Occasional Impressions

Gemini 3

Role models

‘If I can’t do that, I’ll do nothing.
If I can’t be that, I’ll be nothing.
If I can’t succeed immediately,
I'll fail in my own good time.’

Led up the garden path by writers
inventing worlds the world can’t live up to,
under the guise of truth;
by a discrimination too fine,
an understanding too tender,
a way of speaking that elides
the hums and burrs of the diaphragm,
and the tuneless, thrummed vocal cords.

Taken away by perfect performers,
restructured fro m brilliance,
notional bodies, a willingness to undress.
By mind games, second guessing
and varnished, illustrated covers -
two parts Brideshead, three parts death:
against scarred, chapped paint-sprayed walls
the beautiful losers strike defiant poses
with glazed eyes and private visions
made public for bucks.

And by fat cats twisting figures
round pudgy, ringed, little fingers.
In soft offices, round conference tables,
in white shirts, on grey screens.
Ugly men, with sex in their wallets,
and crisp women with sharp cheekbones:
barrow boys and Czech refugees,
Harvard graduates and former miladies,
talking a burnished common jargon,
queueing up for their seats in the Lords.

‘If I can’t do that, I’ll do nothing.
If I can’t be that, I'll be nothing.
If I can’t succeed immediately,
I’ll fail in my own good time.’
ijf

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