ALBERT CAMUS

Did Albert Camus forsake goalkeeping for the attainment of his own personal goals?
Was his brand of absurdist existentialism an own goal?
Was he too nihilistic to believe in anything?
Or are his books misunderstood comedies?
Was he clairvoyant?
Did he stage his death in a manner that anticipates how Marc Bolan, much later, would die?
Did he laugh much or was he often seen to cry?
Pronounced correctly, Albert Camus sounds like a gnu.
Does this make him more readily a popular guru?
Camus remains influential in counter-cultural pockets, predominantly around Europe.
Jean Paul Sartre, for a start, would acknowledge his contemporary—at the time.
Camus wrote about plagues and murder yet never committed a crime.
He wrote of exile, alienation and suicide.
His books are far from cheerful and I have to confide they’ve had me in tears.
AC might be overrated now, but was he recognised by his peers?
Isolated loners arriving in cities to exist as outsiders feature in his work,
Profundity can be the hallmark of a pretentious, shallow, berk.
Was AC a lazy writer? Did he feign illness and shirk?
Where are his hidden meanings? How deeply do they lurk?
Is The Myth of Sisyphus some kind of surreal perk?
Was his understated prose contrived?
Did he steal his philosophy from some oppressed clerk?
Taking advantage of narcoleptics, did AC rise like a lark?
Shaping his stolen material furtively in the dark?
Was he a rare mind with a unique voice, or a soulless operative lacking choice?
Was he as great as (and did he admire) James Joyce?
Was Joyce the real plagiarist—with AC his innocent stooge?
Was he notoriously mean-spirited like Ebenezer Scrooge?
No one really knew Albert Camus; no one really had a clue.
So ignorance of AC is really nothing new,
Life’s futility features in the themes of AC’s material,
If AC visited a contemporary séance, he’d have to be ethereal.
Posthumous acclaim and the scholarly bandying of his name,
Contribute to his fame but to the dead that’s all the same.
The Rebel was one of Camus’ books,
Also it was the title of one of Tony Hancock’s films.
The book deals with murder; while the film should make you laugh.