Jerusalem

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