Et in Arcadia badly bruised ego,
Treeing up the wrong bark, headwards into the trash-can,
My obsessive jigsaw-being, pieces ceased to fit long ago,
Cleverly I snip and cheat, what a charlatan!
My monstrous vanity, how wilfully I let it grow,
Mon Dieu! what a puffy-faced, skin a-sagging conman!

My hallowed education, so proud in my learning,
With near perfect syntax, well sin-tax!
    Embracing any seedy swingers-club, so charming!
About wisdom, the true intelligence, I am so lax,
Ever alone, fearful of any emotional caning,
Divorced from all realities, way too complex!

What now my future, a svelte *******?
Or perpetual bit-part actor, murmurs the jury,
Condemned to be a rough-shod ploughboy,
A mere half-brick in a wall of sound and fury,
No cloistered quad, or brain-storming salvo,
What now a Pedants Revolt, or intellectual menagerie?

The mirror tells no lies,
Ability inexorably led me to something so lowly,
Blindfold no longer, revealed a ruined Bridge of Sighs,
No heady aroma of beeswax and leather, and so lonely!
Unmasked my whole flawed self, which I despise,
Adrift in the cruellest of seas, so vile and unsightly

The mirror tells no lies,
No more deceits, and surely no surprise?


© Robert Porteus