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Monday 16 October 2017

NAMING OF STORMS


Another day and another storm
with a cute name hurtles across the sea
en route to be lead story on the nine o’clock news
presented by *Huw Edwards as Eeyore,
looking miserable and hopeless and delivering the words
like a hangdog lay minister at a graveside.
Storms, nature’s perverse blow jobs,
named after old school friends and kindly aunties,
that will test nerves and bricks and allow action reporters
to model Barbour jackets and Hunter wellies as they wade
in flood water, pointing to the desperate and the damage,
one eye on the camera lens and the other twinkling
to impress BAFTA judges.
Huw tells us the news, the live reporter tells us the same news,
Huw and the reporter discuss the same news
and our eyes glaze and nostrils flare just as they did
when we were six listening to a church sermon
about dungeon, fire and sword, words spoken by a fat priest
with a hangover from a pulpit that creaked above us,
as if squirming God had an itchy arse on a leather chair
and was signalling to Father Fat to shut the hell up
and get on with the praise and glory bits.
If macho storms are to be christened, they need macho names,
not Gertrude, Daisy, Barney, Frank, Nigel, Wendy or, now, Ophelia. 
Call them Satan, Armageddon, Bastard, call them anything that describes
their intentions, their baggage of destruction, misery and despair,
and the most appropriate thing we should do is name one Huw.


Note for some readers: *BBC television newsreader


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