He said to her: I’ve ruled not one, but two whole empires – count  ‘em –
yet the feeling that it’s not enough hangs round here like some phantom.
I rationalise, I hold aloft the naked truth like a lantern
but the ghost’s got pangs like Phineas and its played by Harry Dean Stanton.

The crux is: though life (sigh)’s a pig, a flagship stuck in drydock,
the world’s a stage of tears, blah blah, I’m not too keen to die, doc!
Since what’s the use of fighting off contenders for the prize
if the victor has to give it all up when he dies?

At Liverpool Street Station I stood trembling in my rayons
under the departures board like I was at a séance.
The times and destinations riffled like a tarot deck
or wheel of fortune – clackety-clack – and me a nervous wreck.

I s’pose I was expecting something almost this unpleasant:
instead of Norwich, Cambridge, Braintree, Colchester or Cheshunt,
up came death and death-on-death, deathdeathborough, deathchester!
I swore and kicked my briefcase, and was not the lone protester.

To my left and right the ranks of travellers stood steeled
against the scam, as furious as flash-fires in a field.
They could not have felt more cheated if the claret in their chalice
had a hidden kick of hemlock or was laced with digitalis.

And just as, when disaster strikes, men hurry to apportion
blame, when facing death they try to get off with a caution,
or still more cunningly, attempt to cheat or broke a deal.
I realised then, and tell you now, it’s this that stokes their zeal.

Heads in freezers! Heads in freezers! All the world is rife
with plots to outlive such diseases as old age and life,
and each desire to conquer is as
mad as great-great-granddad Caesar’s
was – it frightens the bejeezus out of me, by Jove!
Bring me scissors, anaesthetic,
fetch me sum’n who’s good with a knife.
No half measures! This pathetic
longing’s got to be hacked, by Jove,
out, out, out of my own heart’s grove.

These weren’t my thoughts at first, you know. I saw it as defiance,
felt like a pint-sized hero in my own Land of the Giants,
like a racist squaring off against the foreign tide,
like anyone who’s got their heart set on tyrannicide

Caligula, old boy, I said, you’re deadlier than Bethnal
Green’s own gangster twins, old chap, you’re going to ring death’s death knell
(And don’t we all go charging, whether stupid or in love,
to stall that last-ditch cowering, the hands-up ‘not-me-guv’?)

But I quickly got fed up with every other desperado
who seemed to have the same idea and equalled my bravado,
which constitutes most anyone whichever way you lunge
O quantum est hominum beatiorum!  Plus ça change

In fact, your lonely Emperor was nothing but a Johnny-
come-lately, would you credit it, to this mulligatawny
of daring escapology – their plans had been in motion
since the late Cretaceous, plans to put the old kibosh on

Thanatos, like Sisyphus, that tricky little swine, did.
Boulderbrain, a roll model? I doubt he would’ve minded!
But uh, the kind of projects all these Sisyfans are bent
on seeing through, they’re all demented, 100%.

In fact, I made a list and brought my spiral notebook, sister –
how’s about you read it through while I take a siesta?
No? You want it from my lips? “What else does she want from his
lips?” the patient wonders. No more letching, doc, I promise!

But
Heads in freezers! Heads in freezers! All the world is rife
with plots to outlive such diseases as old age and life,
and each desire to conquer is as
mad as great-great-granddad Caesar’s
was – it frightens the bejeezus out of me, by Jove!
Bring me scissors, anaesthetic,
fetch me sum’n who’s good with a knife.
No half measures! This pathetic
longing’s got to be hacked, by Jove,
out, out, out of my own heart’s grove.

The list? The list! It starts with the least crazed, the most concrete
– and  don’t think it’s exhaustive or by any means complete –
but 1) the rut of barons, rich as I, who use their hoarded
wealth to startle scientists – “You’ll be well rewarded

if you pledge your brains to this high cause – I’m shitting bricks –
work out how a man like me can dodge the river Styx!”
Think that’s the stuff of movies? Doc, I swear it ain’t.
There’s not a one of the super-rich who learned the word ‘restraint’.

2) The ones who, lacking wealth, an aptitude for science
or any means to change the cosmos, join in an alliance
to fool themselves (and hopefully the Universe as well)
into thinking we’re all marched from this life – schnell, schnell! –

to another where we languor in a stagnant state,
punished or rewarded by The Jumped-Up Magistrate.
3) (And now we’re getting to the bona-fide head cases)
Those who feel it counts if just a part of them, a trace’s

still intact beyond the expiration date – a spark,
a smudge of DNA inside a vial inside an ark.
For  them, y’see, departing’s not the real affront. What’s rotten
is in a trice you’ve never lived at all – you’ve been forgotten!

“This shouldn’t be!” the victims wail. And yea, their plans unfold,
plans to etch their names into the schooldesk of the world.
For some a child’s enough; for others, five or six. For some
it’s critical the kids go through a strict curriculum.

(I know it’s round about the time for my next outburst-chorus.
Believe me, doc, the urge is on me like a psychosaurus.
But number three’s important, so perk up, prick up those elfin
ears, Frau Caligorgeous – it’s the one I put myself in.)

As I say, for some stage two’s to drill the kids for years
to be like them, uphold the name, be more than DNA smears.
Others gun for infamy – the Khans and Bonapartes,
cabalists and most of those who go into the arts.

Armed with their peers’ approval and some self-important bollocks,
they loot the town for subject matter, furtive Eli Wallachs
but see themselves as more akin to fresh-faced Horst Bucholz:
innocent, courageous, pure of heart for all their faults.

Heads in freezers! Heads in freezers! All the world is rife
with plots to outlive such diseases as old age and life,
and each desire to conquer is as
mad as great-great-granddad Caesar’s
was – it frightens the bejeezus out of me, by Jove!
Bring me scissors, anaesthetic,
fetch me sum’n who’s good with a knife.
No half measures! This pathetic
longing’s got to be hacked, by Jove,
out, out, out of my own heart’s grove.

Pluck me from this fug, this trance, this palsy-esque mindfog.
What’ll cure what ails me, my sweet neo-mystagogue?
Genocide, vivicide, cosmocide, or deicide?
Matripatrisiblicide? I dunno, doc, you decide.

I should be gone completely when it’s time to blow this party. Oh,
to blazes with posterity and feeble dismembratio
of soul and carcass; ‘atomised’s the only proper status.
No legacy, no monument, no death-put-on-hiatus.

Great to get that off my chest. Now … I’ve got a few hundred on me –
How’s about the two of us abandon with this money
and put it on Black Death at the 3.30 down at Haydock
then stay up watching second-rate Disney movies – whaddya say, doc?