Madame Vavasour
trips the light
fantastic,
orgiastic,
dans le Rue
du Sauvignon.
L’onion
in zee hand
is worse too
in zee Boosh.
Alors, quel’ homme!!
Inky- dinky
Quest ce-que tu dire?
Never push
when you can shove instead.
Hola, parlez vous?
(Oui, oui, on y va chez nous!)
Life is short,
soon comes le Morte
and by report
the silent resentful dead
remain dead for a very very very
long time.
My crime
was complex, yet quite simple,
my best girl had a pimple
and the blowtorch
came to hand.
Franz Ferdinand
war ein “echter Wiener”
In Bosnia-Hercegovina,
Jetzt tot, der lieber Mann,
his white on white tunic
now so dunkel-rot
and poor morganatic Sophie
shot and squealed and bled,
equally, beastly dead.
La veille ogresse avec les dents jaunes
No, that was Queen Victoria,
a completely different storia.
In another place, another time
some other crime
transpires; now the fires
of Hell burn low:
the Devil’s stokers want to strike
instead they just “go slow”.
They don’t much like
their permanent condition
and seek the Devil’s permission
for a 3-week summer break
in Purgatory. Nugatory, I fear,
such hopes, the rise and fall of tropes:
after all, they have made their beds
along with other nasty deads.
And it’s only them feckin Paddies
(such an awful lot of them down here)
who keep acting queer, obstreperous laddies,
getting into fights,
demanding non-existent rights.
So, the Devil, well, he’s right annoyed
and consults his adviser, Sigmund Freud
(yes, of course, he’s down here too,
an under keeper of this shabby zoo,
a critic and constant scathing belittler
of his hopeless assistant, Adolf Hitler).
Ah, feck this crowd, says the Devil,
would you ever get on the phone to Neville
Chamberlain? He’s one of the pure
blithering idiots beyond,
he’s easily fooled and easily conned.
Tell him to ask that fella God
if he’s ready to do a trade?
He can have the Irish, the whole bleedin’ crew,
and all he has to do
is send me some Baptists and Quakers
and a slew of pious Protestants.
They’ll work without the bother of getting paid
and pay attention to the borders;
best of all, at my beck and call,
they will obey my Standing Orders!!
Madame Vavasour
is not a hoor
but a woman of a certain age
with a mind “en clair”
who thought, this world is so unfair
with young girls placed in a cage:
Alors, she reflected, what can I do,
If not be unfair too?
Her raging business success
has got her on the Fortune 500
along with all the other crooks and liars.
On the smouldering funeral pyres
of our moribund civilization
a final oration
falls due to our Captains of Industry!
Damaged people, with nervous tics and snuffles,
who root out money like pigs find truffles.
On the Chateau d’If
d’Whether, du When,
the wind blows from the south.
Ah, Bisto!
cries out the Count of Monte Christo,
rinsing out his … armpits;
today I believe I shall them deceive,
Voila! Heu, heu .. oui, sacre bleu!!
Vite, vite, vite, doleur!
Zee tricoleur
will fly over all zee nations
and reparations
will be honoured, on presentation
of a duly signed and stamped receipt
at Burlington Court, 114 the Strand.
Ah, life would surely be grand
with loads of unearned money!
But life is brutal, grasping, sick,
a carny trick --
but sometimes very funny.
Things happen.
Things happen some more.
Things happen some more some more.
You can’t help but love it.
War criminals
die peacefully in their beds
while their innocent victims
die in agony, in hundreds of thousands:
that’s the way things are.
In my little car
I drive ten thousand miles
across the weeping frontiers.
Tears
do nothing.
Nothing changes,
Nothing improves.
Power remains a heartless game
in every generation.
The occasion
of death is incidental,
accidental, and necessary.
It moves all people aside.
It ranges wide.
