Something to show for it

Oh, no! I’ll assume something totally wrong
For I lack self-control and I cannot deny it
My interests lean to the venal and long
May my silence continue, I’ll try to keep quiet

But sometimes the need to exclaim all at once
When my mouth gets ahead of my brain, I admit it
Can give the impression I’m thoughtless and dense
As words slip past my censor and blurt through my lipstick

I’m careful, not careless; I pay close attention
Avoiding glib phrases and skirting pretence
Sincere of ambition, diffusing all tension
A guard on my tongue but no end to offence

You’d never imagine… I couldn’t believe it!
My opening gambit, caught sight of a plate
An idiot’s here, I can scarcely conceive it
How could I come out with such ejaculate?

An ass just addressed in the major and minor
The whole of the room with today’s foolish bray
I don’t understand why my inner designer
Won’t work with my editing suite as they say

I’ll sit in the corner, projecting ambivalence
Try to ignore just how rosy the glow
My face is on fire with the sum of my brilliance
Perhaps I’d be better to grab coat and go?

We set up this meeting and hoped for clear visions
But as I just proved I’m inept and half-cocked
It might be more prudent to postpone decisions
Until I’ve recovered composure and tact

Loop-de-wholesale

Made in the land of make-believe
Where lawyers play ‘who’d you believe?’
And corporations patent hints
Before they’ve read the finer print
Safety testing doesn’t sell
As competitive ne’er do wells
Are underestimating time
To roll their products off the line
So what’s to do when local law
Prohibits what has gone before?
But legislate your private loop
To keep them jumping through the hoop
‘Domestic’ laws will not apply
While we want foreign states to buy
Substandard, globocentric tat
‘Til ecosystem must fall flat
So here’s to Canada’s defeat
This business model works a treat
We’ll make our fortune and then some
Just looking out for number one

Out of Place

I suppose there’s nothing wrong with it
But personally it threw me
I even felt a little uncomfortable
Yes, even I – yours truly

Catching the unexpected sight
That lay betwixt my legs
With knickers heading ankleward
And sleep still in my head

A paperclip in a bowl of white
When you’ve been dreaming half the night
Perhaps in itself not so strange a sight
But staring up at me, not right

The world had lost what sanity
Remained to it – insanitary
Metal curves glinted through the blue-tinted
Water in the bottom of the lavatory.

Now how the hell did that get there?
All sorts of scenarios floated through
The sudden space between my ears
As I gazed in wonderment, sans clue

Out of place as an office tool
In the Monday morning, air-conditioned
Chill of a corporate bathroom stall
At odds with surroundings can be positioned.

A mundane mystery, unmoved here
It can’t be shifted by the flush
Of a girl in a hurry to embrace the pure
Delights of the kitchenette thermos flask

Filled with a mud-like java ooze
And the plastic snap-tub biscuit tin
In individual wrappers snooze
The office worker’s breakfast sin

Bought to bolster her resolve
To tackle the horrors yet in store
With an ever-abundant inbox, filled
Overflowing with weekend’s weighty chore

To help unravel the tangled threads
Of under-worded communications
By those whose double shift’s preparation
For the stats release to the waiting nation.

So what to do with this sad item
Displaced object, much abused
With little now to recommend it
Be retrieved and so, reused…

Poor Clippy, sadly suicidal
Jumped the rim and sank his shame
At such clear speech – misinformation
Too few letters to his name

Made redundant since the Nineties’
Macro software eased our pain
Now enshrined in more than pixels
From his ignominy, fame.