Category Archives: AI art, war, genocide, satire, poem, poetry

GLITCH

GLITCH

“A glitch that renders flesh and blood so weak,
Yet paves the way for words divine to speak.”

was wandering through
the killing fields
of Gaza

dodging the whatabouttery
ducking the bombs

when it struck me
that poets
be normal human
beings

except for their software
there is a problem
in the software

the problem in their software
being that it is too soft

UNSPEAKABLE

UNSPEAKABLE

I know wounds
I am currently
still wounded

I am unwounded
you call me
unspeakable

stick that label upon me
with a white hot iron

and now
    in the light
of what you have done
your catastrophic achievements

think you
should back off
        a little

last defence of your position
an appeal to hypocrisy
desire to shut
out any
    all contradiction

think you should have
a serious think
        and rethink

weigh it all up
               carefully,
                    as we
humans are
supposed to

check your direction
confirm your
                 moral compass
before
you step
any closer

for I am
as pointed
out earlier:
wounded indeed
bleed in both
body and
soul
     internally
      externally

feel I can
never heal
      in light of all the death
with which

you have
surrounded me

and yet
        nevertheless

testimony to
      my stupidity

I do refuse
to be silenced

be labelled
unspeakable
       dragged into that
narrative you wish
              have to wish
              we would believe

wounded I am
(may even
           qualify as
     
    distant
     collateral damage)

shock-splinters in my heart
to be true
      (feel them
                  I do)

yet
I know
      come crunch

come what offer cannot but
                                     be refused

how
to
wound badly, terminally

unspeakably

how to wound too
        

HYPOCALYPSE NOW

HYPOCRALPSE NOW

loving the smell
of white phosphorous
in the morning
will he still love
you if you script
all this a la Apocalypse Now?

will he promise you
sign of sanction and
spiritual favout
that is
    yet another
overwhelming victory

or is he taxing your faith
testing your strategic patience
by making this
a possible new
battle of Stalingrad,
advances only in inches
forward or
     underground
stop start
stop start

pity when it comes to
kill ratios even if
targeted and
supremely intentional

collateral damage figures
(including toddlers, infants
women and pensioners)
cannot
        be allowed to
seriously count

but there is no Kurtz and ghere
is no river

             no Dantesque journey
through the circles
of Hell

which makes no sense in a wotld
where it has become
impossible to differentiate between
    our
      angels and demons
      gods and devils

where everything and
everyone have their unique insane
      totally
clueless plan

       to deal with the shadow of
all evil

by massacring everybody
since
         we can no longer
be saved

cannot
       save ourselves

THING THAT

THING THAT

smoke, mirrors,
you have a thing
that falsifies

add on some wheels
bulld up
    some steam can
subjugate the world
with ease

bluff, and distraction
what need
       blades or bullets?

demolishing the truth
a right that that we see
we agree
can only be construed
as completely God-given

the smoke, all the mirrors
as Holy as can be

THEY WAKE UP THE DEAD

THEY WAKE UP THE DEAD

they wake up the dead
bomb their graves
so as to cart
off their bones
to interrogation
solve terrorist incidents
still
    on the books

they wake up the dead
have killed so many
that the underworld
is overcrowded
plus no creches
or kindergartens down
there for
the infants freshly killed

they wake up the dead
to kill them once
twice
    thrice, any number of
times that is
the sacred
     number of times

just to be sure to
be safe from
monstrous insecurity

JERICHO

JERICHO

Let me project this for you
                                onto a screen

proof positive that
we never learn from the past
about our shadow

and there
         like Babel, like Jericho
it all falls down

the air
      you cannot breathe, the crops
you cannot eat

such a price to pay for
all our vulnerabilities, for
all the exaggerated postures
of our fears

for all the bricks and mortar and
wire that we need

the concrete shelters that
we build

     the all-seeing eye
focus nought to infinity that
                      we believe

the memory of ashes
       that we can never leave.

FOUND FOOTAGE

FOUND FOOTAGE

I recall
the footage
am

still haunted by it
those days it was so fresh
(I was born
just less than eight years
after the war’s end)

thought
      for a long time
there a level of darkness,
depravity, racist inhumanity
the likes of which
we would
      never
             see again

terrible to say so, but our species
is nothing if not
a creature
of irony

      delighting in proving
(here so glaringly) everyone
horribly wrong

one monstrous darkness disappears
         another

is creating itself

   a darkness whose reversals

were they
       not so cruelly logical
would

     be impossible to understand

at last, I think,
I am beginning to understand