Friday 30 August 2019

Late August in Sommières


Late August in Sommières,
the air outside like a lazy oven,
and I’m torn between, on the one hand, doing nothing,
and, on the other, doing absolutely sod all.

It’s a real dilemma (isn’t it?)
when you find yourself impossibly torn
between two momentous decisions.

I wonder what the Butterfly of Chaos
would have to say about it all.

‘Well, Ferg, if, on the one hand, you do nothing,
two fires in the Amazonian Rainforest
will rage for slightly less time,

preserving an as yet undiscovered plant
which would otherwise become extinct,
and within which hides the cure for, among other things,

insurance scams, kleptomania, and road rage –
yeah, man, that plant’s a real doozy;

on the other hand, if you do absolutely sod all,’
he continues, ‘GDP in Somalia
is going to grow an extra 0.7 percent in the next quarter.

Of course, you could continue to write this poem,
if you can call it a poem,
but that would totally mess with the street value of cocaine
in North Humberside.’

All of this surprises me; I had assumed that
Butterfly’s arcane knowledge was restricted to
matters meteorological.

‘Life’s full of surprises,’ he says,
as if he had been reading my thoughts.

‘There’s no as if about it,’ says Butterfly.
‘I was totally reading your thoughts.’
And, with a flap of his wings,
he vanishes.

Alone with my thoughts again,
I wonder how the cokeheads of North Humberside
are going to take the news.

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