Fourteen


Are they all just the usual plonkers
With long woolly wigs and red gowns?
Or are others impossibly bonkers,
Sophisticates dressed up as clowns?

Just the same bunch of bald legal eagles,
Peccadilloes infecting their brains?
Imagining juries are beagles
Out hunting us? Are they insanes?

Relenting, will some make repentance
To a crusty, crepuscular God?
Or is every singular sentence
More wallop from ancient old cod?

There are judges, and then there are judges,
Sitting still as a quick-frozen fart:
Until they are moved, or one budges,
How the hell can one tell them apart?

 


[November 1999]

From Labour Pangs

Fourteen

Of the girl in the Gary Glitter case, Mr. Justice Butterfield remarked,'There is fourteen and there is fourteen. Some look like sophisticated young ladies...and some still look like little girls. You may wish to consider which category the girl was in.'