Not what I usually write, the technique is there but in a different way. Classical allusions describing a not all together classical scene, life is art? Or is art just wishful thinking.

“I love you” whispers Paul
“I love you”croaks Jenny.
Romeo and Juliet’s that stroll the streets of every town.
Like a wicked stage empty of actors.
That are too drunk for that final sacrifice.
Or too numb.
Romantic in that conformist way.
He writes poetry.
She sells shoes and he builds coffins.
Respectively.
His poetry is a bit… Lose, you know.
Modernist you could say.
Down the sun.
Writes about the nature of poetry in them.
Bit cool he is. Bit cool.
This makes him a good poet right?
Right?
His breath, his metaphor, an allusion to death.
No Paul isn’t a person to be in the epic poetry.
Not a hero. Not a king.
I want to be just like him

"Are you fucking him?"

Not a man of pretty verses.
He looks at all the pretty nurses.

As they pass him by.
He doesn’t know why.
Never did.

Being aware of a cliché makes it cool right?
A bitter plight.
Memory shines.
He went to Rome once.
Got drunk by the coliseum.
Under the vast classical pillars that Caesar stood.
A human forest of marble arches.
And orated to the world that the empire would never die.

Oggi lei me vedrà sia il Gran Sacerdote o un esilio

Paul got a blow job.
With Mozart’s last requiem drifting lazily from the back streets to his ears.
The hookers there were always nice and cheap and wet.
Their mouths wide like the open grave.
Caesar sank into.

A poet to a dime in this world.
He likes Booze and girls.
Impeccable in bed.
The love song,
She keeps him well fed.
Kissing on a grey street.
Muttering words that Ts Eliot wrote.

“Let us come then you and I”

Outside of Mac Donalds.
So much to be done,
But they can do it tomorrow.
Tomorrow and the day after that.
Long ago he lost his soul
To some forgotten dream.
He doesn’t believe in Caesars or heroes anymore.

She’s a bit of spiritual girl, believes in a God.
Smokes a bit of pot, he likes Donnie Darko,
She likes Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind,

God is dead.

They know stuff.
They’re unique,
They buy individuality by the bag load.
Lip stick and condoms from safe ways.
And the birds all flew away last summer.
Like waves of petals against the horizon.
Poetry is squeezed out of them by industries skeleton hands.
And the immortal verses seem sterile and clean upon the page
As real life rots and fades.

An internal existence.
A self willing tautology.
Balanced on that fragile knife edge.
In Durham existentiality flourishes.
In Durham.
In Durham Nietzsche was buried.
But you can only see him.
Through the eye of a heroin needle.

They wanted to be Rock stars?
Ah no, they watched fight club.
They’re “socially conscious”
As they slit intelligence’s wrists with 24 hour work.
As they stand in line at the movies,
24 hour party fucking people.

Ma i morti sono molto

They’ve got this profile that makes them compatible.
They can match their likes with the crowd.
Just average people I guess.
Standing on the hills of antiquity.
For other people to stand on.
But they know they’re average,
So they’re not right?
Right?

He looks up his dreams in a big book of dreams.
They’re always in there.
He only dreams, dreams, others have shared.
Holding hands smiling,

Soma by the pint glass,
A greased tube to oblivion,
From a life they never cared for.
As time whirls past them
To the sound of a car’s engine. Dim and numb.
They smile,

Into the Jaws of death rides the world.
Smiling and talking about Eastenders.
And property prices in Spain.

Et toi est moi.

Incineration Of potential.
They’ll take a trip to slough tomorrow.
They know the poem.
He recites it, as he goes to work in a building there.
Irony? No? This is life, there is only irony on the page.
There’s a song that rhymes that they recall
They can’t quite remember the words to.
And just hum along to.
A dirge in the dark.
Sacks of meat and water.
They’re in love.
And after their children die.
And their children’s children die.
They will not be remembered.

This is way life goes.
This is the way people flow.

Paul and Jenny have a single line of a census dedicated to them.
Born, married and then they died.
They weren’t aware.
I can’t say I care.
They wasted life,
They would have just wasted an after life.

The death of fire and air.
The death of Paul and Jenny.
The weird thing was no one noticed.
Everyone just walked on.
Just a personal apocalypse.
That was a damp spark in the dry cellar.
Smothered by mediocrity.
Personalities like statistics that can be written down.

Average at this, moderate at that, he did play football in the park.
Before it was dug up and never built on.
A pale wasteland outside his door.
Clouds in the sky,but it never rained, never stormed.
King Lear slept face down outside the Rose and Crown.
With Ophelia sucking his dick.
Penny for a pound, penny for a pretty pound of flesh.

The text is foolish.

They’re part of that faceless crowd that washes past you.
That you are part of.
That great men stand on to achieve great things.
A wage slave that likes buying things.
His pleasure comes to him in boxes,
His wants to put himself in a box.
He comes into this world from a box.

Carried out in a box.

Carried out in a box.

Go west young man,
Go west,
To the homeless and the drab.
Go west.
To a pint and a pull.

Replaces God with a ATM card.
Can't say I care.

Apathy kings.

Quest'uomo è morto
Questo Dio è morto

He was a poet and didn’t know it
Could never show it.

Shine as bright as you can.
Because if you don’t.
No one will care.
77 and dead upon a stair,
A body not found for 7 long days.
A body buried along with a name.

No one is saved.

If life is art.
Then Death is a critic.
Till all poetry reflect life.
And art and Joy fade.