Number 51. Supply and Demand

There can't be many truck drivers who were learning about the iambic pentameter in their cabs on Friday while on a tachograph break.  I was.  I was waiting for a trailer load from the Channel Islands at the Portsmouth ferry port to have the VAT paid which took all morning.  I am reading The Ode Less Travelled, by Stephen Fry, which claims to be the only instruction manual ever written for poets. I had already written Supply and Demand, the previous day, while waiting to be loaded at Gist in Hemel Hempstead, and decided to apply Stephen's exercise in creating lines in iambic pentameter to it.  This is the result.  If you are wondering what the iambic pentameter is, it is the metre or meter and therefore the rhythm of the poem.  In this case it begins on a low accent and can be thought of like this; and one and two and three and four and five,  or ti tum ti tum ti tum ti tum ti tum.  Pentameter means it has five beats.  Read it like that. 

Supply and Demand.

I'm telling you I really am quite rich;
I’ve made a great amount of money, which
Instead of spending loads of it on me,
I think I’ll give away to charity:

It started very many years ago;
The secret is quite simple when you know;
I recognised an opportunity,
The limit of it was infinity!

Demand just now has got to be so great,
That I have had to take to working late,
It seems that people cannot get enough,
Of my quite extra-ordinary stuff!

It comes in truck loads, either boxed or loose;
Some of it special, some for general use,
Some thin, some thick, some straight, some of it curled,
And every day I ship it round the world!

Demand I’ve found has never much declined,
In fact the trend has always been inclined...
Despite my clients’ efforts to reduce
Consumption, towards ever greater use!

I try to manufacture ethically,
To satisfy their too pathetically
Unfettered appetites, that make them think
They always need more of it or they’ll sink.

The truth is that we all of us would be,
Much better off, (of course excepting me),
If manufacture were right now to stop,
Or off the cliff the market were to drop!

Because there is a danger with this stuff,
That if you have a bit more than enough,
Each day you find you’ve got a tangle new;
Before you know it, it will strangle you!

So what is it, what is this stuff I make?
What ever could it be for Heaven’s sake!
What is this business that’s in such good shape?
I’ll tell you now, I simply make Red Tape!

© Stephen Saunders

To book Steph'nonsense for a rhyming evening:
bowleyfarm@gmail.com or 01428 741212

Agent / publisher wanted.

So as I work my way through Fry's book I'll have to revisit my earlier work and apply his various lessons to them all, and ensure they conform to an appropriate meter, so that they don't annoy you the reader.

Meanwhile, I am very pleased with the article that appeared in the Midhurst and Petworth Observer this week, perhaps you learned about me there, and if so, thank you for looking me up on my blog.