Fresh images are difficult
If not impossible to create when
One is lying on their backs not
Really asleep but actually
Truly unconscious,
Impenetrable to the mysteries of the
Silent bedbugs and
Impervious to the house dust mites
That plurally occupy
A gloating position inside our hairy
Nostrils and alveolated air passages.
Scientifically speaking,
It is quite a stubborn problem
Trying to feel this unconsciousness
As a form of heedlessness or as
Mere inattention
When in truth
One is being continually and
Mercilessly pestered by all too familiar
Footsteps on crêpe soles or just on
Thick house socks,
All too familiar indeed
With all these questions if not questionings
On the date of posting or the date of owing
Some little pocket money to the
Occasional errand-boy and the
Expected delivery-boy and our boy going
To the nursery, a proper nursery-school
Of small affordable bills and
Ill-priced compassion
Paired with admiration as our
First-born is paraded during the festivities
In the form of a good shepherd of
The Lord,
A good shepherd bearing his stick in
The lands of Giliad, like
A strange, an eerie advertisement
To tickle our religiosities and the
Unction, the extreme unction that
We bear with sovereign pride,
As we die to wash up
After a long hot summer day’s work
At this slash of a job –
Nothing to place in the shop-window
Where my job should be,
Nothing to have and to be had
As a proper occupation for a
Family man,
So perhaps then
I am no family in a man,
I am only a man in a family,
Whereupon I could as well have
Only been the boy, the first-born boy
Of the family where unjustifiably
If not entirely proverbially
I always tend to identify with the
Father,
Like some cartoony Duke-like figure
Sitting on top of the world on top of
His horse
And commanding lonely views of the
Mean valley,
The mean valley of conurbal bliss
And corresponding repositionings and
Hustlings for the best seat in the
Stands, the best ticket,
It’s always a family outing that
Seems to justify the whole damn
Nuisance,
Under the floodlights with our
Popcorn and our ice-lolly,
What a spin and then
What a hash we have made of
Our biological roles
Always striving for cost-effective
Solutions to predated self-addressed
And casually inflicted wounds,
I drink my strawberry ice
And it drips
From my lips
And I rhyme the bloody stain
On my freshly-pressed shirt
With the hours I’ve been spending
On the train
And with the dirt that seems to
Irk my throat,
Destined to sing and now gravelly
Destined to clear the consonants and now
Fatally hovering over the same needy
Vowels,
Through the inescapable grammatology
Of the right reasons for wanting
To be literate,
Wanting this – this superlative
Literariness, together with the counting
Skills,
Wanting it badly for the kids,
We grew to need it
And they should never feel the need
Only the satisfaction of subtraction
And especially multiplication –
Go forth and multiply
Is an almost unbearable proposition,
So realistic it can not possibly
Have anything to do with religion
Yet it serves to remind one
How important the one-liners and
The overall language skills are
To a good career in the forces
That be,
Pimp or pimpernel in this
Affordable revolution of the
Glistening and the
Sleeveless and the recreational,
This revolution in kind
Like a sort of unintentional
Dialectics,
A fuzzy walk through the same
Streets,
But always with punctuality,
It’s a sort of German dialectics of
Ideas that never fail to
Materialize in a fast-track investment
Opportunity in fancycardom, –
How’s that for being literate and
Numerate and generally
Numismatic and vain,
As in all the pain that goes with
Raising the standard for the
Next generation of urges,
Unconscionable urges at that,
Mighty with the sword they bear
And haughty with their novel acumen
As they always try to go back
They are
Always wont to go back
And recreate the
Moment of their immaculate
Concoction
Amid a pair of margueritas
And on a flower-bed of
Roses.
What a promise,
O what a soft promise of
Happiness.
