Was what, with harness, hatchet, stick and shot,
Bashing them to red gravy, thick and hot.
He stole their speech too, making sure he'd got
Dumb servitude – the plough; if not, the pot.
He had the last word. Nay, he had the lot.
Man the Tyrant
This furred and feathered boss of bird and brute
Assumed the god, all bloody airs and graces,
Nor deigned to look down in his subjects' faces,
Treating each creature like a mildewed boot.
He swilled, he gorged, but his preferred pursuit
Mixed sticking pigs and whipping hounds on chases,
Marches through arches, blown brass and tossed maces,
With decking Eve, that bitch, in hunter's loot.
The beasts had hunted looks, being forced to make,
Poor wretches, the bad best of a bad job
And put up with that swine – all save the snake
Who, spitting like a kettle on a hob,
Weaved at the foul shapes tyranny can take
And hissed: "I'll get you yet, you fucking snob."
A sort of interlude. Let's look at dogs.
At mastiff, Great Dane, greyhound, poodle, beagle,
The sausage hound, that yelps like a sick seagull,
Asthmatic bullpups honking hard as hogs.
Now men. Irish in bogs and Dutch in clogs,
Swarthy as turds, sharp-conked as any eagle,
The Jew and Turk. Then, trying to look regal,
Tea-slurping English, and French eating frogs.
Compare some doggy that leaps on to laps
With a prize wolfhound. Different as cheese and chalk.
In spite of this, our parish ballocks yaps
About us springing from a single stalk:
One primal bitch for pups, and one for chaps.
Did you ever hear such stupid fucking talk?
Adam
If God made man, we've no call to regret
Man's love of blood and lack of bloody sense.
God, who's all what they call omnipotence,
Meaning he'll piss the bed and prove it's sweat,
Pissed on some clay and sweated cobs to get
A statue from it, sparing no expense.
Then he took breath and blew – Haaaa Hadam.
Hence Man's sometimes called the Puffed Up Marionette.
In just one minute he could spout out history
And write and read great tomes as tough as Plato's.
He knew it all when first he tottered bedwards.
The names of beasts and birds – no bloody mystery.
Like a greengrocer sorting out potatoes:
"This lot is whiteboys and these here King Edwards."
Now, Brother Trustgod, Godtrust (never knew
God had a rupture. Sorry), please let me
Shove in a word. I just won't have it, see.
God made us all in his own image, did he? You
Are mad. If Paul himself, yes Saint Paul, flew
Down to agree with you, I'd tell him he
Was mad. (He was mad.) Why don't you decree
Old Nick was made in God's own image too?
O bleeding Christ and Christ's own bleeding mother,
Even if the sanctified three-hatted sod
Says what you say, it's still, my half-arsed brother,
Mad. Is God's image in greengrocer's shops
Then, in greengrocers? God, he must be a God
Of cabbages and turnip fucking tops.
About Eve
Give me a woman bare as a boiled egg,
Who'd think a brush and comb came from the divvle,
Who owns no snotrag to entrap her snivel,
Or towel or dishcloth hanging from a peg,
Who has no shoe on foot or hose on leg
Nor any of the Amenities of Civil-
Ised Life, to use the advertiser's drivel.
No jakes to thrutch in and no pot to deg,
Who will sup water but not sit in it
Nor on a chair nor underneath a roof,
Who'll never see the muckman do his duty.
Picture this little lady decked in shit
From hair to heel, then try to give me proof
That Mother Eve, Christ help us, was a beauty.
But some say: Scorn her not. Remember, she,
When Adam took her, did not turn her face
But drank the dreadful fire of his embrace.
Dirty or not, without her where would we
Be? She merits homage. So, with me:
"O ave Eva, though full of disgrace,
We love thee as the root of all our race;
Thy sap runs in us, leaves of thy living tree."
Dirty? How do we know? Perhaps her skin
Was laved in a miraculous hygiene,
Just as the second Eve was laved within.
Not that it matters. For myself, I lean
To lauding both her sordor and her sin.
Without those to wash off, who could be clean?
Greed
Which of the seven deadly sins is worst?
Pride sneering skyward, avarice shrieking
More, Liplicking lust, or anger, one red roar?
No, gluttony, the fifth sin, is the first.
From Adam burst a famine and a thirst
For a wormy apple offered by a whore,
A penny pippin. God has rammed its core
Down all our throats, a canker of the cursed.
That bitch, that bastard. God, I gape aghast as
I contemplate the greed that could have cast us
Into the outer darkness – fed us, rather,
To final fire. But our ingenious master's
As quick to cancel as to cause disasters,
And to this end kindly became a father.
The sceptic beats his brain till dawn's first dapple
Lights him and all his books to slumber's amity.
Though he's read all from Moses to Mohamet, he
Rejects the truth of temple, mosque and chapel:
That man brought sin and death and hell to grapple
His soul in irons, condemning God to damn it. He
Set up an aboriginal calamity
Or, if you like, munched a forbidden apple.
Why why why? One song, too many singers.
Why why? Why won't unwrite the bloody book.
So let them write a new one if they must.
Why why? We want an answer. They can look
In Milo Aphrodite's clutching fingers
Or up the arsehole of Pasquino's bust.
Knowledge
Before they yielded to the devil's urging
And crunched the good-bad apple to the core,
Bare innocence was all our parents wore,
Like Jesus Christ got ready for the scourging.
After their second gorge they felt emerging
A thing called shame. So rapidly they tore
Leaves from the trees to cover what before
Had been mere taps for secondary purging.
Thus good and evil, as we must conclude,
Succeed in making rude and crude and lewd
The dumpendebat and the fhairy grot.
Else why should man and missis play the prude?
Each knew, however leafily endued,
Precisely what the other one had got.
There'd be, if Adam hadn't sold our stock,
Preferring disobedience to riches,
No sin or death for us poor sons of bitches.
Man would range free, powerless to shame or shock,
And introduce all women to his cock,
Without the obstacles of skirt and breeches,