Wearing a quiff - quite by chance, hairspray <br />and wet hair combined Forming a cowlick at <br />the sides - with allergy-red cheeks I look like <br />a third-rate performer in a sleazy vaudeville <br />company - resembling a clown when I smile <br />with a face puffy from eating chocolate and <br />eating slabs with divine caramel fillings, so <br />good it makes me fly - though I crash down <br />with a loud noise & my colleagues lose their <br />hard-worn poise and rush to see my demise <br />as I sit in misery - not actually, of course - <br /> <br />It is a scene in my Civil Service Opera which <br />has already deteriorated to a vaudeville also <br />my scenes are macabre, phantasmagorical: <br />civil servants in masks chasing each other <br />citing statutes with lugubrious faces, getting <br />ready to slaughter each other with axes, then <br />turning en masse running outside to terrorise <br />ordinary citizens, demand extortionate fees <br />for the privilege to breathe, a street of people <br />running and screaming, save us from these <br />Civil Servants foaming at the mouth while <br /> <br />Blubbering about Regulations, Decrees and <br />Laws, demanding that we greet each other <br />in Fanagalo or Esperanto, ipso facto - any- <br />thing but your mother tongue, Arabic will be <br />fine and Chinese will do, Chinese too - as <br />long as nobody understands you - then the <br />demented Civil Servants fall down, the spell <br />that held them in thrall broken while the evil <br />Dr No bursts into devilish laughter - I don't <br />know what happened to this poem, let me <br />continue translating and return to it later, <br /> <br />Maybe the quiff's affecting my senses… <br /> <br />[14 October 2014]<br /><br />Margaret Alice Second<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/wearing-a-quiff-rev/
