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This time its
Personnel
Accolade, like lemonade
Air Miles
Garden Shed
Social
niceties
This time its Personnel
Presentable and flexible,
I'm neither a snob nor a slob:
I can wring expense claims from salesmen and blood out of a stone;
I can charm overdrafts from bank managers and birds out of the trees;
I can make debtors part with cash and fill out intrastats on my own;
I'll bring your ledgers up to date and your creditors to their knees;
I can bypass Human Resources: I've attended all the courses
I'm familiar with UK GAAP and US GAAP and French GAAP
And the gap between now
and the middle of next week;
I can be nice face-to-face and thoroughly vicious over the phone
I'll make your cash flow out as slow as the mud in Deptford Creek
I can depreciate an asset and amortise a loan;
I've done VAT returns and tax returns and P11D's
I know as much about due diligence
as due deference;
Don't file me away for future reference -
I'll maximise your profits: don't believe me? It's your loss;
If you won't give me a chance, don't think I give a toss;
In the final analysis all I can say is, please:
I can do that
Give me a JOB
© Suzanne de Freitas 2002
Accolade, like lemonade
Slow waters of the Cherwell
flow
Past groups in flowered skirts and jeans and shirts
Release from academe brings forth
Fizzy pop, strawberries and laughter
And mild hysteria before the morning after
Gazing at you supine, I pole
the punt upstream
The glory of your beauty glows while evening dowses
Pubward voices, discarded principles and trousers
In a backwater I drink your
kisses;
Declare that love no more than this is
And oh, my love, one swallow makes a summer
© Suzanne de Freitas 2002
Air Miles
Disregard the walkman's tinny
hum
in a vacuum I vacillate
There are times when I know everything;
this isn't one
There's not enough room in
the crossword
for this endoubled fruit,
a morce code anagram
A specialist in unmanned flight
I scan the little squares of sky,
considering each epigram
unsaid
This is a poem to nowhere
There is no tomorrow at the jam factory.
Shall I set down the Standard to ask the time,
and will you listen?
© Suzanne de Freitas
1991
Garden Shed
"Now, who's for dessert;" queries
our hostess brightly
You echo, sotto voce
I lift an eyebrow slightly
And savour your smile as I turn away
Dynasties rise and fall, icecaps recede, until
Shoeless, your foot follows a calf's curve
Outside:
Climbers cling to the garden fence
As slippery slugs with tiny teeth rasp the leaves of a hosta
The drifting scent, a rose in the moonlight
And a muffled gasp: "faster"
"Oh look", says our hostess,
"there's a moon.
Shall we take our caffe
In the garden?
© Suzanne de Freitas 2002
You said you'd be lunching with your agent
Over a bottle or two of Chianti;
You came home early
And caught us in flagrante . . . . .
And while he tried at least to hide his face, and the instrument of my
pleasure, you just stood
And stared.
And registered shock, horror, wrath, disappointment and incredulity in
roughly equal measure
And though I knew I faced my Waterloo, unnerved,
I said, "(Ahem) I don't believe you've met?
Thing - meet so and so. So and so - thing."
And he held out a shaking hand (bless him) and said '"how do you do?"
Because, even if the situation did resemble a scene from a cheap novelette
We're British
And the proper formalities must be observed
©
Suzanne de Freitas 2002
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