in the small-ads, someone's interested.
If you can't get out and your hair-do needs doing,
call up the girl who does house-call shampooing;
don't give up hope if your future's in doubt
the small-ads have someone who'll sort it all out.
There's someone to call if you need home tuition
or your apple or pear trees won't come to fruition;
if damp is a problem or dry rot has struck,
if you want a cat or a dog or a duck
look in the paper, there's somebody breeding
anything, everything you may be needing.
While reading the small-ads, try playing games -
look out for unusual, int'resting names
For Showers, call Sharon; Get sharper with Harper,
but watch out for sheisters like Bodgit and Scarper,
And how can you be sure, if you want to learn German
that that's all you'll get from a fella named Herman?
Are French lessons french, or only a cover?
Is a massage a massage, or a bit of the other?
When I call up someone to polish my chrome
am I inviting a maniac home?
If I answer the advert "can you make a candle"
will I end up in a blue-movie scandal?
Now that the old inspiration is soaring
reading the small-ads will never be boring!
Pain
The sores on my hands were
from thorns on the roses
the sores in my heart from
the sender
the tears in my eyes were from
how I would stare at
his photograph, now in
the blender.
Smoke and Mirrors
Politicians rise to power on a wave of paranoia,
frantically feeding people's fears with fantasies and shadows.
The fearful Al Qaeda lurks as once did communism's threat,
but this will go the same way; neither is eternal.
Innocents, scapegoats, seized to make the screaming headlines
are then quietly released for want of actual proof.
Those old enough, or wise enough, may remember Hitler's ploy:
give the people an enemy and make yourselves look good.
Any conspiracy will do to make the populace dependent;
half facts spun fine. What's next I wonder.
How they long to be somebody! Saviours of mankind!
It's all just smoke and mirrors though and won't impress for long.