Jim Hopkins: Immersed in verse and even the adverse

The accountants don't care. The policy analysts aren't interested. The drab, grey fellows in charge of BLCFE (Bus Lane Cash Flow Enhancement) couldn't give a rat's rectum.

It means nothing to the lost battalions of OSH officers, marketing consultants, legal aid lawyers and Treaty settlement negotiators. Like every other sad casualty of tertiary education, they will pay it no heed.

Impervious to its wonders, indifferent to its joys, they'll all plod on in a dreary throng, those sorry girls and boys. For them, today will be a day when nothing special glows; when life, their turgid plaything, merely plods along in prose. They'll never taste the nectar of words a little sweeter. They'll never pen the paper or feed thought's parking meter.

But for the few, the blessed few, in whom strange frenzy oozes, today's the day to listen to the chorus of the muses. Because today is National Poetry Day, when verse reigns supreme and all the humdrum, prosaic nonsense that passes for reality is briefly washed away in a shower of whimsy - best shared with a nubile member of the opposite sex, or so says the extinguished poet laureate, Sir Jam Hipkins (honour pending).

So committed is Sir Jam to National Poetry Day that he's even bought an iMad - the revolutionary new electronic tablet for slightly loony poets - and is, as we speak, remorselessly pounding its hapless glass in a feverish bid to embellish his oeuvre.

I Lo ve my litle iMad
With its wondreful tuoch screeen
nOw witH my figners i c an tpye
Presicely What I maen

Well, maybe not precisely what he means but certainly close enough for lesser mortals to get the drift of his gist. And a magnificent gist it is, as his devoted muse, Ms Epiphany Throbbe, will readily attest - or would if she was still talking to him. Sadly, there's been no communication since the laureate was diagnosed with the latest and most fabulously fashionable psychiatric condition, Temper Dysregulation Disorder with dysphoria.

No, no, don't laugh. This is serious. Temper Dysregulation Disorder (ie being grumpy) will be coming soon to a mind near you. As will Psychosis Risk Syndrome (something for the counsellors, perchance) and a host of other derangements.

Reports this week reveal a veritable asylum of new afflictions has just been invented by the US Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) to make psychiatrists richer.

Take all these sickly Sigmunds
And toss them in the drink
For that would be the perfect place
For every greedy shrink.
Labelling sanity as illness
Making life itself disease
These Freud frauds don't want mental health
They just want bigger fees.

Unlike the laureate who seeks no fiscal reward whatsoever - and seldom gets one. His embrace of National Poetry Day is entirely idealistic. That said, he does hope the endorsement will boost his hugely successful Super City Mayoralty campaign. Sir Jam is not only promising to introduce topless meter maids to Queen St and Newmarket but also writing brazenly populist drivel in the hope it will win him some votes:

We must not sell the Crafar farms
Our land cannot be bought
By horrid foreign buyers. No!
But here's a clever thought
There is one cash cow we could milk
For vile, ill-gotten gains.
If I was Mayor, the Council would
Sell all its damn bus lanes!!!

And should that not suffice, he's penned one National Poetry Day piece that will surely win him much support in sporting circles. To say it will make him as popular as Andy Haden in Canterbury is probably excessive but every lounge lizard habitue of Party Central will surely approve. As will all who fear there is skulduggery afoot (and slipperiness underfoot) at Melbourne's Bledisloe Cup venue.

We all know it's extremely dodgy. We've all seen pictures of the surface. We've all heard complaints from Aussie Rules players about its instability.

Put simply, this pitch is a diabolic mess, as slippery as a BP executive. All of which has caused the pundits great concern. They fear our speedy lads will be greatly disadvantaged. But, as this heart-warming National Poetry Day contribution reveals, the laureate's optimism is unbridled. And so say all of us.

Sod off, Aussies, and take your sod
Your slippery, ice rink turf
For Richie's lads they will not trip
Upon your blighted earth
They'll just put their skates on, Aussies
And score by any means
With flashing feet they surely will
Be Torvill to your Deans
A plague upon your sports ground
Your sleazy, greasy grass
Our lads won't fall
Just kick the ball
And then your sorry ...