"POEMS"

by Stephen Pain


Lolita Hippolytus

Lolita

Lolling about on the grass the students brush up on their Nabokov as a means to an end they want of course to pass so they get out their annotated Lolitas and together get inebriated on the allusions and puns making their way to the exam hall, they come across Edgar Allan Poe and his poem "Annabel Lee", while up in a tree, with a smile of a Cheshire Cat, dear old Vladimir, and look there's an anthology of American poetry in a cadillac, and up in the sky, [this mnemonic is rather tiresome], a parody of what, and the student, sweet fifteen, suddenly forgot, was it morality? Torna a Indice (Back to Index)

Hippolytus

"Fay's behind the bar while Goody-two-shoes is shooting pool -- it didn't seem far back when Hippolytus was in school now he has grown up into a handsome hunk. Aphrodite is singing a soul number, while in the corner, Artemis a Country and Western preacher, tells him to save his virginity for a rain day -- and it is a matter of course that the Goddess Aphrodite should lose her temper, call it divine jealousy. Fay's husband, Theseus, is rather too conveniently away on business -- so out of sight, out of mind, Fay's got it bad, got it hot, she wants to go all the way and her confidante an old barmaid says well what's wrong, it's not as if it is incest, besides in the nineteen nineties, who cares? People wouldn't blink an eyelid if you jumped your step-kid. So, she argues in a drunken slur, why not tell him? Fay might be all hot and bothered, but she has her pride and her dignity it wouldn't do for the barmaid to spread it around that Fay is after Hippolytus's virginity. But she did, and from then on life was a blur. Goody-two-shoes was astonished, and was on the way to confront his step-mum was it true that she wanted to fuck her handsome hunk of a son? Before he could get there, she had hung herself from the pub's chandelier, Theseus came back just in time to see her on the sofa, a note in the hand, an incriminating piece of evidence, of course he wasn't to know that his son had promised not to tell, he cursed him, swore at him, kicked him to hell, and Goody-two-shoes took off on his motor-bike but didn't get far because he was under the influence of alcohol Poseidon beer, Theseus arrived in the nick of time at the hospital and found Artemis alongside his dying son she told him that there had been no affair he had jumped to the wrong conclusion and Aphrodite had known all along what had happened an allusion to the tragedy had been in her song. Torna a Indice (Back to Index)