There was, upon a roiglough oave
A swip-tarnassen poikle stove
Where Rubivar, a wristling quoile
All blindered in a fareous foil
Wroyft a fessing lendler moughst
And randelaver prilling fowst
The slumplet, and the bongle’s-friend
The sly-toureening rongles mend
And all the rifflets celiphly
And all the rimbles neverby
To Sair Roondassen rig a voile
And nectuary sictet’s shoyle
The Quakers, bless them, got it wrong.
Eastern State Pen was a bust.
Solitude is not, ontologically, different.
Walden Pond was a bust.
They could’ve held that party at the lake house
after all.
Where do we go from here? Don’t ask me.
Wisdom is koans, dropped like jewels.
If it did anything, it’d be practical knowledge,
a lower form. Pah!
People who say they want
mer — it — oc — ra — cy
are liars
every single one
Well, maybe not every one
Let’s get them all in a room
and say we’re bringing in:
The one ice-blooded ideologue who blinks
and offers:
‘Yes, that’s what I mean’
Ok
Go for it boo
I’m a sovereign citizen
fully self-reliant
I ask for nothing from anyone
and I promise you the same
when the revenuers try to chat with me
I tell them nothing!
nothing! but my number and my name
I built my car myself
using minerals I mined myself
and the rubber tree I tapped without help
is in the back garden
beside my little oil derrick
Look at that passel of folks over there
who failed to end world hunger by thirty-five,
sitting on the kerb drinking white cider:
at least they know they’re failures.
Those folks who couldn’t live anymore,
who had to stop the thundering in their ears:
at least they gave a shit.
Good lord but they gave a shit.
The harried parents in shit jobs,
with no time, no prospects,
and no motivation to solve your or anybody’s problems:
at least something was standing in their way.
How much more pitiable is it,
to have been given all the best:
schools, money, chances, brains (maybe),
and not even know how badly you’re fucking up?
I’m sitting in the alley behind a liposuction clinic
waiting for my dinner.
Oh yes.
A moment on the hips, a lifetime on my lips.
Oh yes.
They say one man’s trash is another man’s treasure
and that hedonism’s defined as the base pursuit of pleasure.
Well they’re right.
They’re wrapped in lard, buttered corn, deep-fried mayo right, oh yes.
There’s nothing in creation that will put me off my dinner.
I’m a winner.
I’m a winner.
I’m a winner, winner, winner.
Oh yes.
Putting my book down and turning off the light
I suddenly remembered yellow dog piss
boring a hole in the perfect rug of fuscia blossoms
that covered that little section of sandstone paving stones on that steep road in Burley
stones that were slick enough that you’d make sure not to wear smooth-soled shoes
on days when it had rained
‘Let’s fall asleep to radio static and the sound of each other breathing’
I said, somewhat pretentiously
and the dog huffed loudly from somewhere under the duvet
I don’t know whether she was displaying displeasure with my affectation, or signalling concurrence
or completely ignorant of the meaning of my words
I live
at number 20 Downing Street.
The street’s gone to shit.
It’s still close enough to Hyde Park
and the British Museum,
but the inconveniences are mounting.
I should have seen the warning signs
when the gates went up
in ’89.
Of course I was given my own key.
By the time the Westminster City Council
published their Traffic Management Order
#128, in ’08,
the game was really up.
Hello, good afternoon, and welcome, and happy Halloween
The ghoul will guide you to your seats, in her dress of gabardine
She doesn’t know she looks like that, so you shouldn’t make a scene
The headless woman haunts the halls, so please step inside the theatre
There’s the candy and popcorn kiosk, manned by the childlike creature
You’ve got sixteen minutes until it starts, so grab a snack before the feature
If you need the toilet, turn towards your left, and descend
The uncanny stairs that eat your soul, and seem to never end
The attendant bog creature bides below, in a U-bend
Once you’ve slithered back up the stairs you can finally take your seats
While a troupe of tumbling tarantulamen perform acrobatic feats
They know no one’s really watching them: ignore the ‘ums’ and ‘aahs’ and ‘neats’.
I beseeched and appealed to the wise Seelie Court
In the glen where the fairies had built their great fort
But although the wee folk looked childlike and short
They thought they should put me to death, to death
They decreed I should be put to death
The trial they had held was impossibly long
Since each point and rebuttal was a long fairy song
But the ropes they had bound me with were silver and strong
And their knives looked quick enough, enough
Their knives were deadly enough
I had trodden unwitting on their holy ground
And was caught by a fairy patrol on their round
But the great Seelie Queen just furrowed and frowned
When I pleaded to be allowed to draw breath, draw breath
I pled ignorance and to be allowed to draw breath
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