The Leader -- Roger McGough

(Poem #1788) The Leader I wanna be the leader I wanna be the leader Can I be the leader? Can I? I can? Promise? Promise? Yippee I'm the leader I'm the leader OK what shall we do? -- Roger McGough

This skirts perilously close to my "why is this even a poem?" line, but for
all that, I enjoyed it. McGough has a fine feel for the rhythms and patterns
of colloquial speech, which makes his poetry a delight to read. Also, he has
perfectly captured a common behaviour pattern in a few well-chosen lines -
the image made me laugh, and I can imagine several of my famous cartoonists
doing a great job illustrating the verse.

This is the sort of poem that, while not precisely epigrammatic, I
nonetheless find myself quoting when events or discussions take a
predictable turn. If nothing else, poems like this provide an entertaining
way of recognising and commenting (even if only to myself) upon life's
little, commonplace absurdities.

martin