New Zealand's unsanctioned poet laureate composes an ode for Sir Mark of Richardson
A Man Of Our Age
Arise Sir Mark! You leave the field
with 9,994 hot takes on the Box.
Hypnotized were we at your rapier wit,
and lofty pronouncements on Matters Of State.
You reflected back our deepest selves;
mirror’d well our prejudice and sentiment.
The commoners weepeth; for who will defend
the Good Landlords now?
A Spartan warrior of The AM Show,
gruff, certain, untroubled by liberality or nuance:
in this stormy season of devilish complexities,
you unpack’d all with unvarnished vigour.
When the Banners of Blue lay ragged in the mud,
you alone stood firm against Pink Non-binary Unicorns.
Your wisdom self-evident: being a Mum is not a job,
after all, unlike hitting balls with a stick.
As the ruinous hovels of the feckless peasants grew
costly, you showed them how it was done on The Block
and put their rent up live on national television.
So the black hole of accumulative affluenza
is cloak’d in practical, no-nonsense breeches.
Thus we salute you, for you are truly
a Man of Our Age: representing this Queendom,
and where our heads are at, most excellently.
Like Dunc and Amanda, you pass the flaming torch
of corporate infotainment to Ryan Manbun,
whom we entrust to channel the zeitgeist,
and to translate for us the strange visions
of our collective nightmare.
Victor Billot has previously been moved to write odes for such New Zealand luminaries as Willis and Rawnsley, Dr Siouxsie Wiles, Duncan Garner, and Garrick Tremain.
