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We`re all in this together

by Midnight_Sun 

Posted: 29 June 2011
Word Count: 148
Summary: A tongue and cheek piece I wrote a while back; after the general election


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My wallet no longer bulges
with notes and Condem are too busy
stuffing their throats
with foie gras and caviar
to care about where
my wonga has gone.

All I got was the milk
of feigned ‘human kindness’
and in my blindness
I lapped it up.
Not realising it was sour
until it had passed
the eleventh hour.

Then the bitterness
turned my stomach.
Flummoxed
by their double speak
my situation turned me weak
as I used to be
a paragon of virtue.

I no longer need a wallet
and even closed my account
as I carry my money around
in a sack, making withdrawals
while my head’s be-tighted
and I don’t intend to give any back.

What’s good for the goose
is good for the gander; as apparently
robbing is all the rage,
but forget banker’s bonuses,
there not for me,
but maybe soon I’ll be knighted.






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Comments by other Members



James Graham at 19:36 on 30 June 2011  Report this post
I like the whimsicality of this - ‘where my wonga has gone’, money in a sack (I can rob if they do), prospects of being knighted. Has wonga already got into the language as a word for a short term loan? (‘Be a pal and let me have a little wonga till Friday’)...or are you the first to use it in this sense? You must be the first to use ‘be-tighted’, a word that deserves to enter the language; it seems to describe a familiar feeling.

This is a poem about economics, after all. I think you adopt just the right tone of whimsical humour verging on Monty Python. Is that how you see it yourself?

I wasn’t sure at first about your ‘milk of human kindness’ idea, who was dispensing this feigned kindness that turned sour. But on reflection I think it must be the consumer society, including the banks. All the advertisers - supermarkets, car makers, comparison sites, compensation lawyers - are the epitome of kindness, they’re there for you, they want to make you happy. And the banks are there to help - friendly, caring, altruistic. And you don’t realise the ‘milk’ is sour until after you’ve swallowed it. So I think I get the point now - didn’t take too long.

There’s a nice scattering of rhymes, alliteration and sound-echoes, which are quite haphazard and not in a formal pattern, except perhaps in the second verse which has more end rhymes. In a curious way this reflects the whimsicality of the poem. A monologue by a banker (if such a thing is imaginable) would be in strictly metrical verse with a very fixed rhyme scheme, but this is a monologue by a normal flummoxed person and its sound-patterns are more offbeat. More human.

A minor change, and two very minor ones:

though I used to be
a paragon of virtue


maybe? Also:

but forget bankers’ bonuses,
they’re not for me


(I used to be an English teacher.)

James.


Midnight_Sun at 11:20 on 04 July 2011  Report this post
Thanks for taking the time to read this James,

I appreciate you pointing out those little mistakes i've made and am chuffed that you find the humour in it Pythonesque as they happen to be one of my all time favourites!

Patricia


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