Poetry analysis: Vuvuzela Johnson

Yesterday’s publication of Vuvuzela Johnson has sent shockwaves through the poetry world and Think of England has been inundated with emails - some timorous, some furious, but most concerned with the rationale behind my choice of examples of things that are "intoxicating to parp", namely:

A gin-soaked trombone,
A pot megaphone,
A line of coke on a c harp,
A vodka kazoo...

I can’t possibly reply to all of the emails individually, but hopefully this general answer will help quell the clamour:

Yes, ‘gin-soaked’ is an obvious reference to the Rolling Stones song Honky Tonk Woman and therefore a self-reference to the Stones’ appearance in the previous post in which it was claimed that the Lightning Seeds plagiarised Get Off of My Cloud; and yes the latter band’s Ian Broudie was the man behind Three Lions, and no, of course this World Cup reference is no coincidence in a poem about vuvuzelas.

The above hardly needed spelling out, I feel, and it should also have been clear to even the meanest intellect that the “line of coke” was demanded by ‘gin-soaked’ via the internal rhyme of “soak” and the oblique eye-rhyme of “gin/ line”. Those of you who noted that Mick Jagger played a c harp harmonica and has also been associated with intoxicating substances should get out more.

At least thirteen readers have attacked me for shunning the more lyrically obvious “sherry kazoo” in favour of the harsh consonants of “vodka kazoo”. This baker's dozen of ignoramuses should go to the back of the poetry class. “Vodka kazoo” was the only sensible option in a football-related poem: the double ka sound allowing us to visualise the Brazilian maestro Kaka waltzing through some Baltic defence in three kicks and a shot (soaked, coke, ka ka! Pass, pass, trap, score! Ka ka! Bang bang!)

Full marks to the seven of you who spotted the assonance and imperfect dactylic rhyme of “vodka ka” and “pot mega” – the latter naturally a play on omega, the symbol for which - Ω - looks exactly like the ball as it is placed on the penalty spot for the inevitable tournament-ending miss from some unfortunate England player – literally the last ball, the omega ball, of our World Cup.