Silence Exile and Crumpets

4 Drinking Song of the Lands of Evening

Happy is good, oblivion is best
to soothe the arguments within my brain.
Drink, fall asleep, full wineglass on my chest.

Either hang out with rich boys I detest
who lust for me, whose worldview I disdain
Sodomy's good, oblivion is best

Or left-wing girls, who never get a jest,
whose feminism strikes me as insane
Drink, fall asleep, full wineglass on my chest

My mother killed herself; her note confessed
she'd miss me, not enough though to remain
Alive for good; oblivion is best.

The books I love were written in the West.
I fear for them; our power is on the wane.
Drink, fall asleep, full wineglass on my chest.

I changed my politics and that distressed
old friends who claim I sold my soul for gain.
Drink, fall asleep, full wineglass on my chest.
New friends are good, oblivion is best.

5. His Discourse on Love

There is a love of men men do not know
Who talk of love and taste upon their tongue
hot salty seed. I knew such love when young,
thought it an appetiser, that would go

with red wine, warm champagne. Such love must fade.
There is a love, seen through a whisky glass,
dim in a bar, that lips or puckered arse
cannot compare with. Love that was delayed.

We talk of writers, go home to our wives.
Argue in public, though with speaking looks
that reassure. Praise in each other's books
Such love is durable, drunk in, through lives

as hair thins and lines grow upon smooth skin.
Love that's respectable, no hint of sin.