Parallel Heaven

[Audio available here on souncloud. Longtime members will remember the brief experiment with having recordings made by "aC-Tors" not long after this was written. I've recorded it myself. I've no idea what happened to the original recordings. TC might know.]

In a cocteau bar called Parallel Heaven,
in a proxy, boozers’ universe,
I sat with Plato unsteadily drinking,
discussing nothing in clumsy verse.

‘Listen,’ Plato suddenly said
and he tilted his beard
as he cocked his head.

Taking a swig of Heidegger beer,
I said to him ‘there’s nothing to hear.’
‘Simply use your imagination:
that’s the sound of cogitation.’

He said I could argue if I chose,
as the fizzy lager came down my nose.

‘Cogitation?
It makes me
think of gears,
infernal machines
between the ears
just churning out
clockwork ideas!’

‘What about rumination then?’
I nearly wasted beer again.

‘What? Cows
philosophising now?
That’s a novel
and interesting slant:
the empirical
arguments of
Ermintrude Kant!’

I felt I’d been a little cruel
in treating Plato like a fool
and asked him what his poison was.

He held up a glass of something pink:
‘I’ll just have another one of these,
I’ll leave the other to Socrates.’

In P.H. - as regulars call the bar,
Mr P’s not known for cracking jokes
but still, we laugh at the lamest attempt
so at least he feels he’s one of the blokes.

I caught the eye of the cat on the bar.
Lucky me, he’s an elusive chap
just appeared from nowhere
in a Schrodinger’s cap.

I ordered Big P an ‘Occam’s Tizer.’
Just too sharp for my uncultured palate,
so I got Engels Beer in a Wittgen-stein,
a hoppy taste and a hit like a mallet.

‘Contemplation?’ - He’s off again -
‘Religious buildings and macro’d letters.’
‘Maybe meditation then?’
‘Navel gazing, you know better!’

‘You’ll accept Philosophy?’
No, I didn’t and why should he?
Still we sat there unsteadily drinking,
‘What’s the matter with plain old thinking?'