A Tale of Thirteen Cities

El Specifi y Nebulo

Overt conquistadors undone by silent clouds of assassins
Homing in on carefully selected targets
Only to discover yet another enclave of ethereal vacuity
So that at the very moment when we
Seek to pin some purpose to our standard
All evaporates before our eyes
The city of the Nebulae
As insubstantial as the air
And all our specificity
A wasted trip to nebulosity
Each meaningful crusade dispersed four windward
Like froth and flotsam upon a wayward rolling sea

Pompos et muy Grandios

Pomposity Grandiosity
A poet’s brace of city trips
Bombastic quips, Homeric odes
Baroquely epic metric stanzas
Lost on crowds of lost spectators
Self-deluding, prattish bores
Belle Epoch cafes full to bursting
With etymologically licenced whores
Pompous puffer fish monstrosities
Monuments to our grandiosity
All bluff and bluster

‘I feel the hand of history upon our shoulder
I really do’

All Tony Blairite self-deluded
Lethal prats with nothing more to do
Than entertain their legacies
And screw the likes of me and you
Until the conversion of the Jews
Tony Blair Tony Blair
Don’t go there, please don’t go there

Tena und Capa Der Deutshce Zwilling

Ich weiss noch nicht
How much I dare
These cities scare yet lure me there
How strong how brave how terrified
To set one trembling foot inside
The infinite capacity
Of human ingenuity
Who dares wins all there is to win
Or withers moth-like stuck with pin

We each have limitless capacity
And though we lack tenacity
It can be learnt and reinforced
Come put my armour on! To horse!
Stiffen sinews, straighten back
It’s not success or wealth we lack
Leave Daily Mail on the rack
These cities now are ripe to sack
Blow wind come rack
At least we’ll die with harness on our back

Opacity not Oprah Winfrey entertains with Perspicacity

How dull these dullards
Lolling in their lollard hells
The halls of cognitive opacity
Emotional cretinism rife
An endless episode of strife
An East End foible of despair
All fathomlessly bleak
They stutter, strut and blankly stare
At city structures unaware like Plato’s victims
Chained upon a cave bound rock
So all they see are shadows of the life they mock
Vague glimpses out beyond the veil
Where clarity and reason prevail
Although with perspicacity
The wise fool sees
That more and more is yet to come
An endless revelatory Pravda

Foresight; but not the Forsyte saga

Unto the last recorded syllable of time
I stuck that in to make it rhyme
These poems shouldn’t make much sense
They serve to obfuscate the dense
And show my penetrating wit
An unashamed exhibition
An etymologically trite rendition
Of my other ginormous penetrative bit

Poor taste perhaps but somewhat better
Than the father of the daughter
Who having miscarried
Now a childless mother
Was ignorantly punished by having acid poured in her ear
By this said father
Not of Denmark but last month in India
Dying some weeks later in bitter agony
Because ignorance is never bliss
Just an abscess draining into the abyss
Of misery, lies, death and destruction
Of Tony Blairite truth-re-construction

Complexi v. Simpli… not the best

A woolly vest is simpler than a brassiere
That’s fine for my mum with her flat chest
It isn’t finding much sympathy here
For all the rest with mammary glands
Not measured in inches but equine hands
With bosoms the size of Christendom
No more, femdom will punish me anon

As Einstein said,
Any fool can make things bigger
It takes genius to simplify
Make everything simple as simple can be,
But no simpler
Don’t whimper in the pimpliness of your diminutive yet perky breasts
The acid test is do they function
At point of peak delivery

Are they fit for purpose
Or stuffed with the stationery of bureaucratic wunderlust
Like forms to be filled when forms are lost
Not in the post because that’s been sold
But in the cold light of day
This monumental scaffolding
Confounding all who enter here

I simply want an education for my children
A place to sleep and a pint of beer
Not a fifty five page licence agreement
In complex ecclesiastical Latin
Heavy enough to flatten at least
The boobs of a pregnant Wilderbeast

I want my cake and I want to eat it
You can keep your structures and laws and conventions
Some of us still have the invention
To reach for the stars
Not silicon boobs with badly hidden scars
Not constructs to deprive us
Of what’s rightfully ours

Beware of complexity posing as reason
If it isn’t simple it’s probably treason
The shysters and charlatans, Fagins and tricksters
The Alastair Campbell Nick Cleggian fixers
The lawyer and warrior classes of yore
Who obscure with sophistry, steal from the poor
Confound us with arcane pointillist laws
Whilst sharpening their sly avaricious claws
Beware of bankers dressed in sheeps’ clothing
Promising one day
All this could be yours
Keeping their compound interest firmly hidden behind
Heaven and Hell and the doors of perception

Automatic Luminosity

Automaticity is built upon habit
A wimple covering a well-worn thread
We do the same things until we are dead
Unless by some accident
A light is shone
Upon the inanity of a path well worn
Our heads shorn of questioning thoughts
We do what we do
We believe that we ought
But mostly because we rarely get caught
Until the end
When some of us ask
In the gathering dusk of unquestioned lives
What was it for?
So here is a thought to consider before
That fateful day when we are all no more

Do – something – different

Make up a rhyme that rhymes with different
Set fire to your pants
Trigger a nerve that has never been efferent
Fire an impulse into the firmament
Sing at a meeting of trustees and shareholders
Pummel your foes with foam rubber boulders
If you want to see further sit on the shoulders
Of mythical giants, heretical alchemists
Bamboozle your psyche, cavort with philanthropists
Paint like the summer reversed into spring
‘These are a few of my favourite things!

We come to the end of our journey
And reside once more in the city of Authenticity

Forgive my candour
I have no wish to offend
I simply tell it as I perceive
If I overstep
It is not in wishing to step over
A living soul
But to cherish each and every one of you
And to make this simple lifelong, heartfelt, much sung, possibly wrong, authentic plea…

Stop taking it all so fucking seriously