AUTOCRACY

 

I liked tobacco far too much,

The coffin nail, the weak mans crutch,

I gave it up I’m pleased to say,

And chased those Passing Clouds away.

 

Cream cakes were once another vice,

A single one would not suffice,

I guzzled pastries by the score ,

But now would want for not one more.

 

I tried barbiturates in the day,

They chased the desperate thoughts away,

But even chemists have their bounds,

And social drugs are biting hounds.

 

I’ve sipped the brandy, crossed that line,

The fetid absinth, grand–cru wine,

But in the end our palates pall,

And best that we abjure it all.

 

A three mile jog would do me good ?

Perhaps it might, not sure it could,

I fear that should I not refrain,

I’d simply suffer endless pain.

 

And that my friend would never do,

I’ll leave that sort of thing to you,

This masochism of the soul,

Has little space to leave me whole.

 

When virtue sends me cold and blind,

I need some sinful sense of mind,

Some memories of sun-filled days,

That mea-culpa gloried haze.

 

The saints are good it’s in the word,

But some were known to sin I’ve heard,

Better then the coloured past,

That leads to sainthood at the last.

 

I’m with Augustus ‘Hippo’s man,

Perhaps that knowledge is the plan,

Perhaps that pull I can’t resist,

I seek within a hidden mist.

 

Gods Glory, ‘Nothing’ who can say,

Are faith and love life’s comic play,

What waits? My whole life questions that,

Praise God the final Autocrat.