Some night when you’re lost in a nest of narrow lanes
and forgotten where you’ve come from, where you’re going, again,
you’ll think back and thank me for when you were three
and I threw out all of your Bob the Builder DVDs.
I’m telling you now—Scoop, Dizzy, Lofty,
Muck and Rolly will make you soft and we
can’t have you thinking you can fix it
every time the fan is hit with flying horse shit.
They want you to believe you should work for the team,
sacrifice yourself to a starched-collar dream,
but here’s your choice: be shat upon or look out for No. 1;
either kick against the pricks, or else become one.
Balamory’s full of Torys! Silence the Fat Controller
imposing his order on the island of Sodor!
But don’t go bawling, this isn’t doomsday,
it’s simply better things are spelled out this way.
For example, sex.
Pick up what you can at the local multiplex,
for soon your sanity will rely on
how well you placate your wee pyjama python.
Soon you’ll do anything for your love’s furry mouse,
so take her to Paris, or your favourite curry house
and buy her a lamb balti with a Cobra or Tiger,
rub her happy thigh as you sit down beside her,
but fastforward the scene by a couple of years
and you’ll have nothing but Yesterday between your ears.
She’ll have left you hopped-up, gormless, parched,
just one more wrinkle on the arse.
You’ll want to whisk back on a magical broom
to that mystic split-second of your fusion in the womb:
to fly through celestial chaos, that cosmic hootenanny,
and find the divine factory where they sort out pricks from fannies.
There, you’ll seek the management office in order to destroy
the Goddess of Creation—who’ll be announcing over the tannoy
with flat-packed officiousness:
‘Welcome customers! On entering consciousness,
please proceed directly to an impasse and fill
out a complaint form.’ For this is Mission Impossible:
think positive, think negative—whatever you reckon,
your thoughts will self-destruct in fifteen seconds.
You’ll end up on your knees seeking Holy Communion,
a taxpaying citizen of a multinational union.
Your American landlord will swing by in his Lexus,
take all your money then fuck off back to Texas.
You might move from place to place, a mind-boggled rover,
or stay in Belfast where, although the war is over
the Party of Bollocks and the party of Balls
are locked in battle for the City Hall.
Even if you roam, you’ll find it difficult
to avoid starvation and its twin, the cult
of profit backed by death planes firing vanity,
base rates, trigger-fingered inanity.
But, of course, I might be wrong. Perhaps a constant
path exists for the fearless itinerant
to tread where, on the threshold of heaven,
the figures in the street become the figures of heaven
and our ears will alloy the preposterous babble.
One thing’s for sure, every step will be a gamble.
Will it be paper, scissors, or stone?
Take another throw, son, of the devil’s bones.