One more lemon-grass tea

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Namaste to you too, soft-voiced nicey-niceys
with your facile Jesus glints.

When forced benevolent grins
part those slender anaemic lips,
I catch sight of your perfect jawlines
and I'm reassured
that Daddy took orthodontics
as seriously as prana.
Take another sip of that lemon-grass tea,
since it's good for the colon,
as well as the teeth
and it gives Samboor something better to do
than look in bemusement.

Where would you be without your
cruddy hair and saffron jim-jams,
thinly-veiled superiority complexes
and bogus laissez-faire attitudes,
your faux serenity and receptivity,
whose all-encompassing paradigm
somehow denies the expression
of any genuine human emotion
such as bare, untapped anger?

Yes, I think you've got brains,
but you prefer to spurn them
in favour of the more pressing concern of
sitting limply in perverse pregnant silences punctuated only by
papers rustling, lighters lighting,
fitful coughing, truncated farts
and pseudo-meaningful twirlings
of the lapis lazuli
that you bought off a Dutch bloke
in Kathmandu.

Don't tell me. Oh you just did.
Your mother was born in Goa
to Colombian-Austrian parents
who then upped sticks to the Masai
where she met your diplomat father,
and you spent your formative years
convening with hyenas
like a good little Doolittle.

She was once convivial and free,
but your seven half siblings
aren't a patch on you;
you've always been
the apple of your father's eye,
and in any case
they only speak an average of five languages
which is four fewer than you,
not counting Hyenish and Retarded-Hippy-Speak.

Before I leave,
the fact that Dad's also a retired scientist
doesn't confer free reign
to speculate spuriously on the link
between overchlorinated water and hair loss,
nor do you endear when you suggest
that receding hairlines demonstrate good memory.

I don't like it when strangers draw attention to my baldness,
thank you very much.

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Comments

lenchenelf | July 25, 2012 - 12:00

Ha, enjoyed reading.

all the best
lena x

Sooz006 | July 26, 2012 - 14:42

which is four fewer than you, not counting Hyenish...lovely.

Rich, wordy and cleverly delicious.

insertponceyfre... | August 20, 2012 - 14:08

I enjoyed this too!

Parson Thru | September 30, 2012 - 07:45

Love it hate it love it! Been there, seen that. A little cruel but carried off with undeniable aplomb. Actually loved it. Brilliant Harvey. Well deserving of attention. Unlike your hair line.