Poeming through the Pain

My penultimate extant poem saw me in considerable distress. Struck with a vicious migraine which left me with 50% vision, our then glorious JCR President, Jack Evans, accosted me for not having written a poem for him. Informed that I was going to bed as I had a migraine, he came up with a wonderful solution.

"Write one about your migraine, then".

Ignoring the desire to beat him with something blunt and heavy (I probably wouldn't have been able to see him properly to aim, in truth), I staggered to my desk, opened one eye, and wrote this short ode to my agony.


With apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan:

When you’re lying awake with a dismal headache
That feels like a nuclear explosion
I conceive you may use this most valid excuse
To avoid dreary JCR motions.

Though your head may be sore, and your vision is more
Disturbed than a finalist’s nightmares
It appears, my friends, that the sympathy ends
(so much for Corpuscular welfare!)

For the president he, in capacity
As the resident head of our meetings
Sadly implied that I’d turned quite aside
From my usual lyrical bleatings

When informed of my pain, he shrugged yet again
And suggested I seek inspiration
From my migraine’s disquiet. (I near started a riot
Or at least sat in mild indignation)

So heroically, I battled, that he
Might rejoice in my lyric outpourings
So take this small thing; a poor offering
To cheer when the meeting gets boring.

Never let it be said that my courage is dead
Or claim that I’m lacking in pluck
But if ever again I must write in such pain
Then the whole JCR can get lost