NO SOONER
no sooner than they
amputated her
legs
and arms
no sooner
than they shot them
all
execution style
than
I forgot
thought it best
not to remember
better one of ths carefree,
untroubled people of
this dead planet
the be haunted
for the entirety of
what remains
of my
life
remains of human life
DEBT
wanted to
write a little poem
about suffering
about genocide
but
spam and telemarketing
rained down
from Heaven like
peverse
pay-later manna
and incessant reminders and
encouragement
to settle my
outstanding
debts wonderful, this world
once God
declared for capitalism
poetry and
profit
such excellent bedfellows
like lovers
in Hell
and talking of Hell
there is
fear and consideration
of media troll monsters
children of the children of
the fat uncles and
aunties
who battleshipped the streets
in my small English town
so no poem
I’m sorry
no tiny increment to
add to this struggle
you are
on your own again, I’m
afraid
nothing more than ashamed failure
(with the rest of the world
accused by
this legal Penthisilea
I stand
not with
my brave South African
compatriots
far from this dock)
TO END ALL WARS
you call me
an animal
but you
are the ones
who kill
poets
shoot them
through the back
of
the head
civilized style
execution style
and amongst animals
who could be
less worthy of
life
than poets
what poet anywhere
(looking at
you, Wilfred Owen,
Erich Maria Remarque)
did their bit
for humanity
by winning a war
(the war to end all wars)
JUNGLE JINGLE
jungle rules
outside
inside:
victory images mixed
with advertising jingles
as the Egyptian mystics
put it: as above so below
as their neighbours
rephrase that:
smoke
and shadow
fog of war
as inside so outside outside inside
god-like delusion everywhere
ARIEL
Looking for a tunnel
to hide in
not to
shoot from
roll mines
into
looking for paper
to write on
got no pen and ink
have to use
my finger
and the blood
seeping through my skin
heard an interview with
a veteran
touched my heart
switched sides
he moved to align
himself with humanity
away
from war machine
no use to them now
at all
at all
lost his tunnel vision.
IN
you are in
now
we have bolted
you in
closed all the hatches
no escape
it’s our lenses
you will be looking through
you will be wearing our
combat masks, goggles,
glasses and visors
our Kevlar that stops
the bullet with your
name on it
nothing personal
from your enemy, they
just hate you
now you are just like,
in fact identical,
to every other
killing machine
you are
in now
no way of telling
when, if, you can ever leave
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
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
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
COLD JOE
Joe
you are old
you are old
your brain
is cold
seems you need
something
thermonuclear
to give
it a spark
get it working.
poems 2 die for