The Burns Supper

You stand there, knife in your hand Solemn’s the Last Supper, Addressing a haggis. Every Scot in his marrow warms to Burns, The Ayshire Casanova who Spoke out for Freedom, the rights of man In straight plain language You get to stand there in his skin Have a piece of him, shaking your fist The main man, against Holy Willies Iniquities of poverty and your own Insignificance and peelywalliness Everyone’s got Burns taped. Number one Of the performance poets, he lived life LARGE He hammered verbal nails into unfairness. Man of the people, sweat of our sweat Our greatest export This is your moment of glory. The haggis awaits. Your mother sucks on her gums You make her proud, oh aye. Her hair is permed to perfection, Her annual trip from the care home Your oilman son, all hairy legs and trainers Listens to you for once in his beer stained kilt The power of poetry gives you borrowed importance Outside, the North Sea storms and rails and rattles Landlubbers pay it not one jot of attention Its dramatic shenanigans is nothing compared With hundreds of Tam o Shanters Spoken this night in a show of Scots solidarity Your son’s imported partner, a pallid Finn Is appropriately impressed as you disembowel With relish the steaming haggis entrails. Your son explains this is a Scottish custom She nods and whispers, ‘Ah, just like our sauna.’