Soliloquy in Voice of Ageing Rock Journalist
There I was on the meditation mat
Jackson Browne gave me to mark
the year of the rat, naked apart
from what’s left of my tremendous
hair, incantating the word
“progressive” to my holy self
and the tiny birds at
the window, who are always
my best first audience,
when the truth came to me:
no other combination of parties
can deliver the certain
(and required) surge
in whole family suicide
among those made live in the kind of hotels
not frequented by Keith Richards,
that will occur
if this government is returned,
as it must be.
I’m most famous
for having once, allegedly,
shared a hot tub, and my thoughts
on the heroic death
of Salvador Allende,
with Ireland’s baldest
living intellectual.
I’m what happens when you take
not quite enough cocaine.
During a session at Lille’s Bordello,
I once pulled Bono’s finger;
or what I thought was
Bono’s finger.
I offer these words as evidence
that I’m not actually dead yet. Satan
be good to me and what remains
of my hair.
KEVIN HIGGINS