The joke

It starts as a rumour in the back room of a public house.
At closing time it staggers into the car park to shoot its mouth off.
Asleep in a ditch, it crawls through the eye of a needle
and wakes up in the indolent mind of a teenage boy.
He carries it like a monstrance to school where each takes his turn
dipping a finger and savouring the gauche smell.

It's soon picked up by a cub reporter at the local rag
who feeds it to the dailies. It becomes a national obsession.
TV documentaries. Game shows. Questions in the House.
Someone changes his name by deed poll, and the lottery
is finished as a concept. People take to standing on cliff edges
above the rising seas, waiting for infinity to snap back
like a rubber band into their insane grinning faces.

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