Storm

Inner north london, top floor flat

All white walls, white carpet, white cat,

Rice paper partitions

Modern art and ambition

The host's a physician,

Lovely bloke, has his own practice

His girlfriend's an actress

An old mate from home

And they're always great fun.

So to dinner we've come.

The 5th guest is an unknown,

The hosts have just thrown

Us together for a favour

Because this girl's just arrived from australia

And has moved to north london

And she's the sister of someone

Or has some connection.

As we make introductions

I'm struck by her beauty

She's irrefutably fair

With dark eyes and dark hair

But as she sits

I admit i'm a little bit wary

Because i notice the tip of the wing of a fairy

Tattooed on that popular area

Just above the derrière

And when she says “i'm sagittarien”

I confess a pigeonhole starts to form

And is immediately filled with pigeon

When she says her name is storm.

Conversation is initially bright and light hearted

But it's not long before storm gets started:

“you can't know anything,

Knowledge is merely opinion””

She opines, over her cabernet sauvignon

Vis a vis

Some unhippily

Empirical comment by me

“not a good start”, i think

We're only on pre-dinner drinks

And across the room, my wife

Widens her eyes

Silently begs me, "be nice"

A matrimonial warning

Not worth ignoring

So i resist the urge to ask storm

Whether knowledge is so loose-weave

Of a morning

When deciding whether to leave

Her apartment by the front door

Or a window on her second floor.

The food is delicious and storm,

Whilst avoiding all meat

Happily sits and eats

While the good doctor, slightly pissedly

Holds court on some anachronistic aspect of medical history

When storm suddenly she insists

“but the human body is a mystery!

Science just falls in a hole

When it tries to explain the the nature of the soul.””

My hostess throws me a glance

She, like my wife, knows there's a chance

That i'll be off on one of my rare but fun rants

But my lips are sealed.

I just want to enjoy my meal

And although storm is starting to get my goat

I have no intention of rocking the boat,

Although it's becoming a bit of a wrestle

Because - like her meteorological namesake -

Storm has no such concerns for our vessel:

“pharmaceutical companies are the enemy

They promote drug dependency

At the cost of the natural remedies

That are all our bodies need

They are immoral and driven by greed.

Why take drugs

When herbs can solve it?

Why use chemicals

When homeopathic solvents

Can resolve it?

It's time we all return-to-live

With natural medical alternatives.””

And try as hard as i like,

A small crack appears

In my diplomacy-dike.

“by definition”, i begin

“alternative medicine”, i continue

“has either not been proved to work,

Or been proved not to work.

Do you know what they call alternative medicine”

That's been proved to work?

Medicine.””

“so you don't believe

In any natural remedies?””

“on the contrary storm

Actually before we came to tea,

I took a natural remedy

Derived from the bark of a willow tree

A painkiller that's virtually side-effect free

It's got a weird name,

Darling, what was it again?

Masprin?

Basprin?

Asprin!

Which i paid about a buck for

Down at my local drugstore.

The debate briefly abates

As our hosts collects plates

But as they return with desserts

Storm pertly asserts,

“shakespeare said it first:

There are more things in heaven and earth

Than exist in your philosophy

Science is just how we're trained to look at reality,

It can't explain love or spirituality.

How does science explain psychics?

Auras; the afterlife; the power of prayer?””

I'm becoming aware

That i'm staring,

I'm like a rabbit suddenly trapped

In the blinding headlights of vacuous crap.

Maybe it's the hamlet she just misquothed

Or the fifth glass of wine i just quaffed

But my diplomacy dike groans

And the arsehole held back by its stones

Can be held back no more:

“look , storm, i don't mean to bore you

But there's no such thing as an aura!

Reading auras is like reading minds

Or tea-leaves or star-signs or meridian lines

These people aren't plying a skill,

They are either lying or mentally ill.

Same goes for those who claim to hear god's demands

And spiritual healers who think they have magic hands.

By the way,

Why is it ok

For people to pretend they can talk to the dead?

Is it not totally fucked in the head

Lying to some crying woman whose child has died

And telling her you're in touch with the other side?

That's just fundamentally sick

Do we need to clarify that there's no such thing as a psychic?

What, are we fucking 2?

Do we actually think that horton heard a who?

Do we still think that santa brings us gifts?

That michael jackson hasn't had facelifts?

Are we still so stunned by circus tricks

That we think that the dead would

Wanna talk to pricks

Like john edwards?

Storm to her credit despite my derision

Keeps firing off clichés with startling precision

Like a sniper using bollocks for ammunition

“you're so sure of your position

But you're just closed-minded

I think you'll find that

Your faith in science and tests

Is just as blind

As the faith of any fundamentalist”

“hm that's a good point, let me think for a bit

Oh wait, my mistake, that's absolute bullshit.

Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed

Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.

If you show me

That, say, homeopathy works,

Then i will change my mind

I'll spin on a fucking dime

I'll be embarrassed as hell,

But i will run through the streets yelling

It's a miracle! take physics and bin it!

Water has memory!

And while it's memory of a long lost drop of onion juice is infinite

It somehow forgets all the poo it's had in it!

You show me that it works and how it works

And when i've recovered from the shock

I will take a compass and carve "fancy that" on the side of my cock.”

Everyones just staring at me now,

But i'm pretty pissed and i've dug this far down,

So i figure, in for penny, in for a pound:

“life is full of mystery, yeah

But there are answers out there

And they won't be found

By people sitting around

Looking serious

And saying isn't life mysterious?

Let's sit here and hope

Let's call up the fucking pope

Let's go watch oprah

Interview deepak chopra

If you're going to watch tele, you should watch scooby doo.

That show was so cool

Because every time there's a church with a ghoul

Or a ghost in a school

They looked beneath the mask and what was inside?

The fucking janitor or the dude who runs the waterslide.

Because throughout history

Every mystery

Ever solved

Has turned out to be

Not magic.

Does the idea that there might be truth

Frighten you?

Does the idea that one afternoon

On wiki-fucking-pedia might enlighten you

Frighten you?

Does the notion that there may not be a supernatural

So blow your hippy noodle

That you would rather just stand in the fog

Of your inability to google?

Isn't this enough?

Just...

This...

World?

Just...

This...

Beautiful, complex

Wonderfully unfathomable, natural world?

How does it so fail to hold our attention

That we have to diminish it with the invention

Of cheap, man-made myths and monsters?

If you're so into shakespeare

Lend me your ear:

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,

To throw perfume on the violet… is just fucking silly”

Or something like that.

Or what about satchmo?!

I see trees of green,

Red roses too,

And fine if you wish to

Glorify krishna and vishnu

In a post-colonial, condescending

Bottled-up and labeled kind of way

Then whatever, that's ok.

But here's what gives me a hard-on:

I am a tiny, insignificant, ignorant lump of carbon.

I have one life, and it is short

And unimportant

But thanks to recent scientific advances

I get to live twice as long

As my great great great great uncleses and auntses.

Twice as long to live this life of mine

Twice as long to love this wife of mine

Twice as many years of friends and wine

Of sharing curries and getting shitty

With good-looking hippies

With fairies on their spines

And butterflies on their titties.

And if perchance i have offended

Think but this and all is mended:

We'd as well be 10 minutes back in time,

For all the chance you'll change your mind.