You’ve managed to find a five minute break at work,
And with those five minutes you can chill,
Therefore, you have five minutes to write a poem,
You have five minutes to conceive and blend and kill,
With five minutes it ain’t going to be a classic,
But it’s another five minutes nearer to fame,
It takes just five minutes to splutter a letter,
It’s just another five minutes lost to a game.
And in five minutes time,
In the time it takes to drink wine,
Wine that burns and molds out a beast,
A beast born of words now we’re ready to feast,
Feasting on five minutes of work,
And you shouldn’t really mention this,
But you didn’t even break a sweat,
And with five minutes of waving your pen,
To a rhythm that no one understands,
But it’s solid as roman concrete,
And with five minutes of writing skill,
You’ll never get your five minutes of fame,
You’ve more chance in five minutes of getting ill,
And those five minutes are the end of the game,
And they all say you can’t do that in five minutes,
Because five minutes is not a real amount of time,
You can’t even cook baked beans in five minutes,
And in five minutes toast ain’t going to be brown,
And a coffee and a snack and a bathroom break,
All adds up to more than a five minute poem,
Well we just have to squeeze it in,
Between a thought and a scratch,
Just enough time to sneeze in the breeze,
In five minutes you can’t learn to catch…
And your favourite songs aren’t even five minutes long,
That sort of music your cats dance to all wrong,
That style that strips wallpaper from the walls,
That pretty little ditty with a ton of balls,
And now the wall of five minutes is through,
And to make it all come together you need glue,
Got to make a little sense in a five minute whirl,
Got to open the oyster to find the pearl,
You can’t stop thinking of your dancing cats,
Whilst most felines sing for their supper,
Proud that you can for five minutes find some originality
And the five minutes are up and that’s good for me.

©D.Hobson October 2013