ON AGAIN! ON AGAIN!
(Jake Thackray)

Jake Thackray - 1970


I love a good bum on a woman, it makes my day
To me it is palpable proof of God's existence, a posteriori
Also I love breasts and arms and ankles, elbows, knees
It's the tongue, the tongue, the tongue on a woman that spoils the
job for me

Please understand I respect and admire the frailer sex
And I honour them every bit as much as the next misogynist
But give some women the ghost of a chance to talk and thereupon
They go on again, on again, on again, on again, on again, on again,
on ...

I fell in love with a woman with wonderful thighs and hips
And a sensational belly, I just never noticed her lips were always
moving
Only when we got to the altar and she had to say I Do
And she folded her arms and gathered herself and took in a breath and
I knew ...

She could have gone on again, on again, on again till the entire
Congregation passed out and the vicar passed on and the choirboys
passed through puberty
At the reception I gloomily noted her family's jubilant mood
Their maniacal laughter and their ghastly gratitude

She talks to me when I go for a shave, or a sleep, or a swim
She talks to me on a Sunday, when I go singing hymns, and drinking
heavily
When I go mending my chimney pot she's down there in the street
And at ninety-five on my motorbike she's on the pillion seat

Wittering on again, on again, on and again and again
When I'm eating or drinking, or reading or thinking, or when I'm
saying my rosary
She will never stop talking to me, she is one of those women who
Will never use three or four words when a couple of thousand will
easily do

She also talks without stopping to me in our bed of a night
Throughout the sweetest of our intimate delights she never gives over
Not even stopping while we go hammer and tongs towards the peak
Except maybe for a sigh and a groan and one perfunctory shriek

Then she goes on again, on again, on again on and I must
Assume that she has never noticed that she's just been interrupted
Totally unruffled she is, and as far as I can see
I might just as well have been posting a letter or stirring up the tea

She will not take a hint, not once she's made a start
I can yawn, or belch, or bleed, or faint, or fart - she'll not drop a
syllable
I could stand in front of her grimly sharpening up an axe
I could sprinkle her with paraffin, and ask her for a match

She'd just go on again, on again, on again even more
The hind leg of a donkey is peanuts for her, she can bore the balls
off a buffalo
Mother of God, I cried one day, Oh, let your kingdom come
And in the meantime, Mother, could you strike this bugger dumb?

Well, believe it or not, she appeared to me then and there
The Blessed Virgin herself, in answer to my prayer - despite the
vulgarity
Shimmering softly, dressed in blue and holding up a hand
I cocked a pious ear, as the Mother of God began

But she went on again, on again, on again on and I
Will have to state how very much I sympathise with the rest of the
family
Give some women the ghost of a chance to talk and thereupon
They go on again, on again, on again, on again,
and again, and again, and again, and again

They will go on again, on again, on again, on again,
On again, on again, on ...