The Anachronous Lout [poem]
A policeman charged me last night
with being drunk and disorderly,
having found me laughing helplessly,
tears streaming down, on a bench
in a park. He was cross, with a frown.
He said, “What the hell are you on?”
I said, “Life, love, trees & everyone…
and everything, and everywhere,
and right now, in this very moment
that we speak, I even love the huge
hairy wart on your cheek. I hereby
specially do also declare my fondness
of cheesecake and my mad affair
with cumulonimbus, bananas & pears,
stars, baby elephants, birds in the air,
puzzles, rainstorms, lightning, long hair,
woods in guitars and words we can share,
orangutans, flowers, gentrified riverfronts,
faces, forearms, & even roast Sunday lunch,
your cap which perches a wee bit askew,
the stubble on your chin
which silently grew without you even knowing,
the juice in my soul which is now overflowing…”
“That’s enough!” said the cop.
“You’re just taking the piss!”
I replied: “May I add one more thing
so you don’t miss the gist?” Then before
he could speak I said, “PASSIONATE KISS!”
For in truth that should be at the top
of the list as it signals the start of the
gentle decline into ego’s dissolvement
(I don’t need no wine, or fungi or ganja,
nor sniff down a line!). And that brings
me right back to that bench in the park
where I lay in a stupor from dawn until dark.
The policeman, I found, was an old archetype
of absurd disapproval I’d internalised,
then projected outside me so I’d undermine
the loveness and freedom I’d grown overtime.
And even that park bench was also unreal —
a symbol and emblem of how I would feel
all alone out in nature with no one about
’cept that cop from my psyche—anachronous lout.
So I killed him with laughter,
and loved him to death,
and squeezed on his throat
till
he
had
no
more
breath.
© Alan Morrison, 2019
The Naked Troubadour 