I am sorry to announce, 

but my long awaited

HS2 poem 

has been branded

‘unachievable’,

and is at risk

of not coming out.

 

Successive

brutish reviews 

say it won't deliver

soon, and

a poetic replan

should cut the

quatrains to haikus.

 

My sonnets

run obsolete,

villanelles

don’t complete,

and the limerick (below)

is the only verse

I won’t delete.

 

Cancel the whole

wretched scheme.

 

Repurpose my florid

pages of prose. Let

someone who knows

what this poem wants,

take on this train-wreck

so run out of steam.

 

Limerick

There once was a blond bloke who told lies so fat, 

that he promised town and the country the full Rubaiyat. 

He was figuratively stoned, and completely dethroned,

and his party said, we never agree to build HS2 quite like that.