Portrait

So call me a bon vivant. Sure I enjoy fine things
and base things in equal measure. Sure I stick
it in my lung and in my vein. Sure I spend a lot
of nights forgetting nights previous. But what's
so wrong about that? I mean, who am I hurting?

I have the right, God-given and He won't take it
back from me very easily, no sir, to take what I
can from a world that dearly wants to hurt me.
And I've done nothing to the world, except perhaps
not paying enough attention to the darker parts

for the satisfaction of those self-righteous prats,
the kingpins of moral correctness that will only
award someone the badge of "decent human being"
if he spends every other night slouched on his
face in the direction of the Hague. Not that they

don't make mistakes like the rest of us. The fine
men and women of the Hague, I mean. The moral
censors don't make mistakes. They don't make
anything, certainly nothing resembling progress.
It's all negativity. Why don't they get so exercised

about people who spend their whole lives doing
nothing, very morally of course, sitting in their
armchairs and looking for something else to worry
about, wasting their one and only chance to do
something, good or bad, worth remembering?

Hmm. A difficult question.