NEW LABOUR ART
By christopher barnes

You'd shrink from the plagued opus
of a theremin.
Because today is a driven snowbank
the polytunnels and the milking parlour
are glittery pearls.
So, Tony's been knuckle-balling uranium (bombshell!)
and is a rhapsodist of decorative cancers.
Kids (other peoples, or course)
are blanks of a leakier anatomy
than regulation predicts.
And that dollop of havoc
one morning'll be in a septic tank
a bag of dust-tricks in the Tate
where a debutante ball
of not-up-to-much wheelchairs
yank a bubble of breathing apparatus
and the guests of the State
thinking themselves tone-deaf
struggle to echo the whine of a theremin.

DUCK'S ARSE
By christopher barnes

Kerb-squeesed, the '57 Ford's no cool box
but a thingamubob in its ilk has him off
and our tee-hee faced schizophrenic
beams ear to ear mirth.
He's barking
"Rock Around The Clock"
with a cluck and a snarl.
The quiff-shaped karaoke in his scalp
has a culture shock's lop side
and though the dipthongs he hears
are in 3-part harmony
he slip-slides,
forgetting which voice is his.