A Lyric Born of Idleness

(I found this on an old CD
Of documents and accretions
And if you will forgive the slang
That invidious Windsorian twang
Then read and see how I spent all
Of five years that I coldly loved. -MD)

O muse! Mistress all-perfect, thou
Crimson, white-streaked transparent one
O vessel of the Coke that flows
From Parnassus (Ohio) speed my song.

Perhaps ‘twas too much piety to thee
O Cola-Queen, that robbed away my sleep
And left me rolling in the duvet blue-
With beigish stripes-upon the Sunday’s morn

Yet not in Sleep’s caress. Frustrated then,
I staggered early from the creased couch
Each aggravating fold crafted by me,
And stumbled down the scarlet corridor.

My feet, and not my head, compelled my trunk,
I found myself before a paint-white door,
And black and white that spread across the floor-
M’Dame’s grave Mail dwells on Tory drugs.

(My Telegraph preferred to laugh it off
Etonians will ever be Etonians.)
I turn sharp left, and, slipperless, regret
My progress on a bathroom’s dampened ground

Not yet restored from E Block’s aqueous fights.
A host of visions flow into my mind-
Forgotten face-wash turns to Dorney Lake
And Dorney Lake-no limits!-Oceania

Consumes the generosity of Henry.
From scaffold on the back of real Chapel
To where faux-Chapel basks beyond Keates Lane
Poseidon has no mercy! The waves roll!

Under the sea the swimmers might be said
To have the edge by training and practise
But Classicists I’d say have mental stores
From reading Horace in his second Ode

The one that tells of deer sinking down
Not so unlike large-satcheled F Block hordes;
Of seals barking, sleek, dappled, urbane
Like English masters on a favourite theme.

And think of all the flotsam drifting by,
From School Office cometh the Tardy Book
Itself, a grimoire with a gruesome tale
That hydrogen dioxide will leave pulp.

My rambling soul is rallied by my sole
Which slips upon a chilly, clinging puddle
Sending me on my face. It’s back to Earth,
And all that’s most relentless there entailed.

Optative verbs take Barbarossa on,
Vocabolario, Gaskell, and this tripe
I grind out when I’m putting off real work.
There’s reams and yards of it-indeed, a gig.

There halts my revelation: friends, adieu,
A better, Mailless world I wish on you.