As yesterday was
National Poetry Day
I should perhaps have then
Spelled out
More clearly
Exactly the extent to which
I wish to win
The T S Eliot Prize
For Poetry.
To which end I shall now commence
To live much more poetically.
I shall adopt a rigorous programme
Of anaerobic flouncing,
Move to a garret,
Pretend to love the English countryside,
Take to morphine,
Try to catch consumption
And get spiritual and wistful
About eels.
Because,
You see,
The Prize is worth a lot of
Money,
£20,000
To be precise,
Which I am sure
The Prize’s administrators
Would increase one hundred fold
Just for me,
To make up for the way Old Tom’s estate’s
Tried to suppress a comic book
I based upon his famous thing
“The Waste Land”
Thirty years ago
As a way of saying sorry,
But also so that they can hide their shame.
But then, you see, with
Two million nicker trousered,
I could quickly turn that into serious
Moolah, investing prudently
In sectors like “Pharmaceuticals”
And “Hospitality” and “Armaments”,
While offering to launder my new business partners’ filthy lucre,
Stained and specked with blood
And sexual fluids and yet more
Repellent unmentionables,
By “versewashing” their illgotten gains,
And splashing their cruel rackets
With redemption from
The Lyric.
And soon,
You understand,
My wealth would start to rise
Both incremen- and exponen-
Tially,
Until I’d buy whole nations with small change,
Have Bezos as my bellhop,
Zuckerberg would skim my many golden pools
Filled to the brim with lionesses’ milk
With a special tool we’d sell him for the job,
And Donald Trump’s cured pelt
Would serve for just one weekend as our hearthrug,
As you’ll appreciate,
Simply for a laugh.
While Boris Johnson,
Naked except for wearing a tight tutu,
Will caper solemn dances for my guests,
And try to catch thrown peanuts between his buttocks
As his keepers jerk his satin leash,
While my guests- my new best friends,
All the world’s top leaders, kings, presidents,
Popes, CEOs, rap and film stars, hedgies and other riffraff - you know the type -
Will all laugh at his antics, and try not
To sound too nervous, none of them quite knowing
When I’ll next propose a game of
“William Tell”
And I’ll
Continue sipping
The tears of my foes’ orphans
From the bejewelled gilded skull
Of Michael MacIntyre.
In these uncertain
And frankly depressing
Times
It’s good to have ambition
You’ll agree.