Soap Operation
The cake, and nothing but the cake,
Not liquid soap, a sad mistake!
It cannot match a trusty bar
Of Pears, or even Wright’s Coal Tar,
Palmolive, Lifebuoy (nice and red)
And lacks ablutionary cred.
For bathroom sessions in the buff.
You really need the good firm stuff.
It lets the spirit soar to wield
A reassuring lump of Shield,
Or rub the shoulders, back and chest
With fingers wrapped round Lux or Zest.
White, amber, green, pink, marbled, blue,
Hail solid soap, not scented goo!
Jerome Betts is from Herefordshire, but now lives in South Devon where he edits the quarterly Lighten Up Online. In addition to articles and verse in consumer and specialist magazines his work has appeared in Pennine Platform, Staple, and The Guardian, as well as anthologies such as Extreme Sonnets 1 & II, Extreme Formal Poems, The Iron Book of New Humorous Verse, Limerick Nation, Love Affairs At The Villa Nelle, The Potcake Poets 1 , 2 and 12 and The Hypertexts. He has been Pushcart-nominated twice and featured in Light. Web venues include Amsterdam Quarterly, Better Than Starbucks, Angle, The Asses of Parnassus, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The New Verse News, Per Contra, The Rotary Dial, and Snakeskin.