THANKS

THANKS

thanks for protecting me
against evils known and
unknown

possible abd impossible

real
and imagined

and even
imagined-imagined

thank you for protecting me
from my self, all my
avatars and handles

thanks thanks thanks thanks
thanks
             but no thanks

I’m too useless, uneducated, over-educated, uninformed,
misinformed, disinformed,
to know
anything anyway

do what i am
supposed

do what
is required

follow the plan
execute nicely and neatly
alomg the dotted line
tick my tock tick
the right box

be the perfecr customary
idiot you can package
in brown paper

send off to
         war (just saying, just
saying!)

prime human material
ready to be exploited

smothered
      in your love

suffocated
with affection

and now technology
world of
        science fiction horror

alien
event horizon

thanks
     but no thanks
thank you for protecting me
from it

must say this
demonic technology

was only
       a pleasure, a joy
in this shit life you
         do manufacture

milliobs of us
zillions of us
         having fun, being
creatuve
feeling the same way

not feeling all
that mind control, becoming
other, changing shape
changing form
as our world turned pink
and then red
and then,
    as that poison did its work,
complete Chinese
Communist Party

wonder what
     we can do
now its gone, Devil
loving hands
                  idle

need a new vehicle to
go same-same to
ridicule this nonsense
throw
   your democracy
back at you

mock, scoff, laugh, sing,
dance, ridicule

tell a little
needle sharp truth
to ridiculous power

AT THE READING

AT THE READING

the poets are gathered
in the auditorium

make the final checks
to see nothing wrong
with their uniforms

doped and dragooned
the audience
        off-loaded from trucks
are marched to
their seats

essence
    of the system

one attendee
one seat

     was the promise decades
prior that won
the landslide election

whose benefeciaries are
here too

armour-plated limousines
as
    gatekeepers of
fine standing

Ah what
a sight!

      same old same old
every poem
basically the same
so
   no sense
in expectation

indeed
best thing that could happen
before a line is recited
a stanza
is read

is that something
from smallest inconvenient
hitch
   to extinction level event

stops everything in
its tracks

temporary reprieve
      or a long long wait

a few million years
    to the cockroaches that
survived
and evolved

get their act together
   to run a better, more
poetic,
     democratic

and yes,

         human event