in the gods

left eardrums a whisper, the caterers want to know where to put the profiteroles –

             its over forty degrees & they wont fit in the bar fridge?

but I’m distracted by the scent of Christmas ivy

It’s already stuffed with Tantalus’s tantalising morsels

disappearing down the black hole in your

They’re up there, all right, in the roof playing scrabble.

I can hear their hooves scraping against the floorboards.

molecules of ordinary blood

in skirts of expanding metal

piercing the arteries of average thought

in gods in their black hole behind the

controls of the space-ship crash landed in the

messenger wings, hermetically sealed. Crowed Hermes, “speak not.”

And in the retorts, distillations missile towed the past into present

where gods wear HERMES jeans and angels

strut runways with gel-filled busts

and three gods strapped in loose C4, with loose ideals

choreographed the night away

splendid, splendid was the cry from the ageing onlookers

and the musicians still played, the dancers danced, the First Fleet socialites

        sipped absinthe with grand stares so grand even the Gods were scared

identities and futures knocked akimbo over Avalon

drunk in a shadow of summer, never recalled

always lost, like a thylacine’s take on tomorrow

these bitter dreams sleep under time

speaking through artesian bores

	and spilling into the sheep

until we wear them, walk in bitter dreams

only to wake (in pastoral

habiliment, the wake still ahead, the scent of mourners

teenage boys fumble heaven breathlessly while

             improbably upholstered goddesses stride the screen

the cheapest thrills are the imagined kind

and way back there

             where the gods are wearing

             HERMES

             there’s an old lady grumbling

             that they must have won

             the lottery

– and so they did: now for estate planning, inheritance taxes, write-offs

A scandal, perhaps a miracle

perhaps an operatic ballet composed by a monkey-dog with the aid of a cat-swan,

              ‘appalling’ was the only word from the critics, an hour of booing from the gods

              resulted in the storming of the stage, but on that night

earmarked for destruction