Smackney Hounds

A million bad actors stuck working as porters The old masters’ protégés craft comics for viz As legions of poets write verse on Thames Water Their publishers scramble to get out of the biz Unworn tap shoes hang from Sadler’s Wells planes As Seanchai howl stories to derelict towns While the gutters fill up with discarded screenplays Which are bloated with pathos, and written by clowns Faceless rock stars are sat perched on street corners Who foam at the mouth with their carbon cut dreams Manuscripts desperately wait for an author Who’s too busy browsing on Vinted for jeans Murals of novelists are painted on tenements Whose volumes are burned to keep residents warm Memorial sculptures are lost to the elements As the ghosts of church organs are heard through the storm Pure Aran wool weaves are left tangled in brambles; Illuminated velum’s illegible rot While custodians win big with an online gamble Their Attention decays from the short form glut Creative accounting avoids unemployment As Beautiful brutes cultivate captive crowds Alone with their phones, emulating Enjoyment Data-set sainthood, adrift on a cloud The curtain in tatters looms low on the rafters As patiently, wraiths wait for final encore Children type up the new creative charter Expressing some truth that the world will ignore