Comic Poems: The Young Wife

The Diocese Meeting Before the interview begins Before we call him in I'll share surveillance findings That your thoughts should underpin We have googled him and taken stock His antics cause concern Check out those suspicious snapshops Of that weekend in Lucerne We have checked him pot on google earth His garden is a tip And we clocked him sunning starkers With a lady and a whip He's been joining dating agencies Online, this married man He's not got the moral fibre To fit with our parish plan For a hobby, he's put cricket Save the planet is his ethos But on facebook his distractions Are with alcohol and eros Now it's time for us to fetch him But before that he sits down He will NEVER be our minister A chancer and a clown Deli Katesson: The Supermarket Deity I am Deli Katesson, goddess of all supermarkets I am omnipotent, omnipresent, all seeing I shape shift at will Sometimes, I'm a trolley Sometimes I'm a check out slide Black and fully loaded I bless the heads of cauliflowers I stampede shoppers into the maw of consumerism I persuade them to buy the coffee excreted by civets I terrify them into stock piling toilet rolls I sooth dismembered chickens in the fridge I hypnotize them into stupefaction By playing syrupy music in the store Belgian pate's putty in my hands I tingle your tastebuds as you pass the wine I jingle the coco pops like strippers' tassles I levitate above the rasps I meditate over the Brie, the cheddar, the Edam All hail my magnanimous watermelons All praise my salmon steaks, my peach ice cream! I am Deli Katessan, deity of the pickles The Doritas, the mince, the herring Your money, cards, vouchers Please lay them at the tills, my sacred altars Very Disappointed: Don't Commission this Artist Sixteen years it took him to finish my portrait Sixteen bloody years. My husband was a silk merchant, you know Money no object But would that Leonardo stick at the job? No, no. Always something else on the go Like a performing flea Let me introduce myself I am Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo I posed for that portrait for ages That wasn't a smile, That was gritted teeth Tholing attacks of cramp or flatulence He took my painting to France, you know Sold me to King Francois 1st I've lost count of my owners Once, I ended up in Napoleon's boudoir But on that my lips are sealed I ended up in the Musee du Louvre, Paris I'm bullet proof, temperature adjusted Insured for 700 million dollars 6 million tourists gawp at me each year My face…MY face…has been copied Parodied, mocked, worshipped, marketed Operas, movies, songs, ships Even a crater on Venus, all with my name More mileage commercial-wise than Helen of Troy A Louvre employee, Vincenzo Peruggia Hid in a broom cupboard, and just walked out with me Hid me two years in his squalid little flat! Tried to sell me to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence Then a vandal threw acid on me. A Bolivian threw a rock at me A cup was thrown at me And that nasty oik the Dadaist, Duchamp Gave me a moustache and a beard Artists? A nasty lot. I wouldn't give the best of them So much as the time of day