Clerihew: Jeremy Westlake
Jeremy Westlake
has the second best take
He's in charge of the cash
and makes sure he gets a big stash
- Read more about Clerihew: Jeremy Westlake
- Log in or register to post comments
Having written and performed as The Big J in the 1980s, Janine started again in 2014, after a brief interlude of around a quarter of a century.
Froms sonnets to villanelles, limericks to ballads, the occasional rap and plenty of straightforward rants, serious and humorous and sometimes both, here is Janine's verse.
Janine's poems have been published in numerous poetry and other journals and websites, including Algebra of Owls, South Bank Poetry, the Daily Mirror, PUSH, Hour of Writes, Proletarian Poetry, Confluence Medway, Screaming Violets, Poetry24, Solidarity, Stand Up and Spit, Hastings Independent, Freedom, Women’s Fightback, the Morning Star, Rising and TenFootCity; and in anthologies Spies4Life, Poems for Jeremy Corbyn, Justice: Poems for Grenfell Tower.and Ashes to Activists
Jeremy Westlake
has the second best take
He's in charge of the cash
and makes sure he gets a big stash
Andrew Haines
carefully explains
That his £593,000 pay is not a perk -
He really is worth twenty of the people who do the actual work
---
*Chief Executive Officer of Network Rail
Grant Shapps
He talks and he craps
But often gets confused
About which end he's used
Janine sonnet, Another Country, is included in the anthology Poetry and Settled Status for All, published by Civic Leicester.
Invited to an event
to answer a question of importance,
I walked along the street with highness,
went in through the door that revolves,
past the guard of security,
and spoke to the person with femaleness and helpfulness
at the desk of reception.
She doesn't cringe and cower,
she's not a fragile flower
She picked on him and tricked him
She's not a perfect victim
She tells of his coercion,
he tells a different version
How dare she contradict him?
She's not a perfect victim
She unstable, she's a venter,
she's known to lose her temper
She pushed him and she kicked him
She's not a perfect victim
Amplify the voices
that rarely get a hearing
Power up the megaphone
and drown out the jeering
Amplify and magnify
the voices that are hampered by
calcifying attitudes and
patronising platitudes
Amplify the organisers
building solidarity,
alternatives to narratives
of pity and of charity
Nicky from Network Rail
says that to get work and not fail
to make yourself a mint,
not be skint
- come on, take the hint -
There once was a Tory, his name is Neil Parish
Attracted to tractors in "a moment of madness"
And now Mrs P is extremely embarrassed
A big-wheeled beauty with a powerful horn
Harvesting hot stuff down in the corn
Who wouldn't love agricultural porn?
Pompous & Opulent
Prosperous & Ostentatious
Profiteering & On-the-take
Parsimonious & Obstinate
Penny-pinching & 'Orrible
Private & Obscene
Perfidious & Odious
Poisonous & Objectionable
Punishing & Oppressive
Petition & Organise
Protest & Outrage
Picket & Occupy
Public & Ownership.