The Weekly Muse

They dawdle over Colchester

To flirt with stars and moon,

The tail-lights in the summer sky

As May slinks into June,

Where grown-up Mods and Rockers

Keep the gardens of suburbia

And Army wives wait up all night

For transport planes from Serbia.

Older than conquistadors

And lost in jungle long ago

A vast and hidden city lies

Asleep in southern Mexico,

Its pyramids and plazas

Ports of call for vivid birds,

While English archaeologists

Stare awestruck, lost for words,

At the faded hieroglyphics

On the columns made of stone

And wonder in the sticky heat

How Mayan flesh and bone,

Which fashioned this metropolis,

Could slip into decline:

The snakes the only sacrifice

Still slithering on the shrine,

The scream of baby monkeys

And the high mosquito whine

On the terraces and temples

Now bequeathed to creeper-vine.

Those doctors linking mobile phones

With instances of damaged brains

Should spend an hour in Standard Class

On any of our rush-hour trains.

The evidence is obvious:

Concertos of mundanity

Assail the ears of travellers

To drive them to insanity.

And this is how the mantra goes,

Relentless as a bad refrain:

Dee-diddle-ee... Diddle-eediddle-ee...

"Hello, I'm on the train."

Hello, I'm trying to read a book.

I don't possess a mobile phone.

I've just escaped from Broadmoor.

You say you're travelling all alone?

A Mekon for an editor,

A staff comprised of chowderheads,

Is all you need to scour the world

For sodomites and powderheads,

To purge the closets of the stars,

Root out their sexuality,

While wrecking lives and livelihoods

And trumpeting morality.

A sportsman or comedian,

A royal bride-to-be -

It neither matters who you hurt

Nor to what degree.

But if you do it long enough

You'll reach the same conclusion,

That everyone's messed up on drugs,

In sexual confusion.

Therefore, let's draft a brand-new law:

All tabloids off the shelves

While editors and journalists

Investigate themselves.