ANTI-BANTER GLOSSOLALIA, LOLZ

Let's raise a glass to the Death of Banter, yeah?

Banter.

No, not the benevolent, bearded, once-a-year postie from Lapland for whom Brian Badonde leaves out a stocking each December 24 – “Banta Bores” – but the scourge of grown-up conversation (ergo: is endemic to football).

My co-columnist over at The FCF, Andi ‘Twisted Blood’ Thomas, has picked it apart – its motivations, its dissimulations – and flatly refuses to put it back together, no matter what part of his body is twisted, sister. Reading his delirious final paragraphs earlier swept me into an anti-banter reverie of my own. This is the result.

If you would like to perform a Marxist, post-Marxist, feminist, post-feminist, deconstructionist, psychoanalytic, or simply a banter reading of it, by all means do so. Just don’t send it me.  

ANTI-BANTER GLOSSOLALIA 

Banter on the streets of London.

Banter on the streets of Birmingham.

I banter to myself:

Could life ever be sane again…? 

It’s anti-banter

you’re after, yeah?

The winner, at a canter

(in a Gallup poll, Dancer)

is askance glancer,

footy sage

and neuromancer, 

the virtuous and sanguine

(though never tortuous) 

Twisted Blood

and Sand

(mebbe Ebbe, Dansk 
in the dark – a real 
[Lars von] trier), 
auteur, formatador

who deigns

to feign

(mainly on the plain

– over zumo de naranja)

an answer to the

pestilential banter,

the existential cant-ah

(à la Mark E Smith-ah),

which makes this lil’ Spanish orange

canta

y canta:

“An end to the banter!”

So he of Blood Twisted

insisted

(forceful as a cross, from danger
fisted)

the long-ball game of the

garra-less, garrulous

little Banter Cocks,

– claw-less, clueless

mental bantamweights –  

should be resisted, 

with tiki-taka. 

Or haka.

Or kung-fu: à la Eric 
Banter-nah.

Use your head, son: 

keep it on the deck,

don’t use your head

all the time! 

Crouch. 
Ab-zurda: two left feet, a

Little Donkey, 

little Don Quijote,

ay, ¡qué burrito!

poor, poor control

(had a sangria or

couple o’ mojito’…?):

a shin-toe: a sin, 
sin the Zen countenance of Hirohito. 

But his Buddhis’ FCF column

out beyond football 

did roam

(quixotic, picaresque,

always chivalresque),

and our gunslinging,

narrow-eyed,

anti-banter hero 

– mantra: zero

tolerance

for verbal violence – 

our wee Naranjito
(moniker of Santa)… 
the stuff of Fanta-sí?

Nein! Cos’ Fanta’s Nazi coke, 

and Banterese,

freshly squeezed,

is but Nazis on coke:

chalk farmers,

talk harmers,

verbosity not verboten:

also sprech der DOMINANZ

#bantz 

Quick half-time orange

(with which nothing rhymes,

which must be, like, a cwimez)

then more me, me, me, me,

yo-yo-yo-yo:

narcisismo. 

Echo. 
Charlie, Hitler? 

Roman hand-show for head

honcho, like Sancho

in Panzer.

Imperialist banter cancer.

Keep going till the end, 
never enough

wee rayitas

to snort

passion

of the Enlisted Blood

of the Race (Aryanz).

Foxtrot Charlie

Foxtrot, eleganz;

poledance gig

in

#Danzig 

Free City.

Bravo.

Alpha.

November.

Tango.

Echo.

Romeo. 

And as the VJ spins Hirohito’s 

Japanter-mime,

a bunraku of tweeted

bantercrimes,

up bobs Naranjito

of Orange 

– (Rob) Peel policing in 

Bantustan – 

and heads off to 
Isla de END-BANTER

Me voy. Me voy. Me voy… 

Partial glossary to foregoing glossolalia

zumo de naranja – orange juice

canta – 3rd person sing., present tense, of ‘cantar’: to sing

garra – lit. ‘claw’: the tenacity and penetrative ‘bite’ of South American forwards (esp. on the Uruguayan side of the River Plate). 

zurda – colloq.: ‘left (foot)’

¡qué burrito! – “what a (little) Donkey!” [Nothing to do with Mexican food]. 

sin – without

yo – I

rayita – colloq.: ‘little line’; diminutive of raya: beam, ray. 

narcisismo – self-love; narcissism

Me voy – “I’m going”

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