Momus
Nikki Danjo
Midnight at the theatre, news is coming over
Of the murder of the prophet, the one we all believed in
Everybody’s scuttling, and everybody’s nervous
The man who makes the lightning has gone missing in the forest

And on the television comes the evil Nikki Danjo
Who proclaims himself the regent even though he is a rat
He’s got forward-sweeping eyebrows, an awful fearless forehead
And the scroll that he is holding tells the future of the world

And all the while the spider comet hurtles towards Earth
A pink and white calamity with an icy blue eye
An electric-coloured coma mane, a horrid ion tail
Danjo grins and grimaces like his head is on a spring

And now the night must lengthen to a universal sealant
While the oil wells in the desert burn all the oil away
The ruin of a wooden ship suspended between stacks of rock
And Nikki Danjo lives in it, as if in the Ark on Ararat

The dinosaurs return to the earth dressed up as stenographers
Committing dactylography, they copulate like dogs
And the ground has got so hot now that the only way to walk on it
Is on stilts built like chopsticks for tottering refugees
We reel injustice in on strings, don’t believe in anything
Between the jagged chimneys floats the nightmare of a moon
It’s down to Ennosuke, the great kabuki actor
To save us from the regent and put the rat to death
A pterodactyl cackle is lingering behind you
Obey the spider comet, whatever it may say