2: Roller Derby Girl

Shall we, Eric, rate the chances of the platypus and the cuttlefish
In their game of survival on this earth? How about those loopy aunts of yours,
The unconscious cruelties of their dottiness
Made concrete in moon-bathed cellars, you
The spiritual heir of Arsenic and Old Lace?
But perhaps you’ve wearied of ribaldry like this,
The kind that invites farce into the parlour
And parts the working man from his union
And elevates the thinking man with his Rilke
To the Board of Directors in their lair where terrible beauties are spewed.
Otherwise, I hardly know where to start, my attempts to write something fine
Sabotaged by lack of conviction, as if I, too, were born a stand-up comic,
Laugh-lines my pickax, shovel, excuse, and it’s not so much a ditch that’s born
But ruin. You, I suppose, see the poisons
As beautiful, as austere in their pristinities
As those gardens of marble, fig and moon
In which Caesar’s daughter showed thigh.
Your spell in purgatory will be prolonged,
You rhymester with classical baggage to unload.
In the meantime, your pension’s busted: you’re having to work past your prime,
The banks, the power brokers playing all ends against the middle,
Our old alma mater the U.S.A. in a squeeze,
Never mind you’re squirrelled away in London,
And life’s fuss and bother, and then you die.
Power’s a one-trick pony now: it corrupts,
Whatever the ends it once was a means to.
Still, much is permitted, and it’s go, go, go,
So that a suburban muse, right-wing diva-lass,
Be she empowered or plain old wife, wears a pale peignoir with such flair
That she’s a priestess, martini tumblers sacred to her, the swimming pools
Each an Avernus. And you wouldn’t mind a little rumble with this dish,
No more jaded liberal babes for whom poetry is just one
Career option among others, the birds flying over flying dead.
And all those Gatsbys bloated with ironies
(Those mobsters, senators, go-betweeners
Of the American way of literary greatness) waging turf wars on the internet,
Have done wonders for the market-place,
Robbing Peter to enable Paul, polishing the shine
Of golden toilets and golden parachutes.
Roller Derby Girl is a case in point, as she seems to play
Both sides of the fence, travels all roads, heaven and hell in her books
But regional offices for a vaster consortium. Even so,
She’d been a drinking companion to MacFarlane
Who once thrived in the area and now is gone.
And one can see that, if in her, there’s a contest
Between good and evil and the lesser rights
And wrongs, her considerable powers of analysis
Will always nudge her towards the highest bidder.
(For all she knew MacFarlane had been a prince
Among men, boon to women, the light of truth,
And maybe I was all that, too, that day we toasted a dead man
In a bar.) Just that, Eric, her smile would curl your toes,
All the world her oyster, so much so, she grants no quarter
To rhymesters, not even to Snorris, not even to one as consummate
As you. She’d just have a soldier stand down
And forget about it as, push come to shove,
What remains of grace, of the noble and true –
Let alone of such a magician of numinous logic
As MacFarlane was, he now stashed in a pail –
Is hardly worth the effort of praise hymns.
Moreover, we foul the nest we call an ethos
With cheaply bought principles, pro forma regrets,
And sense departs sense both grand and comic.
Nothing left with which to assail, let alone presume upon
The despair in a girl’s lovely eyes.

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