Three satirical sonnets about some aspects of life in the world today......

One Of The Lads: Modern Love In Urban England
c. Sara L. Russell, 20th May

She wanted to be always at his side,
He wanted her sometimes inside his bed;
She wanted to become a summer bride,
But pride belied the things she left unsaid;
He wanted to be tied down and chastised,
But not hogtied in dull matrimony.
She met his dullard friends, whom she despised,
But only they saw what he could not see:
A woman sharp of wit, with spun-gold hair,
Who could drink pints until the others fell,
Who kept her feet well-heeled, her shoulders bare,
Whose topaz eyes could weave a sullen spell.
She gave him one last chance to be a man,
He put the football on and cracked a can.



Sonnet Of The Boy Band Factory
c. Sara L. Russell 26th April 2001

It's midnight at the Boy Band Factory
Five individuals shuffle into view
They're interviewed, then scrubbed clean as can be
To be the preconditioned chosen few.
First their hair is shorn of rocker's locks
Then legs and arms summarily unscrewed
Replaced with dancing limbs from a dark box
To conjour a more funky attitude.
Then each boy's brain is carefully replaced
With a brand new one in a smaller size
New voice boxes are wired and interlaced
To interact with mouths, in their new guise.
It's one a.m., and now the boys rehearse
To nail art to the cross of crass commerce.


Sonnet To A Salesman
c. Sara L. Russell 31/7/98
appears as video recital in Pinky's Little Book
of Shadows / Kedco Studios Artist Profile Press

Purveyor of new double-layered glass -
pray do not so prevail upon my time,
with silvered tongue, that it might come pass,
perchance, that I might purchase goods of thine.
For I would roundly smite thee on the ear
and chin thee to the middle of next week,
thou speakest that which I despise to hear,
wasteth my time; bringeth my ire to peak.
I spit upon thy new uPVC!
I scorn thee, verily, thou popinjay!
Thou callest me from serendipity
to woe. Go, copulating, on thy way!
For nought that silver tongue speaketh be true
and I have far, far better things to do.