Massachusetts State Behavioural Risk Factor Surveillance Survey System

A sonnet...  This came from watching a YouTube video about sexual health in various populations.

I had no reason for watching that, but YouTube is the master of the random education.  Everything I know about large explosions, wacky Japanese marble-runs and They Might Be Giants comes from YouTube.

This study was interesting and noted several curious points, none of which I intend to repeat here.  However it was conducted by the eponymous Massachusetts State Behavioural Risk Factor Surveillance Survey System, whose name is excellent, and whose stock in trade must be phoning random strangers to ask about their sex lives.  Presumably during the evening meal.

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Massachusetts State Behavioural Risk Factor Surveillance Survey System


People who have sex, unprotected by the bonds
of matrimony; people who elect the wrong candidates,
spend too many evenings getting canvassed
in their offices; people, people who need people;
unlucky people; people without two coins to rub
against a pie; people who lie, or whose friends lie
and who do not know; people who eat lotus,
junk food, polystyrene cups; people who pour syrup
left handed into the bath; people who laugh
at the staff with the questionnaire; people who care
too much, know too little, do not read
the warnings which are amply provided; and,
above all, people who were out on the evening
when we picked their number to randomly call.

E pluribus unum

I forget whence this poem originated.


I have a half memory that somebody may have raised a challenge but whether it was to write in the plural, or to bend the rules of grammar I don't know.  Possibly it was to adopt an alien persona of some variety...


So anyway, herewith the aforementioned poem.  It's not exactly a puzzle, but you may get some way through before you figure it out...

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E pluribus unum


like really you say that
as if it were a clever thing
and I (plural) am watching
your picnic from seven hundred
viewpoints in the long grasses

and there is only one of we (singular)
and it's not our queen
because, OK, there's only one
in here and we're organised around her
but she's still only a part of the machine

and I (plural) am the machine
and we (singular) are all the parts
and I am watching you
and I am already
in
the
sandwiches

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Note: the first sentence of this posting is grammatically correct... "whence" means "from where."
So "from whence" is arguably tautology, although apparently it has also been in use for a long, long time...

By the book...

Funny isn't that easy to do in poetry, and sometimes isn't productive.  Amusing is easier to achieve, and I think less likely to get in the way of the poem.  That's what I've done here...  or so I think.  I hope you agree...

Kidderminster is a town in Worcestershire.  Croydon is a place in London.  The British Museum is where we keep our loot, and well worth an afternoon's perusal if you are in London.

In this there are two characters, represented by being left justified and right justified, respectively.  There's also a occasional narrator, who is centred, but then aren't they all?

Feel free to read it in three distinctive voices.

I had forgotten, but this was another poem from Making Contact...

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By the book

She reads books,
this is where it all begins.
"Planning the crime of the century,"
was just a way to pass a rainy day
in the library
in Kidderminster

but here she is
leading Crusher, Sparks and The Countess
through the British Museum at three a.m.
with a silenced pallet truck.

He reads books
this is how it all begins.
He read "Lives of The Real Detectives,"
which seemed harmless enough
waiting for the 7:15.

The radio coughs nervously,
a glance at Constable Granger,
a nod to Dave from the Art Squad.
They've all seen the shadows moving
behind the glass.

She's read: "Alarm Systems Explained."

He's studied:
"Weakness of the Criminal Mind"
at some length.

"Transport of Art Treasures."

"Traps—their design and construction,"

"The Great Escapologists."

"Anatomy of a Manhunt."

"Losing Yourself in London."

"Forensics for Beginners."

An abandoned factory in Croydon—
armed police converge.

But she's memorised:
"Victorian Sewers Revealed."

And he's left
flipping the pages
of "Sealed Room Mysteries,
Volume 4."

She opens a small bookshop.

He's in there buying
"Should you Trust Books?"

They nod.