Fenland Sketch: 4

The editor of Island (Scotland) kindly published Fenland Sketch 1 in the November 2K1 edition. Whilst commenting on that poem, he wrote that if his neighbour's God was watching him, he'd bugger a goat on the front lawn.

I thank you for your note, in which you write
about the acts you threaten in a bum
caprine. I didn't say (I'd thought it trite)
that I'm a secret agent for The Scum,

for which I dig in bins throughout the night
(I raid the rich and famous) looking for
hysteria to push in black and white.
To you, I shall admit, I've been a bore,

I told my editor the things you say,
I rue my lack of nous. He's sent a pan
of journalist to hunt around your neigh-
bourhood; he hopes to find a fan of Man-

chester United (we've got Beckham un-
der contract). If you wake to see, one day,
a chamoise sweetly tempting in the sun,
resist that goat, for David B, your neigh-

bour's football God, awaits, binoculars
in hand, to watch. The cameraman will flash
and snap, the journalist will crawl the bars,
pretending he was there. A grand, in cash,

will cheer your neighbour's life, and you'd go in
a chat show agent's set of guests, sunk low
to let the coucherati sneer at sin;
hypocrisy is good TV, you know.

Of course, I don't expect all this to make
a difference, to wit, your acumen
in publishing my works. I'll have my cake
and scoff it, for your moment in The Scum.