Upstart Poems

On Reading A Treatise of Civil Power

Actually you don’t have a shitting clue,
Old timer. Geoffrey, heckling busybody,
What do you know about the Internet?

Or Macro Economics? Or pop music?
Reality has moved fast, and you haven’t.
Come off it! What did you expect? Who cares

About the semi-masticated wordplays
Of a pensioner in a University bubble?
Civil power is about money. MONEY.

Who were you kidding? Everyone else KNOWS,
Fucksake, except your suck-up coterie
Of scholars. Get a job, Geoffrey! Jog on – –

FABER & FABER

Our FABER, who art in London, hallowed
Be thy trademark. Thy profits come, thy contracts
Be honoured, in New York as well as Moscow.

Give us this day our daily press release,
Forgive us our novels, as we forgive
Those who novel against us. Lead us not

Into Crime, but deliver us from Romance.
For thine is the distribution, the adverts,
And all royalties. Forever and ever. Amen.

by Paul Abbott