Space Opera

My God, man, exclaimed the general.
If what you're saying is true, then somewhere,
right under our noses, some guy is taking a leak,
idly musing on the half a cigar in the toilet bowl

completely unaware he's a killing machine.
Let me see if I understand correctly,
said the president. Hidden here, on Earth,
there is the princess of another star system.

Her memory has been robbed
to protect her from a rival family's agents.
Not a social but a cosmic menace
closing in; an intergalactic War of the Roses.

And when those crack agents, perhaps disguised
as SAS battallion in mud thick clay, break
the double-glazing, storm
her semi, strike
aside her fawning suitors with all the ease
of enhanced supersoldiers, and gag
her, cackling like Punch....

it will all come back to the guy in the john
in a mad migraine rush, finished the general
He'll remember he was put here to guard her.
He'll realise he knows kendo, ninjitsu,
every damn do, su and fu there is to know.

And the birds, said the scientist, all the birds
of planet Earth
are his weapons.

I suppose, then, that he'll save the princess
and flee with her, on perilous adventures,
where ships would explode in the nightsky
like cheap fireworks?

A deathly hush filled the war room.
Everyone of them secretly hoping
he was that man.