Kid Gloves [poem]
Roll up! Roll up!
Imagination picks a fight with common sense
and Mr. Fantasy has booked a ringside seat.
A fat and crumpled three-piece suited man
(who I swear is only there to line his pockets
on a whim) sucks on a big cigar and smugly
grins at both the boxers who he represents.
Darkness lights the ring, as you can see;
delusion is the hugely biased referee.
Meanwhile, back in the slumtown gymnasium
a battered punchbag lies in shreds upon the floor;
a sign saying “CLOSED” is hanging on
the broken kicked-in front side entrance door.
Outside a pair of tattered gloves of lambskin
grace the floor amidst a swirl of tumbleweed
and old newspaper sheets declaring war.
Hallucination steals tomorrow’s headlines
written in advance to show the winner’s name.
It’s all a game! says one disgruntled member
of the audience — his trousers at half-mast
to mark the coming of a pipedream era’s
speculative dance in which reality has been
replaced by triviality banality and balderdash.
In the corner marked as red
a flatcapped foppish poser
also known as nightmare’s uncle
(the ultimate brownnoser)
guzzles down the moonshine hogwash mix
which on the bottle says was manufactured
in some faerieland by Tommyrot and Balderdash
a well-known old distillery of yesteryear
when racketeers and fairground barkers
boxing magnates goons and other even darker
peddling bootleg whores who lined the shores
of every feeble mind would market nothing
and the nowhere glare of shuffling limping
damaged-brain contestants in the match
between chimerity and earthly common sense
dissolved the world of clarity and consequence.
.
.
© Alan Morrison, 2013
The Naked Troubadour 