Counting Penguins

Stiff old Aunty lets her hair down lower every day,

her diction as “urban” as an inner city comp,

her spelling as random as an upturned scrabble board.

Aunty Beeb was all talk and chalk once upon a tea-time,

now she is as inclusive as the wonder teachers

that feature on a news-segment and the red sofa

whilst stories tell of classes of forty feral beasts

and stabbings in West Yorkshire schoolrooms.

And we must be included,

Aunty begs our every tweet and meme

to fill the news-hungry maws

of us, the consumers, whose

short attention span

moves us on

before the end

of a sentence.

Kind old Aunty lets us play news every day,

our pictures illustrating weather, whether or no

we care about rain in Rotherham and Ramsgate.

Aunty Beeb is all memes and e-mails between headlines,

now she is as exclusive as a UKIP rally

that features in a news-segment and after the next soap star

whilst no-one tells of taxes where forty fiscal thieves

and rascals thrive in Westminster pump-rooms.