And we; having melody
Meaning; being of sound mind and body,
Are hereby ready to present this thesis
To the faculty of reality.

Having nobody but ourselves to blame.
Having completely depleted our sense of shame.
Having dared waste a century,
Writing eulogies for ecstasy,
Having come to die eventually,
If not quite naturally,
Upon the screen.

Having walked the Champs-�lysées,
Through the archway
To the guillotine.

Having dreamed of ether and strychnine,
Having seen anger as amphetamine,
Having taken kerosene to the capitol,
Having poured petrol on the ledger,
For no crime in particular,
Greater than keeping scripture,
In roman numerals.
Having turned up manky drunk at funerals.
Having smoked skunk at pagan rituals,
Paragon of animals,
Having reinvented death as bold adventure,
Having declined Disney sentimentality,
Or distorted reality,
Or whiskey,
Having executed the entire operation,
With just a leather strap to chew on.

Having felt rather pleased with ourselves.

Having left the guidebooks on the shelves,
Having read between the white lines of medical textbooks,
Having heaped scorn on the operating table,
Having never once read the label,
Having second thoughts, and then,
Having thought again, for luck.

Having made the effort to not give a fuck.

Having played Houdini, escapology,
Having found the key to the locks and chains,
Of most conditional love.
Meaning grotesque romantic vanity.

Having kept the ashes of poetry in gaudy urns,
Having posed as poets for our tax returns.
Having no uncertain terms for the working man,
Save a paean to method and a five year plan,
Having found solace in madness and doing what we can.
Having stripped our opinions from elegant books.
Having no inclinations to part with our looks.
Having wired the world from tenterhooks.
Having felt it turn full tilt.
Having dwelt in the house that Jack built,
Having ourselves built Rome
In a single stoned afternoon,
On the highest slopes of Vesuvius.

Our dubious infant empire.

Academia burned; we played the lyre.
Bohemia burned; our coats caught fire.
Sativa burned; we never went out.

If we did go out we got born again,
Baptised in Pentecostal rain,
Speechless and stuttering,
Suffering syndromes, cyclones and dial tones'¦
Answering our souls phones to withered popes,
Who fired brimstone from their old folks homes,
Beneath their verdigris copper domes,
Amid heavy tomes on bones
Of spastic-redemptive contention.

Having perfected the art-form of anal retention.

Having wept on the platform at Howth junction station.
Having grown apart from the junk generation,
And closer to art through punk degradation.

And grim determination.

Having rejected our vocation.
Having occasion to drink wine.
Having wasted our time sat slack-jawed at some torrid day job,
forty hours weekly spent scrubbing literal, or metaphorical,
Bullshit off the floor in the sick fluorescence
Of anti-depressant lift lobbies.
Having no prospects and having no hobbies.
Having difficulties upholding eloquence
When dragged in deference
Before the baleful searchlight of the untainted now.
Having feigned innocence, deference and impotence.
Having borrowed a belief system from the flotsam and jetsam of moral relativism.
Having blown bilious smoke in the faces of nascent fascists,
Tobacco prohibitionists and vote riggers,
At the insistence of deified rock singers.
Having walked the path of least resistance.
Having gone two times through the wringers.
Having installed spittoons in our bedrooms and bathrooms as the ashtrays overflowed,
Consumed by consumption, dementia and spasms of ecstasy.
Delighting in the irony.
Not very healthy.

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