THIS BOX CONTAINS WHAT'S IN IT


The things I must remember to bear with
me tomorrow are the photocopied forms I have
to fill in to remind me what on earth it is
I've been doing, the art magazine that's cluttering
my table here so I'm going to take it there
where it can clutter to its heart's content,
milk and sandwiches, and the framed picture
of Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival
in 1965. There's a spare nail in the wall
or, to be exact, protruding from it
and it's a fact of philosophy that whenever
there's a spare nail in a wall you have to hang someone on it,
and it's good if someone is a prince or a god.
                                                 Today thinking perhaps
somewhere it's still 1968 I was listening to
Jefferson Airplane records and reading about
rational choice theory but I didn't understand
anything I read about rational choice theory
so please don't come up to me after this
and ask me what it is because I won't be
able to talk to you although I will act as if I want to
although the truth of the matter is I have to do
something against my will and bow to social pressures
and how a man is supposed to behave
as opposed to how a man really wants to behave
are not the same things and have never been.
After reading about rational whatever I then read
Charles and Mary Lamb's prose for small people
version of "Pericles, Prince of Tyre" not just because
it's easier than reading the play but
because it's easier and quicker than reading
the play. And I learn
                        virtue assailed by calamity may
                              triumph over chance and change.
                   Do not become great
           by another's wrong.
                         Goodness directed by knowledge
       approaches the nature of the gods.
               The wicked meet an end
                                      proportional to their deserts.
And the boy sat next to you is almost certainly
a princess in disguise seeking her long lost twin brother
and even though she may be in the wrong play
it doesn't matter because she is in love
with me although she doesn't know it yet,
disguised as I am as a wandering minstrel
and about to discover myself
as the unbelievable prince
everyone had thought dead ever since I went out
to the toilet in 1981 and failed to return.
My people were fair and had distraction in their hair
and were absolutely distraught, apparently.
When I reveal my true identity it will be by virtue
of the gifts I bear and the truths I have to tell:
for example, we don't have to do everything
on the list our parents gave us, nor do we
have to always have to exactly follow the script
thrust into our hands when our attention was distracted
by the word virgin either aimed at us as an insult
or as information about someone else.
                            Other truths I'm saving up
concern families, religion, sex and politics
and I'm having trouble keeping the top on the box
I've got them all stuffed inside.
Don't worry,
         it won't be long now, and then
everything will never be the same again
and everyone will be very happy, much happier

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