Something like that. It's about transcendence. See if you can spot the intertextual references.

I think I agree, I'm not really happy with the ending. In fact the whole thing is a work in progress. The best line is the first one, and I borrowed that from Gerard Manley Hopkins. It came into my head, and I thought I'd written it, but then I remembered it came from somewhere else. But then I used it anyway; it seemed to make sense.

I'm well aware of this part of the body. I've just bought a new bicycle saddle designed to stop compression of perineal tissue and instead distribute weight onto the pelvic bones.

That's not actually what a slagheap is. Rather, it's a pile of all the rock and waste dug out of a coalmine; everything that's isn't coal and so isn't useful. But, you knew that already and were just joshing me in your wicked way.

Problem is, I was wrong. The war didn't begin on a Tuesday. It was a Friday in the end, I think.

I'm glad I made you chuckle. A good chuckle is a beautiful thing.

Hello again Mr. Christof. Yes, much of this poem is a bit rubbish. It needs a lot and more work, and should be about a quarter the length. Still, it was worth a try.

Something freaky happened there, and cut a bit off my message.
The poem goes:

Sing for Wales or shut your trap
All the rest's a load crap.

Which is pretty succinct. No, I'm not Dr. Thomas Jones. But there was a Dr. Thomas Jones who inspired the following short poem:

Where now he lies his own routine
Will suffer scant disruption
For none could say he'd ever been
A stranger to corruption.

Harri Webb wasn't actually a terrorist, he just designed the symbol. But he did write the mighty 'Advice to a Young Poet' which goes

Yes, of course the bathos is the point. The end is meant to be laughably mundane. But perhaps I could express it better. But the point is, it does fucking matter that Princess Diana's ex-butler gets more coverage than, say, 966 people being massacred in the Congo last month. By the way, my PhD is on a poet called Harri Webb who was a hardcore Welsh Nationalist, and designed the symbol used by the Free Wales Army, one of the least competent terrorist groups in history.

Thank you for your kind comment. I agree, the ending in retrospect is a bit weak. I came up with lots of different lines, but none of them quite worked - it has to convey the information and also fit the sonnet structure.

Didn't work for Vietnam, though, did it? The people can stop an unpopular war. Why do you think Harold Wilson, despite repeated US pressure, never committed a single British troop to 'Nam? Gulf War One was about liberating a conquered country. Gulf War Two will be about reshaping the middle east in a way that suits the west. I think people are more aware than you give them credit for.

Actually, it's not going to be Tuesday anymore. The UN vote could now be Friday, and then as soon as the resolution is vetoed by three separate countries (France, Russia, China), Bush will begin raining fiery death all over the middle east.

I agree with you. I used to hate them, but now I write them all the time because I can knock them off in two minutes. Just for you, here's a bumper crop of anti-war haikus:I have never been
Bombed, but I don?t think I would
Send thanks to the pilot.

A liberation?
Kind regards for killing my
Brothers and sisters.

Hiroshima: then
Weapons of mass destruction
Were Truman?s baby

I stood in a crowd
Protesting by a castle -
Some of us were right.

Iraqi summer
Melts the UK issue boots ?
But souls can burn too.

Go, Clare ?Bomber? Short,
Resign from Tony?s polished
Cabinet of War

Fourteen forty one
ignored ? forget inspections,
Launch B52s.

This is dedicated to the great Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, who joined the communist after the invasion of Hungary in 1956, just as everybody else was resigning. Fact.

I missed a word out typing it in - I apologise for disrespecting the Japanese nation in this manner.