CONSUMED

Teenyboppers and weirdos
scramble for subsistence.
As the omelette grows cold
and the milky maids
discern the catchy heads of fashion,
there’s much more for me to do,
replicating every face I see
and gauging the pretence of Clint Eastwood
as he struts towards the Zap Club.

Stumped for an hour
I hop a non-existent streetcar
and jump across open sewers,
just to see what happens.

– Control the effluent flow, menacing.
– Meaning?
– Humbug with questions.

Come over obnoxious.
Hate me for hate’s sake.
Wear the same hats.
Staple my bladder to the floor.
Sift through rubbish
and kiss me with squeaks.
As the humans become rats
they stink to high heaven.

I’m a custard pie joke
perfected in abstinence
and exiled in the cottages of doom.
I’m a guttural Philistine
glutting the game with bullion
and small-talk victims
I never get to know.

The money I’m made to feel
and the glue in the airstream
shakes sunlight from the trees,
mingling gallant birdsong with horror.

The overnight train
with its expensive drainage system
kicks on the heartbrake
and stamps the name

of a future war.