1, poem, poetry, – Page 30

THIS IS WHERE

this is
where

democracy died
saw its grave
despoiled

its name
erased

the thing
ghost danced
never
talked about

outside the camps
where though
strong verboten

discussion
remains

AT LEAST

you tried
to write
a poem
but your
fat pen
slipped

sloshed
all over
the page

and me
when i
popped
in to
the poem
to have
a read

found
you drowning
in a torrent
of ink
and being

the saintly
figure that i am
leapt in
feet first
making
every effort
to save you

sadly, we
were not
entirely
successful

lost you
but managed
to salvage
fix your poem

some of it
at least

IN THE HOUSE

IN THE HOUSE OF NO LESS
THAN ENGELS HIMSELF

Big and bounteous
the Chirch of Capitalism
expanded its limits
threw out its long, craggy arms
became a
Cathedral

assumed the position
assumed the latest of
its greatest shapes

and
nothing there
entirely alien,
least of all to me, whose
Norman ancestors, newly
converted, set
immediately to work
building these things
eventually
stealing
the English crown in
the one they built
in England

but
I do digress
just to point out
the songs
remain
more or less the same
we all, having learnt
them all
by heart and
then force fed them
again by media

a hundred years
of continuous advertisement
so intrusive having become
we can
barely breathe

without a priest or pastor
pope or cardinal
if not
great market
theologian
of the faith

dragging us
by hook or
crook
right up to
the altar

more to consume
than ever commune

(and me
once having lived
along Oxford Road Manchester
plumb in
the sacred house
of no less than
Engels himself)

BOGUS

so this skinny old
withered guy

splurted out that the skiers
who called into question
the current state
of American

should be unceremoniously
stripped of their
national ski uniforms

which
gets me, thinking
if this geezer is
so passionate about this
he should
travel to Milan
strip the offending
skiers himself

presuming
obviously that
he survive
the cold
manages to
not drown
in the snow

such fake, bogus contrived passion
stuck in a glacier
not going to melt anything

poor, skinny, old
withered man

older, more skinny, more
withered,
infinitely
more bogus,
than i am myself

SIR JIM

for a moment
when Sir Jim
came in
to fix us
we deluded ourselves
it would be
Camelot

but turned out
much more
managed by
Mordred and Morgana
than reborn
Manchester United

still
a key player short
and no free
bananas

no free lunches ever
as we stop-start climb
above fifteenth

we never expected you
Sir Jim to be
thin and sparse and
tin
man kind
of hollowed out

supposed
to unite us all

but here you
are breaking apart, fragmenting

a team of squares and
round holes
bits and pieces

no football logic, common
sense
so must be

profit in it
primarily, exclusively,
in
everything we do

SWITCHED ON

Switched on the TV
but it was the emergency
channel

sirens blaring
where I thought
Tony Soprano
would be

outside the sky
looked ordinary,
nothing special,
dull blue,
straggles of cloud

not the wondrously
horrific spectacle
I was convinced
our last ever sky
damn well ought to be.

THREE BOOKS (revised version)

THREE BOOKS

there are three books
any of the three will
provide you with a basis
for understanding everything

even though
they are so different
don’t say
the same things
at all

there are two books
(three minus
one
is two)

either of them will
provide you with a basis
for understanding everything

even though
they are so different
don’t say
the same things
at all

there is one book
(two minus one
is one)

even though
it is
so different
it will provide you
with the basis
for understanding everything

even though it doesn’t
say the same things at all

even if
no books
may just be better
than one

THREE BOOKS

there are three books
any of the three will
provide you with a basis
for understanding everything

even though
they are so different
don’t say
the same things
at all

there are two books
either of them will
provide you with a basis
for understanding everything

even though
they are so different
don’t say
the same things
at all

there is one book
even though
it is
so different
it will provide you
with the basis
for understanding everything

even though it doesn’t
say the same things at all

THE TEXT OF YOUR TEXT

you texted me to tell me
that i must be delusional
not to believe democracy
is doomed, on its
last legs

all that talk of
by and for the people
already well on
its way to becoming
laughably quaint

but
not so quaint or genteel
the armoured personnel
carriers full to the brim
with paramilitaries

screetching to a halt
pistols, automatic
rifles at
the ready

primed to debate
the finer points of political philosophy