This poem was written by Salman Hushdie and RobotDan when we were both very bored in boring jobs.
An Equal Beauty
My word that pig is bionic and sad
It’s weeping with gaggling tears
It’s gogglish eyes are watery balls
Brimming with nightmares and fears
Stapled back together with love and devotion
The pig does my duty as only a pig can do
Wondering around the office drones
Screaming and gargling
Flips and borks and squarks at dawn
Waiting on my telephone
Trotters lift toward the swine
A porcine moan to drown the drones
His weaponry, small tacks
They fire and sting the gorms
One shouts ‘whart is thaat?’
Another laughs with spittle in his throat
Brushing the perimeter they smell of Lynx
Their bawdy hair is gelled with mucus
They beat the drums of meat at 3
At 4 they bang on nature’s door
Avast! Young pig, snarl and growl!
One’s personal hygiene is at stake!
I stick the letters to my forehead to keep the eyes off my naked body
I sniffle and grunt and urea rolls down my leg
This entire space is like a grave
I’m chewing the soil for Wednesday’s joy
I staple a tie to my neck and dream of Mexico
My mouth fills with tequila from the inside
October sprawls and calls my name
Pork and offal stick in my teeth
I’ll snout the months and squeal and think
I am a man
I am a pig
What a joy to read! I am trying to stifle my giggles of entertainment from the ears of numerous dumpy editors. I find the line “the pig does my duty as only a pig can do” deeply fascinating. What is a pig’s duty? And “They beat the drums of meat at 3.” This really hits the spot. I can’t say exactly what spot, but it hits it all the same.
What is it about pigs that’s so ceaselessly pleasing? Pigs and meat and mud and blood. Perhaps it’s our Anglo Saxon roots calling out to us. This poem isn’t so far away from Beowulf, you know. It’s got clout.
I’ve just been reading an article about Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. He couldn’t write a poem like this in a million years.
I wouldn’t want to.
That’s some motherfuckingly great usage of animal imagery.
The more I read it the more I am disturbed… the rhyming strut of the first verse gone before a structure can be contemplated… “Wondering around the office drones” attacks my sense of questioning typo while simultaneously lifting from the dregs of repressed memory days of office employ… mouth filling with alcohol from the inside excites and terrifies, where is it coming from? … the self confessed pig man admits that pork itself and offal itself are stuck in this pig man’s teeth… i don’t want to read it any more… is this the lynx effect?
Perhaps it’s the Pygx effect.
Glad you like it, Gary Ablett. It looks as if you’ve understood it well. As a co-author, I’d like to point out that to the best of my knowledge the ‘wondering’ is not a typo, and that the alcohol is coming from the throat.
I’m glad you cleared that up.
The alcohol always seems to do that… come from the throat… and office hours are often spent wondering while wandering in office hours is (sadly) often limited to the well trodden path between one’s computer and the coffee supplies.
It’s no way to live… but I won’t for a second pretend that I don’t understand it. Not for a second. I’ve pigged with the best of them and it is true that Ends often justify Means… don’t they? I love suckling on pig… don’t you Hushdie? Don’t you Robbie D?
Don’t we all?
Even Sociable does in his own vegetarian suckling way.
I do it only in the vegetarian way. I wouldn’t even suckle a fish. Burger is murder!
In the office you can dream and dream but you will never smile.