C K Wetton
Song of the bug
Segmented tankman
with glass-noodle legs,
we never stop questioning
O monk’s louse, monkey-peas
peasie-bug, doodlebug
medieval perambulator
buffed to a dull sheen
both horse and knight
O butchy boy, boat-builder
monk’s louse, monkey-peas
tiny-footed scuttle
to the dark mulch
underbelly of anything
we’re grammersow, granny grey
peasie-bug, doodlebug
when will we stop asking questions
with our twin antennae
half folded like a music-stand
sing peasie-bug, doodlebug
cheesy bob, chiggy pig
corner like a bendy bus
articulated wagonette
the size of a vitamin
grammersow granny grey
cheesy bob, chiggy-pig
busy in the garden every weekend
in our autumn gabardine
on our Scottish-reel legs
sing monk’s louse, monkey-peas
cheesy bob, chiggy-pig
peasie-bug, doodlebug
pill millipedes armadillidiidae.
Project management
is a mental illness
a weird kind of syndrome that blacks out the present,
the present is annoying! The future is the thing!
We tend to speak in jargon and to type very fast,
we swig from water bottles and we pop Pro-plus
we sit scrunched up at the ergonomic desks,
don’t take vacations ‘cause we just get behind.
Living in the future keeps you earning more and more,
we are the managers who think we’ve got it all.
Time is too many too small boxes.
Time is a terrorist who ambushes projects.
Time is white water rapids that will not stop.
We’re living in the future and we can’t come back.
We estimate capacity, allocate resource
what the point of it is – we don’t really ask,
our love is for spreadsheets and a smooth transition
we are the managers who get things done.
We go fast and faster but it’s never fast enough,
quarterly reports make us feel bish-bosh.
Nights, we hit the gym – burn off excess stress
– getting lean with these projects fuelling us.
Time is a tapeworm, knocking at the gut.
Time is a cake cut in ever smaller bits.
Time is a suitcase you can’t quite shut.
We’re living in the future and we can’t come back.
Us managers are sick, our eyes are dull and glazed,
we don’t hear birdsong, we don’t feel the rain
we’re sitting in meetings but we’re not really here
in March we live in May, and in May we live in June;
but visit Quarter Four and you’ll see that all is well
with our Gantts realigned and the sponsors all informed.
Temporal disorders are often diagnosed,
prescribing a pay-cut doesn’t go down well.
Time is the enemy. Time must be fought.
Time is feral and bites you on the arse.
Time is a horse that runs itself to death.
Time is a bug I think I’ve caught,
I’m living in the future and I can’t come back.
Haikus
I kill the engine,
the moor’s dry grasses lit pink,
cut-out crow exits.
*
My lone red tulip
lolls over, loosens into
an open-mouthed kiss.
*
The earth seethes with ants,
a broken nest erupts in
urgent, angry work.
*
I tell my children
the slumped badger by the road
is only sleeping.
*
I lay sugar trails,
form a mandala of ants,
fetch boiling water.
*
Little white feathers
from the hen-harrier’s kill
float in the sunshine.
*
Sweating onions,
easing pop of the corkscrew,
us not arguing.
*
Map OL21
Slaughter Gap, Cat Stones,
Horrodiddle, Paradise,
Canker Lane, Jam Hill.
Great Ding, Jubilee,
Dungeon Wood, Fill Belly Flat,
Wolf Stones, Clunters, Tongue.
Commissioning a map
The cartographer and I have had a tiff,
I don’t appreciate his profession,
my slapdash approach to boundaries is troubling,
the distance the crow flies is not the same as walking.
But that’s just fine because I
am more interested in flying than walking.
He explains my map is not to scale,
that I’ve mixed Northings with Eastings,
that A and B roads aren’t choices made or unmade.
A variable of five degrees can be the difference
between success or failure.
But my concerns are not to scale and furthermore
I want the bridleways unbridled,
the best bacon sandwiches mapped,
where to go sledging and
what time not to walk alone at night.
Maps, he explains, don’t do temporal,
and I say, well, the hydrographer did the whales,
spouting beautifully in the ornamental lake.
He points out the hydrographer got lost
trying to draw an armada at the swimming pool
and asks me not to hop-scotch on his grid lines.
He thinks I’m a slagheap (dis).
But he has plotted the silence of the moors
(marsh, reeds or saltings)
and the gorgeous swoop of the motorway.
My contour lines are scum rings round the bath.
The cartographer is sick of drawing dragons and
if I have that many dragons there’ll be no cattle left in
Calderdale.
BS! I say, I’m the one making this map,
you’re just my technical advisor.
You need more than technical, he says, more than advice.
It’s true that there’s a bubble in my compass.