I Try Out Different Ideologies

At breakfast, I become a communist.

It starts off well enough. The revolution

is bloodless, swift, decisive, strong. I storm

the fridge and liberate its captive contents.

I redistribute them about the house:

the orange juice and almond milk are poured

into the bath; the royal gala apples

are placed on window sills and mantelpiece;

I put the mango chutney on a stair;

and smear tahini on the bedroom ceiling.

The vegan sausages are strung up on

a coat hook pour encourager les autres.

By half-past nine, the paranoia starts.

Utopia has not arrived. I look around

the house: if anything, I must concede,

things have got worse. Someone must be to blame.

I ‘uncover’ a plot: the vegetables

have been conspiring with some foreign agents,

and, after spending time inside a meat-

grinder, confess to their nefarious deeds

during a show-trial in my living-room.

Impatience grips me as I realise that

the Workers’ Paradise is further out

of reach than ever. So, I try my hand

at fascist ideology. Step 1:

I make a bonfire of my books. Step 2:

I make my train set run on time. Step 3:

I gather all my troops (just me), invade

the spare bedroom, annex the airing cupboard,

and daub the walls with poetphobic statements

declaring my superiority

over ‘the lesser poets’ (any poet

who isn’t me). This all feels great until

the fire alarm goes off because of all

the burning books (perhaps I shouldn’t have used

the garage as my ‘place of intellectual

purification’?). Fortunate for me,

I have a fire extinguisher to hand,

and when the fire brigade arrives, I tell

them that the clouds of smoke the neighbours saw

came from a really massive piece of toast.

Left to my own devices once again,

I undergo religious revelation.

The flames were clearly Flames from Hell, a sign

from God that I must put my house in order;

recant the day’s godless ideologies;

repudiate the false hope of their claims;

and thus, embrace the one true faith of

religious ideology. But whose?

The Catholics’? Muslims’? Jews’? Sikhs’? Buddhists’? Mormons’?

I save time by believing all of them

at once (this surely can’t be any more

confusing than the contradictions found

inside their holy books) and spend the final

hours of the day in silent contemplation,

a bit of meditation, and some prayer.

When I awake, I see my prayers have not

been answered. Chaos, chaos, everywhere

I look: the house is like a vandal’s playground;

the garage needs a dose of demolition;

and all the food has vanished from the fridge.

My ideological experiments

have failed. Tomorrow, I shall try philosophy.