What better place to start this Poem of the Day blog than with ‘The Hole’? 

After all it is April Fool’s Day and certainly a time when many more people are discovering that there are yawning holes in places they never thought to see them.  Holes that gobble up savings, investments, jobs and even well-being itself.  This is awful.

Of course the Hole in this piece is a metaphor for something a little deeper but as it is fundamentally a satirical piece of buffoonery it seems an apt choice for April 1. 

What chance do we have when even the best ideas like for example the electric car (and before that The Stanley Streamer) are deliberately trashed to safeguard the mega-profits from oil and the internal combustion engine?

The car I mention was a well designed small saloon which could be plugged-in for a top up overnight, at home  for your sixty miles worth of  trips the following day. Many were sold in the try out state of California.

http://www.stwr.org/multinational-corporations/big-oils-vendetta-against-the-electric-car.html

The pressure is on the Capitalist system and quite obviously it is going to get a good deal worse. If you link this with the accelerating demands of climate change and look to deliver some sort of a prognosis for Man …..

I’ll leave this to you, as some things are better left unsaid. 

THE  HOLE

`There’s a hole in the middle of my bedroom -

can’t think how I never saw it there before!

A great big hole in the middle of the bedroom:

yawning at me from the middle of the floor!

Now if I sit and watch it careful,

might see what kind of beastie lives inside.

Could be anything on earth (or from inside it),

a hog, a badger or a buffalo that’s died.

There’s the  sound of something chewing lettuce

and the smell of something meaty being fried.

 

Well it doesn’t seem to have no bottom;

its colour’s deep and darkest black.

Just dropped my last fifty pee inside it -

don’t think I’m gonna get my money back!

The more I stare down in its murky spaces

the more it seems to wanna pull me in.

Are holes like this supposed to have strange faces?

Just now I swear I saw it grin.

 

Perhaps I ought to try and meet it half-way:

but tell me how on earth could I begin?

There’s some rope stashed in the bathroom:

I could just lash it round the heavy chair,

let the other end right down the thing

and then,  just sorta climb down there.

 

Maybe I should take a box of matches,

a salami sandwich and a pot of instant glue.

a Meccano set might come in handy;

maybe my Reader’s Digest Atlas too!

Who knows what kinda stuff you need explorin’

and I wouldn’t want to meet my Waterloo.

 

So now I got the rope all knotted round the armchair

and a knapsack slung across my back.

I’m swinging in the darkness,  spinning,

and groping for my geophysical map!

I can only say  ‘It’s not at all what I expected’

            and truly, ‘Yours sincerely’

                                              may not be coming back!´