RENEWAL

1. 

let's say you're a champion not to be beaten

for shaking a stick at collections of things

you would have to concede

that there may be too many

whenever the matter of spirits is raised

the number of goddesses gods and whatever

has been calculated to be eighteen thousand

but this is as nothing compared with the demons

which Bishop Alphonso de Spina declared

as over one hundred and thirty-three million

a figure refigured a century later

when one Johann Weyer rejigged the accounting

and four point four million seemed nearer the mark

2.

the giddiness

the profligacy

the plenitude

and then there's the myths

accumulation beyond measure

no care for the clutter

but now there's hope

the flip flop cycle of proofproof fads

can be flung

into the past-it waste-bag

we can celebrate

a cure for allegories

freed from the lure of lore

purged of paraffliction

wizened pieties

and cash-flow kitsch

we can raise a glass

of some adult elixir

to the Centre for Mytheme Innovation

creator of chimerase

digesting pet figments

dropping delusions

from a scrapyard grab crane

cobbling jokes from the fragments

acid etch mythography

recycling old yarns

into bright new lampoons.