Bugger Bognor

When it finally gets me
I dream of boarding with a swagger,
Death and I trading easy banter;
‘How ya doing, ya fat bastard?’ I quip
and deal the reaper a matey jab to the ribs,
‘Eh? Eh?’
Death grins, tips
back his driver’s cap, liquorice
roll-up unsmoked between knuckle bones.
I pat my pelvis for a lighter.
‘Good day, is it? I bet the traffic’s murder.
Eh? Eh?’
Death turns his famous gaze upon me,
hollow sockets like clifftop eyries.
He looks a bit serious
so I keep the tone ironic.
‘Typical, eh? You wait for ages
then when one comes it spreads your entrails across the street.’
I glance down at my xylophonic frame
and grip a ribcage stripped of meat.
‘What d’you know? I really am big boned!
This is great! Wait till I tell the missus!’
But it’s sinking in
that there’ll be no later;
my guts wedged stinking
in the bus’s mangled radiator.

This is how the world ends.
This is how the world ends.

Not
rising oceans
thermonuclear bunfights
fanatical suicide presidents
nor turkeys with colds

but buses –
BING BING!

Buses in Birchington, Kidlington, Kirtlington
South Zeal and Kidderminster, Iffley and Yapton;
buses in Blewbury, Playhatch and Ducklington
Baconsthorpe, Nettlebed, Todpool and Slapton
Buses for brain tumours, chicken bone windpipe chokes,
parachute failures, blunders with knives;
buses for seizures whilst pruning azaleas,
botched ops and fracas with truculent wives.
Buses for heart attacks, blow pipe and dart attacks,
stingray and shark attacks, bowel-bursting fart attacks,
six and a bit billion big blood-red buses
for six a bit billion one day dead us-es.

So what’s our answer?

Bugger Bognor!
Who gives a shit about growing older?
Picnic gaily in the shadow of a falling boulder!
Kerb-stomp your silly ways of self-doubt and sorrow.
Cheer up! You might get hit by a bus tomorrow!

Bugger Bognor!
Pound Paradise in its Pearly Gates!
That white light’s nothing but bus headlamps getting near.
Everything passes, so kiss goodbye to fear and
Cram glam-jammed afterlives up preachers’ arses!
Cheer and charge your glasses!

Bugger Bognor!
Say what you feel!
Don’t be so fucking British!
Here’s an easy one:
if ‘fessing gets you skittish
just picture a Steinway swinging dark and Damoclesian
above your head. One day your guts ‘ll spill for real!
Standing there with your jaw frozen
you may as well be dead,
your music still inside you, decomposing.
A moment’s song enough for us,
join the chorus:

Bugger Bognor!
Bugger next week, next month! Fuck five year plans,
long games, big schemes, all those grand
romantic dreams like slow, smug wanks!
Say no thanks fuck-chops and dash whooping
from your banks, your grim partitioned offices,
tell your bosses to stick their retail whoredom
up their cobweb-festooned orifices
then backflip off the Golden Treadmill shedding boredom
like a skin that got too tight.
Ball your fists and punch the night sky.
You can do this kiddo –
just picture a bus and cry:

Bugger Bognor!
What?
Bugger Bognor!
But sire!
Bugger Bognor!

Cos it’s far better to die as a George the Fifth
Than to live as a Richard the Third