I hadn’t thought to think, so have for nowt
this sonnet, jack-in-the-box that’ll always
spring summat from thought’s brief blackout:
a word, a phrase, even this image. Today
I’m out-of-office because the jesters say
there’s no cash, at least not beyond the stash
stacked high from our goodwill. The glaze
of their painted-on smiles wears thin. In a flash
they’ll vanish again, into some newly brash
building since that’s the way the money goes.
We turn the crank; the music plays; crash
and boom the same to these pinocchios.
Now bob along to the market’s grim credo:
money is truth, that is all ye need to know.
Ben Wilkinson’s second collection of poems is Same Difference (Seren, 2022). Don Paterson (LUP, 2021), a reader’s guide to the poet’s work, is due out in paperback later this year.
new boots and pantisocracies 