Death Dance

 Literary agents wriggle hardened buttocks in conga lines

Each grabbing the burning other to urge their delicious love

The friendly rivalry crawling over unbelievable publications

And they whoop their commissions stacked behind;

Dance to the death of no relief

To the death of scheming sweat

Dance to the death of death itself.

Sceptical authors stare intently at their relic intractables

Literary lives fall prey to tales of rain-soaked fantasies

Only voracious readers can swallow best-seller horizons

And share salt and pepper with successful publishers;

Dance to the death of interruptions

To the death of the middle man

Dance to the death of death itself.

False alarms roll across electrified front-page headlines

Eye muscles contract before the horrors bursting forth

Copy editors make it up and distribute terribly bad news

And journalists leave their offices for the cemetery;

Dance to the death of suicide

To the death of preaching creed

Dance to the death of death itself.

Unpublished manuscripts writ full of weird urban stories

Random seagull droppings form the full stop in the sentence

Fiction and memories adorn walls of broken-down houses

And shrills for the politically incorrect to not fade away;

Dance to the death of grey suit love

To the death of big brother’s wag

Dance to the death of death itself.

In the name of madness cult biographers fry lives alive

Their recycled ghosts confiscate ghost written words

Interviews lain waste by cute examples of interaction

And the bones of the rich and famous remain exposed;

Dance to the death of the no-no cycle

To the death of new age discos

Dance to the death of death itself.