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.