It’s no joke, when you’re at work

with someone who loves work so much

they can stand and watch it all day,

or should that be, slouch on a broom,

or a roll of carpet would suffice

as a seat or a bed for potato couch,

a slattern by all accounts, a slowback,

a slacker, a slowpoke, a loafer,

a skrimshanker, a wastrel, a skiver.

If not skiving he’s chucking a sickey,

or slumped under the duvet snoozing,

lallygagging, kipping, sleeping in.

His forty winking and work-shy ways

spread like a blood infection

deflating my spizzerinktum

below the level of a zest-less lemon

and I slipped into the slow lane,

oversleeping, jigging, going missing,

bone idle, lackadaisical, too slothful

to concentrate on leaping sheep,

yawning through my sluggardly motions

in slow motion...

Preferring the languid pace of a tortoise

tottering behind a sauntering snail.

I’m a slatternly slugabed, a lacklustre

punch-line. Look me up in the dictionary,

slubberdegullion, boom, boom.