The Friday Poem

Belphégor, Lord of the Gap, Hell’s Ambassador to France

Bradypus variegates, the brown-throated three-toed sloth,
is surely the laziest bastard in the South American jungle.

Once a week, she climbs down from the high canopy
into the O horizon, where she takes a shite on the detritus.

This is dangerous, as there are jaguars there, and yourselves.
Is the brown-throated three-toed sloth afraid? Is she fuck.

You would cootchie-woo cootchie-wootchie-coo any sloth.
So would I. But she neither wants nor needs our affection;

nor our sympathy when the harpy eagle swoops in for the kill.
Taking it in their stride, all sloths know evil, and this isn’t it.

Would you cootchie-woo cootchie-wootchie-coo a layabout?
a human one? Would you fuck. You’d say, ‘Pull yourself up

by your bootstraps, away out and work or start a revolution.’
And you wouldn’t cootchie-wootchie-coo a beggar neither.

Harpy eagles don’t beg for brown-throated three-toed sloths –
like all good entrepreneurs amongst the Homines sapientes

they go out and take the bastarding bull by the bastarding horns.
You would feed a ploughman’s lunch to a harpy eagle. Admit it.

The Knorr cryodesiccated noodle ship would be touring along
the river creating a market amongst the Amazonian tribespeople

and you’d be cootchie-woo cootchie-wootchie-cooing a sloth;
or feeding bits of Red Leicester and pickle to a hungry harpy eagle

from a bumbag slung over a branch. And I, Belphégor, would be
egging you on. ‘Go on, love,’ I’d say, ‘that’s fucking ingenious.’