Salesman

A toy is a ‘machine for playing’:

The ideal toy would consist of a white box

With a red button labelled ‘FUN’.

‘What happens when you press the button?’ asks a little girl.

‘Fun,’ replies the salesman.

The little girl buys the toy.

When she presses the button, nothing happens.

The button now reads: ‘TO END FUN, PRESS BUTTON AGAIN’

She presses the button again.

The button now reads ‘FUN’

‘This isn’t much fun,’ she says. ‘I want my money back.’

Having proved a commercial failure,

The Modernist toy is sold to a Swedish billionaire.

It remains in his private collection to this day.

*

The judges sit modestly under a willow tree.

There is a water feature in the shape of an angry rabbit.

There is a bowl of lemonade.

One of the judges turns a cartwheel.

Another pulls a handstand.

He holds it for five agonising seconds.

The other judges laugh and applaud.

Passersby say, ‘They may be judges,

But they’re just like everyone else, really.

Except for when they’re in court.

Then they’re judges.’

The salesman releases a case of mosquitoes

Before selling them the repellent.

*

The dirigible weighs anchor overhead.

The anchor lands in the middle of a cake,

Scattering picnic guests and judges.

A thousand feet in the air, the captain is anxious:

If the dirigible crashes, the board of directors

Will make more from selling the film-rights

Than they would from seven years of successful dirigible flights.

1 in 3 human endeavours end in disaster:

Smoking under the shadow of the water-feature,

The salesman is drawing up a life-insurance policy.

*

The birdhouse is too small and there isn’t enough

Birdseed and there aren’t enough breadcrumbs.

Important people ignore the salesman

The way a seagull ignores pigeons,

Oblivious even to the respect she inspires in them;

How they hop off the plinth when she lands.

The salesman must formulate new plans;

He must write a beautiful novel

About the plight of the salesman in the 21^st century

*

By mid-afternoon the salesman is manning a stall

Under the banner:

YOUR THOUGHTS PUBLISHED INSTANTLY

Patrons may give the salesman up to 4,000 words;

For £25, the salesman types the words into a computer

And they are published on a billboard in the centre of the park.

Most thoughts relate to censorship and freedom of speech.

Repetition

Tomorrow is a process. Our neighbours are cruel

And I keep cutting myself on the new knives –

What am I to make of all the repetition?

A virtue? I know everything already;

If the barrier is made of ice, you wait for it to melt –

But what am I to make of all the repetition?

Music? I have carpeted the inside of the piano;

The dog won’t bite you if you bite it first –

But what am I to make of all the repetition?

A system? I lack the education to understand

The insults being levelled at me. My nose fell off –

And what am I to make of all the repetition?

A matchstick longboat? Under the circumstances

I cannot see the point of a matchstick longboat.

What am I to make of all the repetition?

Humility? A divining-rod? Uncreated light?

I do not understand my own laughter.

Tell me what I am to make of all the repetition.

Wilful obscurantism? An obsolete pigment?

Far too much depends on this board-game –

An agreeable ritual made of repetition.

Lunch is ready. My loved-ones are plotting against me,

Locks appear everywhere. Why am I so angry?

What am I to make of all the repetition?