The Pen's Lament

I never get to choose the words you use,

The colour of the page on which you write;

I wish I scribed a rainbow - red, pink, blue -

But every day I’m trapped in black-as-night.

The English language is a world of wonder,

A vast and magic land of power and might;

But through its realms of beauty you just blunder -

If only you would learn to spell it right!

Here we go: another lengthy essay!

We analyse a poem of your choice;

You are always careless and so messy -

When will you write a story, find your voice?

Let us wander down the roads of metaphor,

And weave some similes like spiders’ webs;

But then I hear the naggings of the teacher -

We’ll keep rewriting paragraphs instead.

Jennifer Pickup