Coming back to their neck of the woods,

a shout was as good as a wolf and a basket


as full as a boot full of tarnished medallions


and useless keys, pugnacious as costume


on a moonlit patio, swilling prosecco


in the face of a woofer meltdown,

the Pixies Doolittle undermining


their security and ripping through


their smokescreen, they linked arms


and tumbled headfirst into the black


ink of their future depositions, laughing


like whales at their idiotic prospects,

reminiscing over the glory days


of their addictions; some strange


archaic pleasures, white drawings


on the fragile weatherbeaten wall,


hessian curtains with macramé tassels,

vases with cracks sewn together


with lines from the Old Testament


making them crazy: the lord raised up judges,


which delivered them out of the hand


of those that spoiled them, and left


them stranded on the banks of their own


satisfaction. Really, their pleasures


were of the most fleeting kind, so

they faced up and said, ‘damned


if we do, damned if we don’t’,

and didn’t do anything to correct,


construct, console, constrain or


contribute to the future prosperity


of their grand project, though they


played out their ebullient narratives,

and folded up their origami verses,


took to the trombone and piano

with gusto, and uttered a rousing


chorus to all and sundry.

the next day, they were arrested


in their development towards spiritual


affirmation, a transparency attractive


in its embrace of optimism’s anodyne argot


though their youth lay dead as springtime


it was late in the hour of burning reason


and enlightenment overkill, thus panhandled


they stepped out of the limelight


and took up Pascal programming 


insisting it was neither an imperative 


nor blast from the past, always slinking

into their nesting


procedures to put everything


into structured subranged enumerated records


before they opened the business door

to uncultivated beauteous genius;


for, you see, they knew (or know)


their territory, their competition,


their enemies; experienced

in an exquisite tai chi


they quietly folded backwards

as some roaring ruddy raider

bellowed and screeched wild calumny


at their retro costumes festooned with flurries


of rapid eye movement, privately aghast


at their charismatic choreography


and lush sampling of his aggro compendium;


in their neck of the woods, a shout was as good as


a promise, a promise as good as a fistful of hemp,

a fistful of hemp as good as a hit