You had to be there

It topped the assassination

and the revolution. It beat

the cloning fields and the black

holes of Paris. It triumphed over

the resurrection of Michael Jackson.

It shamed the world’s first water wars

and put the kicking to death of the last

penguin permanently into the shade.

You had to be there. To appreciate

the sight of entire cities moving

and the floating crowds of spastic grief

leaving cut flowers and plastic toys

in the wake of no accident. It bettered

the Hadron Collider bomb or Swissgate.

It threw housebricks through the window

of Flatscreen flu. It hammered down

the doors of Africa and its establishment

as the Chinese People’s Prison Continent

and it licked the armpit of the Lesbian Revolt.

You had to be there. The smell alone

was enough to give atheists the fear of God

or the fear that he’d farted after a long blockage.