I have a confession to make, I said. I drink to forget all
That my failings and foibles beget. Sobriety
Sends me to most fitful sleep. No rest for he who in his unwaking hours
Mulls over the wine of his life, which he sours
With his own cork of guilt and self-conscience. All mine self-confidence
Derives from Contradictions repressing. Catatonic sleep of great notoriety
Is my limbo, my heaven, perchance my sick death. The
Removal of a blot on the face of this land should solicit, I fear, cornet
Mouthed angels to sound clarion of victory. If I was religious
I should become a flagellant invigilate most excellent
Flayed as the poacher would the pheasant.
And the landowner would the poacher.

Silence from both. I take a drought from my drink, she a small sip.
She looks at me and I look a way.
Do you want me to pay for this? She asks. Just the tip
Quoth I. Another drought and a sip.

Another.

I break down. I have nothing to believe in,
To believe in foul dogma to wash my soul of sin
I find repugnant. Belief in Progress and people and
The wonder of Nature is akin to praying to the inconstant sand
Castle made by the hand of a passing child.
Belief in my girlfriend! More my love’s greatest failure
To grant her the care and affection she deserves
Due to my sand castle of pride in which I do serve.
And thus do I say, to purge all my lust
There’s only one way, in Self-disgust I trust.

The Cat and the Hobo went off on a jaunt,
At midnight for a spot of small mirth
Both as dead as the above, of ribcage most gaunt
The Hobo wishing hard for more girth.

"So say, Mr. Pussycat", said the Hobo unyielding
"How bout a small race, for naught but a prize
Which I should haste to add is of insignificant size
All just for fun, old kitty unfailing."

The Cat's sharp ears pricked. A darkening rampage
Would thanks to his ears be of humongous advantage
To the felinous fellow of movements most scurrilous
For the Hobo, he thought, t'would be ruinous.

He came closer to shake
His hand on the deal
But no sooner was his paw benevolently outstretched
That the hobo had him in his arms most wretched
"Oh you Cat, for once in my life my lack is too real
Of you a stew my old friend I shall make."

There is no place in this modern age, it seems.
No "I could if I would and wouldn't if I couldn't"
Or some other convoluted phrase of a pod. Now
Getting out your phone is sufficient
To show to another some ghastly memes
Puerile goldmines, or else perhaps
Some comic vines
Or worser still, oh dear me
Some animal *******

Now nothing shocks if not in the flesh
News of paedos on TV
Where used to haunt old sir Jimmy
Elicits now some some disinterested grunt, whilst genocide
Suffers horribly from being juxtaposed
With the football scores.

If nothing shocks, if nothing works
To divert the mind from those ****** tweaks
What good are words to those who still
Prefer to sit and tell a joke
Rather then hopping on the rumour mill
And spew much **** till we all choke.

There's no place for Wildeisms, for how
Can they compete with lolcats?
Wit is no longer about sarcasm and irony
For, dear god, the Americans run the world now,
And is now about a carefully placed
"Yolo", or perhaps a reference to some Facebook trend, or
Some other fatuous *******. It's so **** it drips with ****
So goodbye, dear wit, let me blow you a kiss
And let you know that I say, "**** this,
I'm going to go watch Tommy Cooper videos on youtube."

On the edge of a wood stood a well
Between Walker’s stead and the dell
Ha’way man young Alan
Aright mortal off balance
Down into the well he full fell

Jack ropes and merriopes
In solicitous rhyme in fer derilious velope
envy implicitous insectuaryan harridannous
Ensole brodequins forbearing to lace
Trace elements of that remaining empoisonous

For failure interred
Is succes disinterred? And if so, form where?
Where derinferred strands failure unerred
By error masked muscovado coloured Breadth
Pneumonic, perhaps caustically mate
Aerial’d on the glib side of acoustical elimination
Veritable under pooh stick discrimination

Matte clouds of drab depression ove in
An area of low pressure
According to yon hypothalamic forecaster. Core has ter
Fail lently viola lapidavitious stretch so she as
fer ter rousse fer ter kamuskova. An epic
Scribbled on der calen.

Sole of brevity then being approximately an inch and a
Bit minus that
Torrent all yendergelpin cleaving
The very schism wit! It cynicism
Be as may be a pea, no spelling bee entrusted
Where? In there? In that jumble of line?
Barely knows his lime from his rhyme, or indeed
Lime from lime.
He’s just trying to fill up that calendrous space
And make some sense of it.