SWEATING IT OUT

Someone is sweating over money inside a cathedral.

As one perspires, purse spires inspire the supernatural manifestation of a pun made literal.

A moneybag with bags of room for a steeple to protrude;

Vast, phallic and symbolically rude,

In the past, one’s imagination had been quite crude.

So how did this surreal monstrosity suddenly intrude with the fused elements of reality with which it was imbued?

One counts the days, for there are only seven,

But then again—now, there are eleven!

In a place of God, you appeal to heaven.

Only to find perfume in a monstrous bottle before you—truly heaven scent.

If you repent, you think, the strange happenings might relent.

You regret your wasteful ways, the money squandered and time misspent.

As Daliesque melting clocks ooze from every single vent.

‘Only time will tell,’ says a clock face, as human as it is horological.

Your heart is racing on a track formed out of pews,

With various other human organs, this is too much!

You vent your spleen; literally, smothering melting clocks that make you turn green.

As a colour and quite a pleasant hue,

You feel like a shady character and wonder what to do.

Abruptly, a corrupt umbrella salesman pushes his rain-protective wares on you.

Fair weather friends assemble in an insincerely sympathetic horde.

Despite your rising terror, you try hard to look bored,

Drills give thrills to spectating sadists as they penetrate your pores,

Bleeding and screaming, painfully aware of your flaws,

You empathise with victims and casualties of wars.

At this stage, in agony and rage, you visualise theatres of war,

Operating theatres where surgeons butcher Shakespeare.

It occurs to you that King Lear might appear,

Well more Fool you.

Scenarios unfold, plays play out with tales untold,

That transform themselves into silk that, once, you spun, now hold.

You follow the thread with fascination and dread,

The taste of cotton in your mouth is seen by material witnesses—

Crumpled individuals publicly washing their dirty linen,

Coming clean, expressing outrage over the obscene,

An odd scene develops involving money laundering,

As gangsters compete with hypocrites in the immorality stakes.