Chronoclasm
I’ve been the victim of a chronoclasm:
Displaced in time, I’m living in the past,
And I’ve just seen, with a gut-wrenching spasm,
Someone I know. I stared at him, aghast.
He has my face, my body, my expression,
My house, my car, he’s sleeping with my wife;
He’s got my job, my sexual obsession,
My mistresses, my cash, my whole damned life.
Enraged, I watched the way my wife caressed him –
It felt like blatant infidelity –
Then langorously, teasingly undressed him …
I’d wait for him, concealed behind a tree,
And shoot the bastard; God knows I detest him!
But if I did, what would become of me?
Brian Allgar, although immutably English, has lived in Paris since 1982. He started entering Spectator and New Statesman competitions in 1967, but took a 35-year break, finally re-emerging in 2011 as a kind of Rip Van Winkle of the literary competition world. He also drinks malt whisky and writes music, which may explain his fondness for Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony.