Arthur's Chessboard

Lately I have dreams in which my kittens both are dying,
while rednecks from my past life mock my tears in their brutal strine,
And I in grief am paralysed, my head in rictus hands,
and pine for oblivion all nature demands.

And in the dark rows of my cinema sleep
diminishing audience make whoopee or go to sleep,
the drama unfolding does not their foibles meet,
the lightning box office shows a sad receipt.

The American singer leaned into the mic and
said "Your beautiful country's what our country used to be like"
Like two days in St. Kilda confers an honourary degree,
but you're free to condescend when you come from the land of the free.

The fashion designer girls, the magazine boys, would nod
in strange agreement as he got on with the noise.
But as much as they'd like to think we share the same load,
to each their own apocalypse, we're not all on that road…

Lately I've been drinking to the point of kissing stone,
and accusing random street signs of Young Liberal plots,
and telephone boxes which appear to me but to nobody otherwise -
paranoia keeps ringing lullabies.

I have friends, I have family and a woman I don't please, demands upon a weak man only distance can appease.
But how could I recognise myself in exile, making moves on Arthur's Chessboard and dreaming all the while?