Floodgates

Lui qui ne pleurait pas, ne voyait pas.

The improvements since antediluvian ill?

For hors d'oeuvres analyse architectural drafts;

those that well give a damn for foundations, and spill

out their viscera, blissfully levy their lives

to the tune of three hundred by thirty, and craft

out their gopher’s-wood schemes when disaster arrives.

But the fortifications, though firm and insured,

with their structural groundwork to roll with the clouds,

are worth less than the sandbags Atlantis demurred

to exploit when the ocean had thrashed out with them          

the same offer as Ino, for manning the shrouds

is abortive when squalls start in bellies of men.

So a Trojan donation that’s opened inside

the environs of buttresses built to defend

its interior mocks the dimensions designed;

there’s a Samson that toils on the lowest of floors,

in chthonic conditions; no contract extends

where societal pillars conceal their remorse.

In the archives this elderly scholar removes,

and he bends over backwards for menial pay,

for a quinquagenarian limbo can prove

to be costly, especially judging that since

he’s not been to confession for many a day,

and this makes jeremiads much simpler to mince.

In apparent obscurity, milquetoasts descend,

operating like hummingbirds, hold to account

the decrepit employee but can’t comprehend

with a pantry as paltry as childhood is blithe,

alimentary concessions have started to mount

for the washed-out old Cretan with P45

and the ramshackle meadows that make up his desk,

boutonnieres bright with Asphodels sent by his wife,

his certificates framed, the naïve arabesques

from his granddaughter, photos of holidays past,

not to mention the crop of continuous strife,

are now cardboard-interned and dispatched just as fast.  

   

So while Caiaphas snoozes, the tangoing dice

in his whisky reduce, and he doesn’t expect

that the highest of stories in office suffice

to do little but merit insurgent attempts,

just as ice cubes, selected for certain effect,

start to temper the taste with a convict’s contempt.

With no fetial avowal delivered downstairs,

metempirical means are engaged in its place,

and no human resources, equipment, or prayers

smartly superimposed onto spreadsheets prevent

the report of Pandora that sounds in the face

of misdeed, nor the launch of succeeding events.

With the pansophy born of the downtrodden man,

all the wrongs of humanity start to amass

in the tear ducts of one who’s done all that he can,

but amounts still to naught but a blotch in a file,

and he meekly inherits the biblical brass

of a vengeful authority painting the Nile.

So the bawling of epochs decanted at once

from a phizog forgotten for many a shift

as a patsy implausibly buried amongst

an assembly of hirelings and babes in the wood

causes swift undulations, thus casting adrift

all the dirtiest laundry, as punishment should.

All the stationary floats to the perilous plane

of olfactory gates, and the markers and pens,

turning traitorous, mock their old masters, and deign

to display all the might of their cousin compare,

as the weight upon which every weapon depends

is its downfall, the surface is flotsam’s affair.

Atramentous stiletto-quills panic a few,

and they grasp marginalia, inkhorns and tracts,

in a dash for some driftwood or buoys in the blue.

In the absence of baptists, the codger oppugns

their imprudence and pride, as felt tips start to act

with conniption of octopi under harpoons.

With these animadversions the room is submerged,

with his puling the pools overwhelm all the oaths

and the schwarmerei standard of counterfeit dirge.

so the statements of statesman combine with receipts,

with contentions of senators, laws that are loathed,

all these Prospero-papers the tempest deletes.

  

On the offices’ ground level, hell’s breaking loose,

a department for publishing men’s magazines

is now up to the knees in inundant abuse,

Lollobrigidas lose what decorum remains,

not to mention their derelict drawers; their routines

since their teens have been crammed with Aspasian games

and the closest available cavalry ranks

are the Berkeley brigades, and the infernal trot

of ecdysiast’s heels, as this ocean of angst

carries off Cora Pearl, and her fizgig façade.

The cosmetics and crudity: all gone to pot

for the ditziest dancers of Offenbach yard.

         

As a job lot of droplets continue to pour

from the jobless pariah, salvation’s beyond  

all the trained secretarial sirens, who roar

for the sparing of blusher, mascara, and gloss

to compete with Xi Shi, who, near similar ponds

gave the fishes amnesia by screwing her boss.

