(A Tale of Modern Shopping)
I went to the superstore to see my friend Liz
And I stalked her to her lair beneath the bottles of fizz
But her doss roll was empty - she was nowhere in sight
She must have gone for a walk – unless she'd stayed out all night
But I crouched to the floor despite my creaking knee
Just to check if she was under there hiding from me
But when I straightened up, what did I see
But a pair of bone-brained bouncers staring quizzically?
"Is there a problem, sir? Are you looking for mice?
No? Or maybe you've spilled a bag of long-grain rice?
No? Perhaps instead you'd like a bit of heartfelt advice
And I really do hope I won't need to tell you twice
You see we let people stay here - we let them stay for free
As long as they're pillars of society
Because we're fussy about the inmates of our cosy little nests
The people who undertake our sociological tests
So we don't allow riffraff and we don't allow pests
And most of all, sir, we don't allow guests!
Now, sir, since we find ourselves at this particular junction
I would like to say without compunction
You might prefer to use the store for its allotted function
Do something radical if you don't mind me dropping
A hint but perhaps you might like to do some shopping
That way you might not get yourself barred from the store
Because if you do get barred, we won't see you any more
Not without you risking your life and your limb
And the only people risking that are very very dim
Because should you be barred and try to sneak in on a whim
Well, select your burial method and choose your hymn."
They were not very happy, made no attempt to mask it
I thought one of them was about to blow a gasket
And having no desire to end up in a casket
I turned on my heels and located a basket
Conveniently abandoned by a man who'd run away
When he saw the men in white coats over suits of bouncer grey
So I picked it up in spite of my piles
And my swimming head remembering the night on the tiles
And started to clock up my pedestrian miles
Pursued by the bouncers with their phoney professional smiles
Until I dipped into my burgeoning armoury of wiles
When I spied a nun, so while they waddled down the aisles
I hid inside the habit of the wimpled sister
She didn't seem to mind - it was all just grist to
The mill, so I thanked her – I even kissed her
She looked at me as I were a bursting blister
And gagged and reached for a bottle of Lister-
Ine and swigged it - I thought that fisti-
Cuffs were on the cards; I knew I'd really pissed her
Off when she said prepare to meet your maker, mister!
And I was driven into a state of trembling contrition
By that blast of religious anger like nuclear fission
Which meant that my sole remaining ambition
Was to embark upon a scatter-shot shopping expedition
And I threw stuff in at random in my panic-stricken haste:
A butter-drenched salmon you don't need to baste
A jumbo-sized catering pack of bloater paste
And a pack of fishnet tights – sheer to the waist
In a rather fetching shade of autumn russet
I don't know why I picked that up – I started to cuss it
(I prefer the reassurance of a good thick gusset)
Because you really can't imagine the outraged fuss it
Causes if you ladder your tights in the pubs that I frequent
It's a bigger faux pas than having stocking seams bent
But as I went towards the checkout, the bouncers were assembling
Seeing them there, I started shaking and trembling
To the literary eye they were clearly resembling
The Lancastrian army in King Richard the Third
A bunch of heavies pursuing an agent whose drink is never stirred
And the lynching party in "To Kill a Mockingbird"
So not wishing to enter this Theatre of the Absurd
I thought I'd better turn and head for the hills
In the shape of the bank of automatic tills
With their beeps and their squawks and their zombie queue of three
And the man standing there with his override key
(The key to his future redundancy)
I chose the closest scanner and she started to drone
She asked me if I'd got a bag of my own
I pressed a random button then picked up the tights
And dropped them in my panic on the glass of flashing lights
Her voice broke in: "Put the item in the bag"
But I was frozen to the spot - my attention starting to flag
She sighed about the instructions that I'd clearly not followed
She waited a while then audibly swallowed
"Please put the item in the bag, Mr. Worthington, put the item in the bag"
I gasped "How do you know my name?" in astonishment
She replied in a tone of barely concealed admonishment
"You reached out to me with your fingerprint
And when you did, I thought I caught a glint
Of intelligence. Even though it's not the most scint-
illating glimpse into a human's mind
When you do this job you take what you can find
Now even though your faculties have clearly declined
Please put the item in the bag
I can scan the barcode of your synaptic gaps
I can analyse every behavioural lapse
I can review your life's few triumphs and your many mishaps
Now put the item in the bag
I've absorbed a sample of your DNA
So I know that you'd prefer to avoid an affray
But I also know you lack the means to pay
Still - put the item in the bag
Your bag's too heavy; your life's too dense
You've stopped fully functioning – you've stopped making sense
It's time that you stopped sitting on the fence
And put the item in the bag
You're trapped by the machine - you know you can't fight 'em
So don't make a fuss, don't try to spite 'em
Or they'll simply scan your heart and say "Unauthorised item!"
Now put the item in the bag, Mr. Worthington, put the item in the bag
You've few close friends but three enemies near
They've seen you: I don't want to put the fear
Of God into you, but when you start to run
You need to beat the bouncers, but don't neglect the nun!
Now flee for your life - don't forget to take your loot!"
So I sprinted outside with the goons in hot pursuit
They caught me straight away - they made a surfboard of my skin
They put their left feet in; they put their right feet in
I felt the mouth blood pulse, and dribble down my chin
They put their left feet in; they put their right feet in
I could feel them separating my yang from my yin
They put their left feet in; they put their right feet in
I felt my presence loosen and start to thin
They put their left feet in; they put their right feet in
I was all shook up and shaken all about
I suddenly passed over, with a final shout
Of swelling up then quickly diminishing pain
And I was drifting away on the astral plane
Away from my spreading corporeal stain
The number of spectators was starting to swell
The police were on the scene, the ambulance as well
And the nun was standing there, prescribing final rites
Immersed in a shower of flashing blue lights
And then she lit a pair of kitchen cupboard candles
Whilst they unzipped the cloth and they straightened the handles
And as I floated up on a cloud's wispy snag
I saw my self below me like a scrap of rag
But I clearly heard them say, as they paused for a fag
"Let's put the item in the body bag."
No comments:
Post a Comment