Jerusalem

Has the sensation as he passes through

Of fusing with the drab planks from below,

Emerging on their far side in insane

Conditions, chest-deep in the warping floor

To nightmare. He discovers that his skin,

Now naked, is that on a manikin

Grown from this attic of the charnel poor

With joints replaced by pins and pores by grain,

Whose screams are creaks, whose tears are viscous gum

Slow on his lathe-shaved cheeks. Den gapes, appalled,

As his host, wood-fleshed and immersed like he

In floor, is seized by the fraternity

Of tipsy ghouls who sing while Kenny’s hauled

Up to inebriate Elysium:

“The jolly smokers we, a cheery bunch

Here in our half-world, half-real and half-cut,

Enjoy that good night out without the wife

Pursue an after-hours afterlife

And want for nothing save a head to butt

Or Bedlam Jennies for our Puck’s Hat Punch.”

Aghast at what seems Happy Hour in hell

Den flails, embedded, glancing up to spy

The Guinness toucan smirking from tin plate,

Its touted goodness decades out of date,

Then with a wide and panicked wooden eye

Surveys the chiaroscuro clientele

Of smouldering reprobates who swirl and curse

About him as he struggles there beneath

Their knees. One, waistcoat-draped with bowler hat

Wipes from his chin the remnants of a rat