With the editor’s hard drive marooned on his desk,

to be claimed by the kelpies that neigh with delight,

And his private collection of backstreet burlesques

which are murky as Selkirk’s secluded pursuits,

consequently he’s frothing and foaming with fright

in the Sodomite saucepan he’s helped to pollute.

Through a stock cupboard keyhole a drooling voyeur

sneaks a look at the hosiery Degas described

with clandestine intent, that informed connoisseurs

labelled genius; but elegance, when it’s enclosed

in alarm, only suits a particular tribe,

is as piercingly cold as was Judith unclothed.

As this business goes under, the first floor canteen

starts to brim with the brimstone belligerence born

from commandments galore humankind contravenes.

All the mackerels, advoutresses, rakehells, who wait

to be swallowed a stage down, belatedly mourn

how the food of the flesh is the emptiest plate.

All the Wakahaguros are bloated like whales

in the sludge and the porridge, and lumbering strokes

of delusive attempts to escape, as the hail 

still continues to sling it down, suffer a glut

of outrageous misfortunes, are blind to the joke

it’s a broth they prepared detonating their guts

and this glycerol folderol eddies around

endomorphic physiques that were so full of beans,

now the catering staff are accursed, and confound

the cuisine that they’re bathing in, forced to consume

in cascades, for indulgence, partaken by fiends

to excess, is a pleasure that runs out of room. 

The homunculi, drunkards and winebibbers scream

for their gastric catastrophes, cummerbunds snap

from completely replete overeaters, who deem

that Vitellius victuals serve to promote

serving Cerberus supper, post-prandial naps

make for corpulent corpses that fail to float.  

So a swamped salmagundi of sybarite swine

are now gargling the pluvious blues, it’s too late

to assuage the responsible party, the line

between superintendents and skivvies is crossed.

On the next floor’s accounting, who’ve taken the bait:

snatching jack while they still had a chance to get lost.

Amidst figures and invoices, value and worth

are confused; for example, Fan Li’s golden rules

mean much less when surrounded by lather and surf,

and the options he’s given a staircase above

spell the end of his missus; economy schools,

deifying the dollar, have only one love.

With the currents of currency claiming the throat

of a broker with broken resolve, while he can

he grabs florins, exploits the sub aqua, and boats

on the backs of his brothers, a lucrative pop

at delaying demise; as an ambulance man

for Saint John’s, he’s aware when the kicking will stop.  

Belshazzarian foresight is tardy reward

for those studying screens that determine their shares,

and their preoccupations with money abroad

make them blind to the writing they’ve seen on the wall,

all their offshore investments and fiscal affairs

as important as outflow of Anchorite Paul. 

Avariciously vicious volition precludes

a cooperative concept that’s crucial when faced

with the preordained doom this alluvion broods.

the presumption that makes parsimonious clods

close their pale-knuckled fists is a penury based

on perspectives that struggle to measure the odds.

The acquisitive rigmarole comes to a head

when the pilots of gondolas laden with cash

start to joust to protect all the cargo instead

of their comrades in coin, and thus tipping the scales

towards tragedy, learn that at sea, what you stash

for the purpose of trade should weigh less than your sails.

As pathetic a fallacy forced on a bloke

as departments that run personnel can attain

heralds harsh retribution for mirrors and smoke,

as the patriarch’s bawling for payslips they stole

has engulfed almost half of the building; the pain

penny-pinchers elicited gorges them whole

and those close to a getaway make for the door

to the building’s next echelon, squealing for aid

through the window, in time to be cruelly ignored.

an aggrieved group of three, who refuse them a chance

to explain, play the keepers of kismet, parade

with the bile of Eumenides snubbed at a dance.

So the weeping sweeps into a centre of spleen,

pamphleteers of preposterous rightist regimes

and political journalists say what they mean,

are incensed by how commonly love of prestige

is destroyed, a defence common sense always seems

to prefer to the Commons they try to besiege.

While the clamour continues, they’re up to their chin,

yet engrossed in the arguments hypocrites hold

like the parents Pompeii helped preserve with their kin,

the deceased keep their sentiments after they’re gone,

just as here, white-hot choler, maintained till they’re cold,

means the torment they touted can still carry on

and as power makes policy bow every time,

two opinions opposed on a detail the size

of their intellect, opt for a wrestle in slime,

and the Guelph against Ghibelline grapple points out

that the doctrine is never the coveted prize

when a ruler is one thing they can’t do without.

