Egotism

I’m not sure how the cadences and rhyme and other effects will translate from the medium of the rap poem to the page, but I thought that it was worth the attempt.

I
I’m quicker than you, my brain’s one step ahead
So the best you throw at me comes at you instead.
I find this so simple, I do this with ease,
The hurricane, Force Five, you’re a light summer’s breeze –
Leave you dazed, fazed, crazed by my ability
Which will leave you humiliated with no credibility,
Laughed at, mocked, like you were naked quad running
Up against his legendary lexis, panoply of punning
Outgunning your wit, making your punchlines redundant
On the champion’s pantheon, perpetual incumbent.
It’s over in seconds, opponents clear the stage,
Eyes downcast, fearing to incite the rage
Lest their mind be bifurcated, sliced into two pieces
Should they dare to antagonise the maverick genius,
The unseemliest artisan, softly spoken assassin
Rhyme’s my call of duty, and the kill count’s amassing:
Just one more victim of my violent verbosity
Quelled by my articulate animosity
Enmity in the enigmatic erudition,
Pronunciation has you on the path to perdition,
A sociopath who’ll slaughter you at Scrabble,
His rhetoric’s arousing the rage of the rabble.
They scream ‘go to hell’? House party with Satan!
So, no success, though their baiting’s so blatant
Triple headed monster lying supine, hidden, latent,
Uncontrolled, explosive, no-one ever tamed it.

II

God bought Lucifer’s reformation hook, line, and sinker:
The more fool him for being so naive to think a
Devil could become a deity, you can’t hide the horns
Or the pitchfork and trident with which he’s adorned.
Pride? He’s the epitome of the egocentric
That’s why each of his gospels is so introspective
Why His Majesty’s sermons are all so excessive
And the palaces of his hell are so impressive…
A mundane genius mired in monotony,
Never been the same since he received that lobotomy
To his nucleus accumbens the fears come in hundreds
Crying tears of a clown, the laughter tore him asunder…
A pyromaniac who could never bear his heat,
A glorified champion who gazed at defeat
Met his eyes, taunted him ’till he had to blink
Wearing titanium armour, titan without a chink.
Nymphomaniac yearning for intimacy,
Rides a purple-gold chariot, success in his genes,
Evoking every shade of all the envious greens
Under the sunset, as he walks into its beams

III

There,
I found my prelapsarian luscious legal Lolita
We were ignobly immersed in la dolce vita
All my majestic madness, sins never sweeter
In our ephemeral Eden, ecstasies never bleaker
See the ridiculous rage: swear, scratch, spit, strike
As we scuffle
The standard hazards of courtship’s kerfuffle
You call me a bastard like I was a foundling
I call you a harlot, devoid of any good grounding.
We meet faceless faces, I try not to be unpleasant
Bring the good angel out for all whom are present
Smiles and hugs all around, no self-aggrandizing
And I’m thinking that this part might be a role worth reprising
Surmising that this act, to my acceptance it’s conducive
The perfect panacea to cure this reclusive
They may be able to reinstate this recusant
Or so they think – assuming that their course of action, I’ll choose it.

(Suddenly, Bad Angel appears): Cease, please, I just can’t be dealing
With the Titan I create being so needing.
Who of these walked to the depths of hell with you?
Play the solipsist: all others are but residue:
I’m with you, I kid you not, you can triumph yourself.
Mephistopheles knows best, now, go drink to your health.
Now, it’s time to leave, no need to make your excuses
To the others – hell, a Titan’s allowed to be elusive.

(Good angel appears): Why are you leaving? You know in under a week
You’ll be sleeping alone, skipping stones into a creek
Creaking doors in your mansion to provide one last sound
To distract the ‘solipsist’ from no-one else being around.
OF course, you’ll be forced to come crawling back, pander and grovel
Why you let the id control makes the mind boggle
Your liaisons with Lucifer need to be done:
Just let your superego your super ego overcome.

(Bad Angel, again): For what reason do you fear the fire?
The madwoman in your attic proved your messiah,
Entire nations were brought down by this pariah
So desist in persisting to resist your deepest desire.
Mired in the maelstrom allowed you to Narcissan emerge
Sweetly-sung sycophancy only suffocates urge,

Why aim for truth when you live so truthless?
Why try and create art when all art is quite useless?

