Late-Model Import-Export Cultural Recycling Poem
The golden cherubim of twenty-two turn into
promises of middle age, locked inside a gilded cage.
Jumping Jack Weta is growing rhubarb in the suburbs;
Academies of Yahoos offer Diplomas in Primal Urges.
Maybe syringes and razor blades should always gleam
inside the translucent plastic loo seats of the Scene.
The pink parlour poodle of the State has run away
to join The Great Moscow Circus, anyway;
and all the sacred cows of the status quo
just got up and got down with the Orinoco Flow.
Rapid eye movements scan come-hither headings
of tabloid broadsides and blunderbuss weddings,
where Nouveau Woman’s Weekly lurks in wait
for Anna Horribilus’s latest date.
A choir of washing machines launches into
Persil Automatic’s Song Cycle: “Glory Be to Soap Opera”,
drowning out a brass band rendition: “Ompahpah MMP”.
Here, the new anti-hero is the microwavable
couch potato with mobile phone holster,
clicked onto a celebrity sizzle turned flammable,
while the God Boy can’t find a tin opener
for a gift of pressed tongues from Antarctica.
Death, Resurrection, Immortality, Judgement Hall:
the Warehouse discounts Four Last Things for all,
and opens a Great White Elephant Stall,
as jobless, restless, mutton-chain Joes,
chow down on pink, bloodless cheerios.
The Archbishop of Otakou takes for sermon
strange graffiti written on a dunny cistern:
Doll Bludga sez I and I woz hair.
A Government of Poets Arriving by Bicycle is declared:
on penny-farthings, glitzocrats and glamazons
appear, bringing Odes to Muttonbirds, Odes to Scones.
Come, walk a mile in John A Lee’s old boots;
Big Cheese announces a trillion ways with kiwifruit,
to tics keeping time with Zurich’s money metronomes.
David Eggleton