Under The Sphinx

The Sphinx

Act I: The Remains of the Dead (Before the Rock Drill)

Pottery Urn
Zatopec, Mexico 650
Inscribed bone (your bones?)
Fine, smooth black figurine (before the Rock Drill), Oaxaca
Mixed it with Tequila (Monte Alban) and:
Hey Presto!

Geometry of fine Aztec home cooking
Cue Picasso, the Philistine, asking his wife:
'Go out and get me a jug of ale'
Noseless Roman child (rich kid)
Said, having just been ripped off:
'Take me to the Parthenon'

Then the cabbie, who was also running for Mayor
Stepped up to the dais and said:
'The aqueduct will last longer'
Baked Mesopotamian clay, or shit
Solid but reeking essence of Burroughs
In Ur there is no such thing as the everyday, only War

Nicolas gaze de Joursauvaux
Knight of Philip
His clone, Christ-like, was martyred
Life of Christ - mutilation, fever
Blood, intestines, flaps of skins
Like failed Regulus returning to Carthage

Act II: Church Farm Yardley (Birmingham)

To Neo-fascist town hall
Like the 'respectably poor' going to Brighton back in '59
(beastly!)
From mosaic to chunk of Kendal mint cake

I missed 'Rupert in Birmingham (The Revenge!)'
So, emboldened, I stood on the balcony to the adulation of the
throng
And declared (proudly):
'I have wiped out the peace-loving people of Abyssinia.
Italy now has her empire'

But despite the Lawrence-like invocations
I still 'take tea' in the Yellow dining room
With the musical greaseball
Even though the Adult Seating Area was undemocratic

Act III: The Sphinx (After the Rock Drill)

Tales after the Rock-drill of elegant clothes-peg heads
(But not from the brown stuff)
General Oufkir c'est hero, set centrally (dead centre, geometric, in
rural Chad)
Dust, and bronze, and stone
Larger than Vicky Square, than the Sphinx, than that Tyneside
thing
Modernity meets the 'oriental' despot (or summat Eddie Said
-Said)
Jeddah Bank, and back again, then taxi rank to Saddam Archway (My
Numidian brother)
I said 'Christ!' Eight quid!?
Then got talking, and I remarked that Maya Angelou was wrong
The million came to cheer, not apologise