IV

Thus,
These memoirs of a titan aren’t even worth reading.
Nothing of merit in this hurting and grieving
Nothing’s pleasing, his lust for life is receding
Disbelieving, his decadence left him reeling
Reading these journals, his confessions to no-one
An addict, a drunkard, his health should be so gone
Entries on elation he found in corruption
Segments on the darkest secrets of seduction
Reliving moments of a murderous maniac,
Pondering perfection, a brilliant brainiac…
Saying that, there’s surely something so stupid
About his failure to keep his Dorian diluted.

In reality, he’s Mr. Grey in reverse,
The plot’s been convoluted: imagine the curse:
The beautiful young man locked up in the attic,
Thus, all the world sees is the vulgar fanatic
The need to forever be melodramatic
The need for every word to be emphatic
The need to assert his life’s got meaning
The need to be showboating, prancing and preening:
‘How dost thou, sweet lady? Good morrow, sweet lady!
Remain here for a moment, and then, just maybe
The scars and deformities will disappear
Then Wotton’s waxwork might start to endear,
Suddenly my barbs and gibes seem more like banter
And then you’ll want me to refill that decanter…
‘A toast for the scumbags, every one that I know!’
It’s not the first time I’ve been toasted like so:
The Eucharist’s Prayer for those with an ego –
It sounds more like my elegy when it’s said to me, though…

V

I’m being told that my words couldn’t be triter:
That’s not true, I could be the Fifty Shades writer
I’m being told my head couldn’t fit through the door?
I’ll break it down, then – t’would improve your decor
In bed, wondering why I can’t build a rapport
Why the knee-jerk response always is to abhor
Why I’ve never got past a kiss at the door
And dear Lord, why am I so damn hard to adore?!

No doubt because the ego’s on sight, there’s the full panoply
No contender in sight – a one-man monopoly
I’d top myself before anyone could top me
Now he’s alone at the apex – now, out drops he…

Jack

From Magdalen Bridge

Mordeo mordentem.

I

Given you’ve long forgotten me
amid brown boats and spring sunshine
it is now time I – properly –
(Let me take a swig of French wine
Or a draught of Brakspear beer:
What reason remains to adhere
To the habits of a lifetime?)
begin to spit out the butt-ends
you left rammed in my rabid teeth.
May you read this among your friends
while my helpless wrath descends.
Thus, this May-Day gift I bequeath.

Now, here is what I want you
to do.
Now, go and curl beneath Kermit.
A childlike, one-wild-night hermit.
A model of self-preservation.

(Let me eschew each last reservation:
I do not write for your delectation).

Prepare a mug of Lady Grey.
Such a Lady deserves no less,
After all. Let the steam shimmer
and swirl, and lurch beneath your light:
despite all your hats in the way
the phantasmagoria may
provide occasion to impress
(Though Humbert’s ghost grows ever dimmer,
Though Humbert’s ghost will growl, grimmer)
upon you what dies in the night.

Respite, I thought, would come
behind brittle barren bushes.
On occasion, a chagrined cheek
might betray, my hypocrite lecteur
that you had not perhaps become
ever more distant, week by week
(This is, I know, mere conjecture)
to what whines while the river rushes,
to what you left in the bulrushes.

But never mind that: I well know
that I prevaricate
far too much, and deliberate
and equivocate
like Hamlet. That you made clear long ago.

And I also well know
that I am boorish, uncultivated.
Dancing penguins delight not me;
I speak in coarse innuendo
like a lout, inebriated.
I am bemused by botany.

And how I am inadequate!
Monochrome, monotone sequel.
Merely the smoke without the fire,
a week-old, weak-willed cheap thrill.

II

Well then, my pride-pulled, strong-willed dear
a churlish gust just blew in here,
it cleared this musty maudlin air
shattering your sultry snare.

I said I should write a sonnet.

III

May you get married in Cologne
to the drone of Buxtehude
while your grim groom looks the brooder
and I, Narcissus, dine alone.
May you through spring’s kiss see regrown
dead lilacs, dry brooks the nuder,
murmur that he looks the cruder,
and see your figure with a groan.

Then wonder where the poet walks.
(I, Narcissus, still dine alone)
Wonder if he recalls your eye
when he walks between blurring stalks
and you, lovelorn, do wander by

under the spreading chestnut tree
where I loved you and you sold me.

Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.

Jack