CASCADE
leaflets cascade
Iittle
life-parachutes
they
flutter down
tell you
that if you are
at all disinclined
to follow
the stairway
to Heaven
at this
very jumcture
you had better leave
ditch everything
you had better move
because
whatever ladders you thought
doors gates windows
they are all
about to be removed
pancaked out of existence
a time of wandering
is at hand
as has been written
in blood
in the book of centuries
STUMBLE
we were falling asleep
trying to left-brain
follow every
technicality after
technicality
(South Africa got no case
because we forgot
to insist on
a reply)
but we will show you
dispute if you
diss our
deep integrity
(bet after this you
wish we were
your legal
arm)
but where
were your human fire and
intensity
moments of raw humanity
saw only a shifting of the goal posts
a stilted conjuring act
none of that Irish flair and poetry
threatening to scorch the beams in
the palace roof bringing it tumbling down, everything upside
down
and tumbling down
the world tipped South and
the Southern Cross
pointing the way
dear next Dante
away
from Hell
and towards Heaven
yes no poetry, not a flash at all,
just stumbling responses
and mixed-up
papers shuffled like cards but
all of them
jokers
not a poet
in the pack
not one
homegrown (perhaps
you did
them in
as you did every voice in Gaza
especially
those of the poets
poems 2 die for