“Storm”
Inner North London, top floor flat / All white walls, white carpet, white cat, / Rice Paper partitions / Modern art and ambition / The host’s a physician, / Lovely bloke, has his own practice / His girlfriend’s an actress / An old mate from home / And they’re always great fun. / So to dinner we’ve come.
The 5th guest is an unknown, / The hosts have just thrown / Us together for a favour / because this girl’s just arrived from Australia / And has moved to North London / And she’s the sister of someone / Or has some connection.
As we make introductions / I’m struck by her beauty / She’s irrefutably fair / With dark eyes and dark hair / But as she sits / I admit I’m a little bit wary / because I notice the tip of the wing of a fairy / Tattooed on that popular area / Just above the derrière / And when she says “I’m Sagittarien” / I confess a pigeonhole starts to form / And is immediately filled with pigeon / When she says her name is Storm.
Chatter is initially bright and light hearted / But it’s not long before Storm gets started: / “You can’t know anything, / Knowledge is merely opinion” / She opines, over her Cabernet Sauvignon / Vis a vis / Some unhippily / Empirical comment by me
“Not a good start” I think / We’re only on pre-dinner drinks / And across the room, my wife / Widens her eyes / Silently begs me, Be Nice / A matrimonial warning / Not worth ignoring / So I resist the urge to ask Storm / Whether knowledge is so loose-weave / Of a morning / When deciding whether to leave / Her apartment by the front door / Or a window on the second floor.
The food is delicious and Storm, / Whilst avoiding all meat / Happily sits and eats / While the good doctor, slightly pissedly / Holds court on some anachronistic aspect of medical history / When Storm suddenly she insists / “But the human body is a mystery! / Science just falls in a hole / When it tries to explain the the nature of the soul.”
My hostess throws me a glance / She, like my wife, knows there’s a chance / That I’ll be off on one of my rants / But my lips are sealed. / I just want to enjoy my meal / And although Storm is starting to get my goat / I have no intention of rocking the boat, / Although it’s becoming a bit of a wrestle / Because - like her meteorological namesake - / Storm has no such concerns for our vessel:
“Pharmaceutical companies are the enemy / They promote drug dependency / At the cost of the natural remedies / That are all our bodies need / They are immoral and driven by greed. / Why take drugs / When herbs can solve it? / Why use chemicals / When homeopathic solvents / Can resolve it? / It’s time we all return-to-live / With natural medical alternatives.”
And try as hard as I like, / A small crack appears / In my diplomacy-dike. / “By definition”, I begin / “Alternative Medicine”, I continue / “Has either not been proved to work, / Or been proved not to work. / You know what they call “alternative medicine” / That’s been proved to work? / Medicine.”
“So you don’t believe / In ANY Natural remedies?”
“On the contrary actually: / Before we came to tea, / I took a natural remedy / Derived from the bark of a willow tree / A painkiller that’s virtually side-effect free / It’s got a weird name, / Darling, what was it again? / Masprin? / Basprin? / Asprin! / Which I paid about a buck for / Down at my local drugstore.
The debate briefly abates / As our hosts collects plates / but as they return with desserts / Storm pertly asserts,
“Shakespeare said it first: / There are more things in heaven and earth / Than exist in your philosophy… / Science is just how we’re trained to look at reality, / It can’t explain love or spirituality. / How does science explain psychics? / Auras; the afterlife; the power of prayer?”
I’m becoming aware / That I’m staring, / I’m like a rabbit suddenly trapped / In the blinding headlights of vacuous crap. / Maybe it’s the Hamlet she just misquothed / Or the eighth glass of wine I just quaffed / But my diplomacy dike groans / And the arsehole held back by its stones / Can be held back no more:
“Look , Storm, I don’t mean to bore you / But there’s no such thing as an aura! / Reading Auras is like reading minds / Or star-signs or tea-leaves or meridian lines / These people aren’t plying a skill, / They are either lying or mentally ill. / Same goes for those who claim to hear God’s demands / And Spiritual healers who think they have magic hands.
By the way, / Why is it OK / For people to pretend they can talk to the dead? / Is it not totally fucked in the head / Lying to some crying woman whose child has died / And telling her you’re in touch with the other side? / That’s just fundamentally sick / Do we need to clarify that there’s no such thing as a psychic? / What, are we fucking 2? / Do we actually think that Horton Heard a Who? / Do we still think that Santa brings us gifts? / That Michael Jackson hasn’t had facelifts? / Are we still so stunned by circus tricks / That we think that the dead would / Wanna talk to pricks / Like John Edwards?
Storm to her credit despite my derision / Keeps firing off clichés with startling precision / Like a sniper using bollocks for ammunition
“You’re so sure of your position / But you’re just closed-minded / I think you’ll find / Your faith in Science and Tests / Is just as blind / As the faith of any fundamentalist”
“Hm that’s a good point, let me think for a bit / Oh wait, my mistake, it’s absolute bullshit. / Science adjusts it’s beliefs based on what’s observed / Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved. / If you show me / That, say, homeopathy works, / Then I will change my mind / I’ll spin on a fucking dime / I’ll be embarrassed as hell, / But I will run through the streets yelling / It’s a miracle! Take physics and bin it! / Water has memory! / And while it’s memory of a long lost drop of onion juice is Infinite / It somehow forgets all the poo it’s had in it!
You show me that it works and how it works / And when I’ve recovered from the shock / I will take a compass and carve Fancy That on the side of my cock.”
Everyones just staring at me now, / But I’m pretty pissed and I’ve dug this far down, / So I figure, in for penny, in for a pound:
“Life is full of mysteries, yeah / But there are answers out there / And they won’t be found / By people sitting around / Looking serious / And saying isn’t life mysterious? / Let’s sit here and hope / Let’s call up the fucking Pope / Let’s go watch Oprah / Interview Deepak Chopra
If you’re going to watch tele, you should watch Scooby Doo. / That show was so cool / because every time there’s a church with a ghoul / Or a ghost in a school / They looked beneath the mask and what was inside? / The fucking janitor or the dude who runs the waterslide. / Throughout history / Every mystery / EVER solved has turned out to be / Not Magic.
Does the idea that there might be truth / Frighten you? / Does the idea that one afternoon / On Wiki-fucking-pedia might enlighten you / Frighten you? / Does the notion that there may not be a supernatural / So blow your hippy noodle / That you would rather just stand in the fog / Of your inability to Google?
Isn’t this enough? / Just this world? / Just this beautiful, complex / Wonderfully unfathomable world? / How does it so fail to hold our attention / That we have to diminish it with the invention / Of cheap, man-made Myths and Monsters? / If you’re so into Shakespeare / Lend me your ear: / “To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, / To throw perfume on the violet… is just fucking silly” / Or something like that. / Or what about Satchmo?! / I see trees of Green, / Red roses too, / And fine, if you wish to / Glorify Krishna and Vishnu / In a post-colonial, condescending / Bottled-up and labeled kind of way / That’s ok. / But here’s what gives me a hard-on: / I am a tiny, insignificant, ignorant lump of carbon. / I have one life, and it is short / And unimportant… / But thanks to recent scientific advances / I get to live twice as long as my great great great great uncles and auntses. / Twice as long to live this life of mine / Twice as long to love this wife of mine / Twice as many years of friends and wine / Of sharing curries and getting shitty / With good-looking hippies / With fairies on their spines / And butterflies on their titties.
And if perchance I have offended / Think but this and all is mended: / We’d as well be 10 minutes back in time, / For all the chance you’ll change your mind.