In the marshland created by sorrowful carp,

are most sullen purveyors of cant and complaint.

temperamental Petrarchan performances harp

upon all the hot water they find themselves in,

giving stick to the Styx and its soggy restraints

with their ornery mourning as toxic as jinn

and in passing the slough and slop, in the time

it takes Phlegyas asked for a favour to flip,

the avenger’s attention’s for next in the line:

the most rational evil the edifice keeps,

one that in moderation is noble, but slips

to defamatory depths with its voluble leaps.

When these national geographers bury themselves

in the beauteous challenges nature imparts

in itself it’s a worthy career, till they delve

too far down; their conceit, as in this case and point,

has on many a gathering broken the hearts

of the theists they think puts their nose out of joint.

  

That at social events they’ve aggressed with their facts

to dismantle the faith of a diffident group

who possess an audacious belief which detracts

from most pompous endeavours is adequate grounds

for the coming of judgement; it’s ruthless to stoop

without burden of proof, to the level of hounds.

They resent Avicenna’s assertion, it pricks

their acerbic convictions to leave them bereft

of their future, but opposite viewpoints aren’t fixed

by lobotomies after denouncing as fake

a divergent idea; the tea service left

in the cosmos is certainly taking the cake.

Those that laboured with fairest and honourable charge

without injuring those who are also inclined

to rejoice with the wonderment, that, by and large

is at variance only in final respects.

Serendipity sees that they’re able to find

a much quieter lunch as survivors elect.

It’s no Botulfsson business that’s being performed,

but a price to be paid for the radical use

of a cause undergone condescending reforms,

using science to slaughter the hopeful, enrolled

in their codes of devotion, which, likewise abused,

came to warrant the tools the inquisitive hold.

Virtuoso vindictiveness vented with pride

is as dumb as the speech Malagrida forgot

to deliver at last, when he came to decide

on its contents the tone was as grave as a prayer

and abridged at the end of a lordly garrotte,

not to hope for redemption when death comes is rare.

So with research abandoned, this playground of spite

is the latest surrendering stage, and the moans

of the martyr redouble, begin to affright

the panjandrums that prowl, and are wholly immersed

in amercement and forfeiture, company loans  

create clerks with misdeeds they have not reimbursed

and this mulcting diablerie comes to a close

for the ribbeting toads of sadistic red tape,

with the fever pitch plaints cataclysm bestows

on incendiary Seren exploiting the law

to relinquish with eloquent edicts and rape

using small-print ensconced where it’s often ignored.

Here the ugliest characteristics reside,

it’s where violence is clad in the flashiest suits,

and the Nessus-shirts wail for the rules they defied

as the arrows of conscience help perforate ties

made in devilish tailors of high street repute

though their suicide’s stylishness can’t be denied. 

So the profligate playtime has come to stop

and the socialite shindigs are stripped from the bill,

and like Bloodgood’s performance when labelled a flop,

with a last recognition of ventures that failed

the proscribed perpetrators with hands in the till

see the truth but ignore it, the life they curtail.

It’s a moment of stardom; the Robert Budd Dwyer

predilection for blasphemous statements before

a pièce de resistance, all over the wires,

if a hero’s finale is not on the cards

there’s still infamy left as a final resort

while the press still enjoy such a morbid charade.

    

All the property pilfered with hostile deceits

and the typical tyranny lawyers adore

now as inconsequential as Dearborn’s defeat;

their purloining to such a pedantic degree

leads to Pyrrhic carousing that grimly ignores

retribution that foreordination decrees.

The embezzlement, robbery, blackmail and threats

to make Ferdinand Marcos convulse with concern

are now duly rewarded by being beset

by a boiling Niagara, a smouldering stew

as pyretic as piracy’s lesson, which burns

with the murderous guerdon that’s long overdue.

Chief executive officer Forsyth surveys

the anonymous anger destroying the graft

of a lifetime that merits an auto-da-fé,

and the knee that he wounded in panic portends

to his playing a maltworm to rancorous draughts

for iniquitous values he’s tried to defend

and the tower becomes like the trees Gilles De Rais

saw inverted, the roots penetrating the ground

in a scene as grotesque as the coital displays

of his Satanist sport; though the monolith’s bricks

are piled skyward, the gruesome affairs that are found

past its doors reach the depths of nefarious tricks.

