Where bygone barbarisms still prevail
And the perpetually present poor are real,
Not metaphor. Thus, long, cruel eons pass
Before distraction having the semblance
Of a ghost-tramp storms through the hoodlums,
Frog-marching there before him as he comes
A mangled man whose babyish countenance
Is set with inlaid gems of broken glass;
Whose breast is concave ruin. Tankards chime
And voices raise. “What’s ’e come up ’ere for?”
The vagrant phantom loudly now decries
His captive’s deeds and whimpered alibis
Though Den, just then pressed down beneath the floor,
Cannot discern the nature of the crime
Yet sees its punishment. For his offence
The prisoner, stripped of his torn attire,
Is made to kneel, unsure what to expect,
While Kenny, wooden phallus teased erect,
Learns that the roughneck revellers now require
An act unnatural in every sense.
As both performers start to moan and bleat
In their abrasive coitus they enthral
The spiteful, spectral spectators, who sing
“We’re jolly and we smoke, but here’s the thing.
There’s some stuff that we care for not at all
And serve rough justice here above the street
Where all the arseholes of the ages meet,
Thereby democratising Milton’s fall
With Satan overthrown and mob made king!”
Den feels as if he may be settling