From An Old Man Behind the Times

February 24, 2019


I have not moved enough, nor moved quickly enough, although

The whacky world has moved and quickly slid away from me,

Everyday normal casuist brassy blasphemies

Go on unweeded, disregarded; - accustomed - rather twee

To be au fee insider now a person needs be snug

Confirmed in non-conformist slavish same-ish ways

Potatoes all; overjoyed at shocking, rocking earth; contentions

Folding bend all form, meaning implodes, a shattered prism

Art vandalism imitates, is pan-demotic

Glitz ululates, whoowhoos: ‘go break the mold!’

Elbows work at the outer-limits, instate misshapes, galled wounds

Iconoclasts and zealots string delirious happy-hours

Get smashed, then smash up china like at 50s fairground stalls,

Leaving the leaden clowns esteeming in the one and nines

And is there a thing left standing that remains unspotted

Rotten tomatoes splat punt former value into touch

Full in the open fey taste incubates its midden pit;

Quarterpounder - with mayonnaise from Waitrose - oven fries

Mad melodrama to be now, to freak new ground

Plough on the hoof, by chin and tooth, raise money hills

Carbuncles, wens, distempers, humpback mules, amorphous geese

Fill out their staggering cattle trains of arcane cheap pretence

Sure, sore assured they are, are in the know, regarded,

Aplomb is their broad audacity, immodesty interlarding;

How that so much was known and’s now become as if dead lumber

To which their wishworld’s bubblewrap clings weakly and dependent

Dismayed the ages wither, go down, hither doth bring-on

These broken dissipations as our fulsome supper;

Bland open mouths go swallowing bolting former herb resources,

Eat of that no-law potage gorged by Esau; crowd the scullery

Fearful have many cried end-time; have savoured to proclaim

A turn of the deadlock tumbled, so as folly meant to name

Their latter days the last - cavorts disport the giveaway

Rather, perdie, my end-time comes? - and dare I shout “Hooray!”?