Dumbo in Cuckooland

^{Photo by Varshil Changani on Unsplash}

The Chancellor’s cloudy thought-bubble

begins to rise, squeezes its way

out of his rotund body,

& pushes off past stretchered patients

and their rushing docs that throng

the corridor. It slips into

a lift and tiptoes up the stairs

onto the hospital roof,

has a quick fag, and jumps. Leaving

naught but an Oxford comma behind.

*

The chancellor looks out glumly

from his levitating bubble

at passing jumbo jets defying

the travel ban to bring us books

& toys by post from Amazon,

past flocks of birds, their collective

compasses confused by pesticides

& telephones. He has a little

 scuffle in the lobby with

one of the bouncers of Our Lord

but sets off doddering bibulously

on up the heady ladder of

epistemology that leads

to the realm of forms. The yellow

bricks that pave the winding route

reference, he notes, the monetary

prudence of a predecessor.

Arriving angels rush to inject

 the chancellor’s arteries with ichor

and greet his ghost. Jean-Jacques’s assigned

his case. Let them eat cake. Jezza

the Judge disarms the Chancellor

with twinkling yet piercing eye,

set in formaldehyde in his

panopticon, flanked by a bench

of grim-faced qadis and ephors

chosen to hear the Chancellor’s

opinions put to a jury

 of peers, which finds, after brief

conclave and deliberation,

in favor of the people ‘gainst

the Chancellor. The Chancellor’s counsel

instantly lodges appeal.

The Chancellor is out on bail

bumbling around again. Almighty

is mighty pissed to have to open

the appellant court again—first

time since Adam and Job, egged on

by Satan, and that Jobs, trundled

their misery guts before the court.

Milord peers condescendingly

at the plaintiff over the half-moon

specs he needs to read his notes these days.

Orders him to his chambers for a chat.

The chancellor pits his intellect

against the Lord, who’s now long passed his prime,

now atheistic clerics throng

the ranks of heaven’s angels

& spread fake news pertaining to

his ontic status and gender,

call Him a Her or They and such.

Mind drifting, the Almighty lets

the Chancellor drone on and on,  

till with an oratorical

flourish of dramatic triumph

 worthy of a Demosthenes,

he swishes the veil away. Whiz;

Schlumpf. Gzump. Shbang … The wizard’s

got no clothes.

*

The Chancellor jerks wide-eyed

and naked back to life under

the spark of the defibrillator.

 “Wow. Thought we’d lost you there, dear boy,”

the songstress merrily chortles

through mouthfuls of hospital lunch.

“Sit up chuck. Now. Look sharpish.

Time for our swan song to be sung.

Time for our audience of visitors to come.”