Four Candles

 

Four Candles

 

You watch them put people in the jungle

and make them eat worms,

slap leeches in their baths -

been doing it for years – adding dabs of colour -

celebrities, influencers – off they trundle -

I mean, if it’s a Tik Tok Twerk

with followers a-plenty, they better get packing.

Switch it on, how we laughed –

or if you think something’s lacking,

maybe not. Later tonight there’ll be a top ten

of things somehow better then –

Fray Bentos, Dixons Pick n Mix,

Saturday shopping at Woolworths –

but there’s a nip in the air.

Want a national dish? Have an English -

goodness gracious me, you saw that once

they’re putting chips on everything that’s wrong

but you’d rather be caught with a poppadum,

left wondering if it’s dubbed a classic

because the dim and distant remember it.

Who told you to think that,

made it a condition, a living thing,

a terrible thing to lose –

you'd never put yourself in their shoes

or walk around in them

because they know there are those

who laugh at four candles –

even Griff said it’s a shoddy thing to lampoon

shooting sparrows with a cannon,

there must be something worse in the room –

coming from jungles, sculling with spoons

while you’re told those poor people on the rafts,

will make it here and will fail to laugh.