The small gods of mediocrity worship me In glimmering shades of opaque vanity And a quantity of quietly suspended sanity For believing in me is me deceiving in thee Cos’ nothing exists inside an empty mirror Everything is but a shallow showy business An’ vanity’s the perfect anaesthetic to criticism It has a certain cachet of symmetrical insecurity Which protects one from the whips and scorns Of the too, too solid clever clogging creatures And their insistence upon a useless authenticity And several types of other irredemptive features If thickness was a virtue they’d be geniuses As things stand they’re an average ordinary Overburdened by the extremes of modernity And the necessity to dwell in the sin of originality No such burden afflicts this untempered soul A pickpocket in heaven is a smart career move There are so many treasures in eternal garments Looking better on me than any famous other They may have originality but I possess the sin Tailored to perfection of a finely cut deception Wrapped in the vestments of deceitful beauty So befitting on this prince of thieving vanity . If you have been where I have always been You could’ve written the Faerie Queen And several iniquitous verses in between The fame and fortune of writing anything It’s a difficult business being someone else At least on paper and preferably in private An’ don’t you just love an innocent abroad Loneliness is always my singular attraction And sadness isn’t without capricious merit They’re the essential requirements of being A phantom haunting in the raiment of deceit I could shake the scene but only for an hour Why does everybody know that second-rater Or some warbling barbed wire singer-songer? The blowing wind of his twice solid injustice Denies me my princely literary inheritance I’ve got more Faust than a beggar’s banquet I could be them, but they could never be me So who is the real genius at the literary feast? That’s the question that they refuse to answer I’m the prince of all the borrowed tomorrows And the silver-buckled trampling of history Who are they compared to me, the thief of faces A genius at my very own seditious practices? Skylarks, nightingales and ****** red roses There’s no purchase there for a born deceiver Pirouetting upon the landscape of deception My ancient trade, a slave to modern ambition And isn’t wealth so comfortably in fashion Filthy lucre for filthy booker is my very passion A flattering self obsession can be so expensive Plundering souls to satisfy a scribbling ego costs Much more than your average literary bargain Writing’s cheap and writers are even cheaper That’s why I became this born-again deceiver Transient fame and eternal blame’s my passion Who cares about fifteen minutes of ignominy? I’ll do it all tomorrow in another stolen name Addiction thrives by being exposed to shame Any fool can pen their play or scribe a novel The romantics always scribble in their hovel Whilst the past is a very lonely day tomorrow And written failures drown in present sorrow But my notoriety is a timeless endless furrow Ploughed and planted in each passing season Harvesting the festival of my sweetened treason And I’m compelled to a very summer’s day An’ winter springing another written disguise Favouring my fortune by a winning surprise Beggaring the belief of a charitable donation To the swollen coffin of my self infatuation Ferreting in the trashcans of the famous For those half-forgotten reject slips Nothings too worn or useless for my audience Even less for my insatiable appetite To be appreciated as a literary genius Even if it lasts for only fifteen minutes In the company of an utterly innocent audience I’m neither proud nor even vain glorious It’s just part of my addictive insouciance I just love that moment in my significance When I can be seen as someone not average Not much to ask and even less to deliver It doesn’t take a genius to be just clever That’s a joy that I can always joyfully deliver Twice on Saturday provided one’s a matinee I will venture on this shadowy way forever Harming no one except a ripped off author They should be grateful for the plunder After all it is a kind of literary flattery I have standards in my taste for literature I’d never rob your average written writer If they’ve mugged themselves, why bother? A long lost great or an undiscovered genius Is more my taste and appreciated flavour New wine is fine but truth is there to be told I’ll drink anything especially if it can be sold To any old innocently paying punter Desperation travels in the company of deceit And much of it is right up my street Not quite the boulevards of the ancients And there I go along the road of the living Avoiding life’s cul-de-sac dead end A place to spend a life seriously avoiding Even if it means inhabiting other people’s clothing The wearing and the tearing is a riot An’ God won’t send me to Hades for borrowing The silken garments of the truly wonderful But he sure as hell gets mad if I copyright it.