New Zealand’s demi-official poet laureate Victor Billot composes an ode for Simon Bridges, soon to be a published author.
The Outsider
I’m here in ripped leather with my life story,
not just your common garden Tory.
I’m going to be completely honest and open.
Deconstruct masculinity. Are you still coping?
I am going to blow the minds of squares.
A gone jazz cat in my psychedelic flares.
Like Albert Camus or Ol’ Jack Kerouac,
an existentialist from way, way, back –
the Jean Paul Sartre of Mount Maunganui,
with my Gauloises and a thimble of Drambuie,
channelling Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca.
I’m an outsider, not a merchant banker.
Bourgeois convention concerns me not.
You ask for policy, I supply a bon mot.
This is a screaming guitar solo, a trip, a ride:
stick close by for your walk on Simon’s wild side.
Victor Billot has previously been moved to write odes for such New Zealand luminaries as Trevor Mallard, Mike Hosking, and Garrick Tremain.
