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A young woman in a dress and sweater screaming in an empty field, on a cloudy afternon.
A young woman in a dress and sweater screaming in an empty field, on a cloudy afternon.

BooksDecember 2, 2016

The Friday poem: ‘Gone Mad’, by Nick Ascroft

A young woman in a dress and sweater screaming in an empty field, on a cloudy afternon.
A young woman in a dress and sweater screaming in an empty field, on a cloudy afternon.

New apocalyptic verse by Wellington writer Nick Ascroft.

 

Gone Mad

 

Health and safety gone mad.

Disease and hazard gone mad.

‘Health and safety gone mad’ gone mad.

Healthy dislike of Baby Boomers gone mad.

Housing prices gone mad.

Interest rates threatening to spiral out of control but remaining at a plateau gone mad.

Estate agents gone mad.

I’m stuck in an elevator with three of them with only a safety pin and malice aforethought gone mad.

Zika outbreak spreading like wildfire gone mad.

Zika outbreak media announcements of successful containment gone mad.

The alt-right gone mad.

The alt-mad gone right gone mad.

The countryside, the city, the coast, the island off the coast gone mad.

The island descending under rising sea levels with ice caps going, going, gone mad.

The nanny state gone mad.

Europe gone mad.

The Middle-East gone mad.

Turkey straddling both while elbowing itself in the vagina gone mad.

The Phillipines gone mad.

The otherwise calm and dispassionate alpine nation of Switzerland gone mad.

The fledgling autonomous region of Rojava not yet gone mad.

Self-righteous moralising gone mad.

Scepticism-fatigue gone mad.

Shrill liberal echo chambers gone mad.

The internet and its sequel, the dark internet rises, gone mad.

The fake-news-bot generators gone mad.

The Al Jazeera autocue gone mad.

Some talking headshot gone off on one gone mad.

Gone Daddy Gone diddy doo-wah diddy bada bing bada bang gone mad.

Mod cons gone mad.

Maud Gonne gone mad.

The Maud Gonne Band gone mad.

The Michael Jackson album Bad gone mad.

The satirical magazine from the 1980s Cracked gone mad.

PC gone mad.

PCP gone mad.

CCCP gone mad.

Pea soup gone mad.

Healthy pee is not sea green gone mad,

but gone girls have gone with the wind gone mad.

Schizophrenic disassociative copralalia gone mad.

Humanity, one day everywhere like vermin, and the next, gone: mad!

Keep going!