Because English is nothing is not Shakespearean
by Lyndon Hood
Next Generation Roads Of National Significance
Cuckoo Song
Traditional English
Nationyl’s bitumen-ing
As they du du
Seed groweth
River floweth
Then ‘dozer drives thru
Highway ensu
Analysts examend road
How much yt cost u
Decryd yts
Cost benifyts
Whych Nats issu
Big fuk u tu
Car numbyrs gru
And cee oh tu
Tis cuccu nu
Tis cuccu
We’re so scru
Tis cuccu nu
‘Presentable and competent’ – National MPs [initially] on Ardern
Sonnet MMXVII
Bill “Shakespeare” English
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art less widely liked, by just a bit;
But popularity is not the way,
To prove for Government you are quite fit.
You smile (so I maintain) all the time,
You lack (I haven’t checked) in policy,
Your grasp of its detail is unrefined;
You haven’t even run a Ministry.
I could go on, but now instead I pause,
And listen to the things that I have said:
Will they persuade the people, or give cause
For those that like, to like you more instead?
My criticism, accidentally,
Of you, is also always of John Key.
‘Some have fewer human rights’ – Bennett promises harsh crackdown on drug-dealing gang members
This is just to say
William English William
I have commenced a vicious crackdown
on the thing
that was on
the talkback
and which
you were probably
making
a plan for that might work probably better but which didn’t involve destroying basic civil rights and boasting about it
Forgive me
it was desperate
so reflexive
and so cold
Steven Joyce refuses to apologise for attack on Labour’s fiscal plan
From The Love Song of Trivial Disproofrock
S. W. English
Mentre ch’io forma fui d’ossa e di polpe
che la madre mi diè, l’opere mie
non furon leonine, ma di volpe.
Li accorgimenti e le coperte vie
io seppi tutte, e sì menai lor arte,
ch’al fine de la terra il suono uscie.
[…]
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Am I right?” and, “Am I right?”
Time to stay awake for half the night,
As the media fix me in their sights —
(They will say: “He made up Labour’s fiscal hole!”)
My confidence, my statements firmly put and strong,
My walking back on them without admitting I was wrong —
(They will say: “Can he count? Is he a troll?”)
Do I dare
Admit the truth?
In a minute there is time
For assertions and aspersions where a minute finds disproof.
For I have used them all already: have made use
Of ways to turn their strong points to a curse,
I have lectured on their life, chapter and verse;
Painted them, implying with half-lying truth
Incompetent, malicious, perhaps worse.
So how did this not work?
In the room the pundits turn on me
Bang goes that election strategy.
***