fellow traveller

[dedalus]

The king was in his counting house
counting all his money;
Jock and I were chained in the dungeon,
not in the least bit funny.

The queen was in the parlour
eating cakes and honey;
Jock and I were on bread and water,
our sores had gone all runny.

This is what you get
for being a Celtic Communist,
lost back in the Middle Ages:
tossed into cages, burnt at stakes,
bound in chains with wife and wains,
then hurled into nearby lakes.

We preached the Third Stage of Capitalism
while the world was concerned with Papal Schism,
we were a bit, perhaps, before our time
(to be garrotted, impaled, then buried in lime)
but the People need to be told things.

Jock was a Seeker, a fiery speaker,
"Guid wha' tha haw an tschock fa lings!"
he'd cry to the gathering gawking crowds
and me, I'd translate, parting the roiling clouds
to expose the shining sun, I was the one
that had a way with the local lingo,
this guttural sputtering spitting speech
these brutes had cobbled together ... bingo!
and called the Angalish tongue.

When the castle in time was attacked
Jock and I were the very first among
the prisoners who escaped: the queen,
I'm sorry to say, was repeatedly raped;
so incessantly, in fact, to her heart's content,
that she subsequently went to live in Ghent
with the gentleman-rapist best endowed.

Her husband, the king, didn't fare so well:
fearful and tearful, most thoroughly cowed
he was hastened on his way to hell,
garrotted, impaled, and buried in lime,
dug up, then hanged, then burnt at the stake,
as an afterthought slung into a lake.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Jock and I married two bonny sisters,
and set up a tea shop in Ayre.
Damn the speeches, the auld emotional fits,
we'd become Democratic Socialists.
The girls run the shop, God bless 'em,
we smoke our pipes in the garden.

[BenJohnson]

Absolutely awestruck. I'm sure there should be some crits, but I can't find any.

[dedalus]

No, and there won't be any until I stop posting poems and start writing a few comments. It's natural justice. I've been falling down on the job. Woefully. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

[Cooper]

I dunno I think it may be that some people in the face of your poems come over all inadequate... In my humble opinion what i've read of yours, is some of the best on the site. Poetry I actually want to read, and genuinely enjoy.
Now that the arse licking is over..