There’s the wailing and yapping of barbarous hounds

who have only adhered to their selfish desires

and now blankly look round all their ill-fated grounds

scratching foliage-beards from the grooming eschewed,

as an athlete who’s seeking distinction retires,

with a prize as devoid as the mileage accrued

and a Crowlian coward remembers the beach

of a foreign resort he’d booked tickets to see;

a deserter’s chimera of sand he’ll not reach,

gaudy cocktails, fellatio, sun bed and spa

that he’ll never enjoy, as the copy machine

is his only companion and final hurrah.

As he thinks about Christmas it ruins his mood:

when he offered a colleague with morals as loose

to subscribe to his do-what-thou-wilt attitude,

and then hitched up her hams in the very same place

that now serves as a purgatory prime to deduce

how his temple’s reduced to xerography space.

The penultimate point of this skyscraper damned

by the sackcloth and ashes the management caused

is a government sector, where all are dab-hands

at collapsing on swords when their wiles are revealed

but it’s more than a hushed resignation that’s forced

from these fraudulent factions too ready to yield.

Epicedium notes of an instrument used

without praise or esteem, nor directions to find

where the dole queue begins from where say-so’s abused,

force precipitous pleas from the politic tongues

that have drawn what they want from the credulous kind

and discarded the gullible saps where they clung.

With a JFK smile and a wink at the polls,

to smooth over illicit behaviour that hides

in the closeted cloisters protected by trolls

with best interests in mind and promotions to boot,

pouring oil on caliginous flings with asides

to make abject offenses a cinch to impute.

Here a grandstander’s hand in the hurting derived

from his callous seductions has all the finesse

of Picasso’s philandering; since he arrived

one’s depressed, one’s bewitched, one’s a tacit recluse,

one now swings from the neck that he used to caress,

one decided a bullet’s more apt than a noose.

So he paces the bounds of his reprobate roost,

where he’s toasted ambition and fashioned from feints

and chicanery only false idols; produced

with his flattery, fawning, and monkeyshine stunts,

a solicitous post within furtive constraints;

now his beggarly triumphs eternity hunts

and his black braggadocio, bully and boasts

brews the foetid Jacuzzi he’s wallowing in,

and the Ponzi pretentions of cheques in the post

just won’t cut it with comrades in fourberie gain

and they can’t hear the strains of his sham violin,

they play ostrich to cries for assistance abstained

and the piety paid for a countenance key

to a civic success is effrontery bred

from besmirched codes of conduct and suave perjury,

a campaign with a hope finds an optimist costs

about two-point-four kids and devotion; instead

of fidelity, masks made from ethics we’ve lost.

Crooks are stalking discordantly, desperately torn

between trophies to save for a mantelpiece show;

in a limb-ripping panic hegira’s forborne;

they all favour encomiums made for themselves

as they don’t want the journalists later to know

how their pedestal’s worthless with desolate shelves

and De Hory’s vainglorious mimicking dupes

are a janiform trick that’s ephemeral, since

insincerity strikes at the soul, and the drupes

of misstatement and masquerade metamorphose

into acetose fruit when veneers are evinced,

and if not, then the cancerous malady grows.

Conscientious accomplishments meet with a shock

when they’re subject to subterfuge, dashing the trust

in deserving achievement on charlatan rocks,

but these counterfeit moguls, Casiques of Poyais,

get to stretch out with Kujan in chambers worth dust

to the swastika functions of brutes in the way.

We dispense with the barratry, hoodwink and cons,

at the end of sharp practice: a point of dismay.

to a sterile retreat for the treacherous dons,

with their boots on the table and liquor as old

as the ancient CV of the notary, grey

from the grindstone these alchemists turn into gold.

In a hermitage home to these traitorous heels

that are swift to revolve in a yellow retreat,

the enraged ululations make masonry keel   

over authors of crimes of insidious mould, 

and the citadel slips like a pugilist’s feet,

who takes too many knocks and determines to fold.

The cathedral of vice, now a craterous gap

where Iscariots, forced to inhabit the pits

of perpetual agony, learn while they’re trapped

that a pyramid praised for its acme retains,

with removal of parts to which grandeur submits,

the potential to fall like a torrent of rain.