Soufflé, or the Ballad of the Crooked Man

Unlike the teary telepreacher, full of guilt who confessed

Before the world of watchers, believers and depressed,

Unlike the crowds of empty souls, eager for the attention

Of split parents, psychologists and the win-win men,

Unlike degenerate journalists, spiking copy with venom

By scheming to write gossip about the god up in heaven,

This crooked man, unafraid to die a half empty life

Moved to a great shopping mall to go it alone;

Eager to dispel his restlessness; his misplaced curiosity.

 

The experience of his times with this shopping crowd

Eventually produced an accuser from this mass trance,

Who mistook the man’s discontent for rank arrogance

And upon the rising of its middle finger enlarged,

It arched through the mall, and faced the crooked man

A blackened fingernail the face of an evil talk-back host

The perfect people's accuser; perfect in his contempt.

Back flipping in fright, down a supermarket aisle,

Caterwauling at the sight of designer product promos

The crooked man crashed into packets of Cocoa

Was drugged, finding himself beneath a balding tree

Which grew solitary out of a fluffy white cloud.

 

"Since the big bang", said the kindly, gnarled tree,

Whose solitary root extends back down to earth,

The crooked man's madness then turned into mirth.

The tree tells of the first animal that had thought,

Of Adam selfish, ignoring his creator's remorse

How the incest of Adam with Eve begot insanity

Which began a ruinous species, driving this tree insane.

"Be not self aware" the tree says," for you will invert

And be not prone to the wile of born again converts.

Your next human contact will make your soul crumble

And it is to hell your wanton idealism shall travel!"

"Will I be Cocoa when I return?" the crooked man asks,

"Begone ye to shoppers world; expect no other tasks."

 

The crooked man licked the tree's seeping blue sap

And upon awakening he was feeling quite compact

And to his joy he found himself a total Cocoa being,

A humble packet, surrounded by countless Cocoa's

He saw all were identical; he was no longer alone

He saw colourful conformity, and similar vulnerability

This Warhol painting vision; pure in its consistency.

 

"Will this picture be infinitely so?" he asks the adjacent packet

"Yes. This is the dead frequent shoppers' infinite supermarket",

Said the sweetest, gentlest voice he'd ever heard from a female

The other packets around them, she says, are beautiful but gay

She is cute, and the buttons are pressed for a traditional romance

They connect, manoeuvring like lovers in a lined square dance.