Spleen

I know a few true poets, greet them with great joy

When we meet on the streets of the old city.

But as for the literati, what can I say?

Whiners, egotistical neurotics.

Nothing is more comical

Than to see them slavering after the latest fashion,

Tongues hanging out like winded dogs.

Twenty years of arse kissing

To publish a volume of boring, moronic poems

And you would think the Prime Minister

Had appointed them ambassador to the Cayman Islands!

Unlike dear Catullus I refuse to end

By slipping on a cloak of pious Roman humility.

I have this to say to sheep huddling together in the corner of the paddock –

Bah as pitifully as you may.

Bat your long lashes ever so fetchingly.

Death will snap you like a dry twig

And cast you off into oblivion anyway.

As for that book of poems –

That can be put to use in the outhouses of the new millennium.