Tag Archives: genocide

JUST IN CASE

JUST IN CASE

waiting for them
to arrive

some anxiety
no small trepidation

outriders
an advance guard

what are they
going to do with us?

the media
is making every effort
to reassure us
serious journalists
have ridiculed our fears

have downplayed
the comments made by
these forces
      who swear by
all that is holy
they are
coming in peace
just bringing bombs
and bullets
tanks and rockets

just, as they say,
“in case”

BLOCKS

BLOCKS

we had our bullding blocks out
the whole carpet
was covered in them

so much fun to be had
building castles; founding
empires

our imaginations
free-wheeling
about the
tiny world of
the living room

and then, in a rather peverse
surge of destructive mind-set
we entertained
the thought of planes
raining down destruction
our tiny
      populations crushed,
destroyed
bombed out
   of existence

no shelter bullt, or place
of refuge

     it simply being a matter
of available
bricks

          and then we heard
real bombs falling
exploding in sticks until

we took
   a direct hit             so
forgive us

      if we can neither explain
nor suggest
                 our guess
at a reason

for we are dead now, as
yet undeclared

ARCHIVE

ARCHIVE

pitched up at the University
in time
    for my lesson

but there
was no lesson
no lecturer
no classroom

no
University

just dust and smoke and,
in the distance
the burning
archives

but perhaps I misinterpreted this
perhaps I
got in wrong
      in solitary confinement
you made it sound
so reasonable

ark of the archive
archive of the covenant

with no
archive how will they know
how I was disappeared?

SOLITAIRE

SOLITAIRE which way is the wind blowing? empirical, metaphysical equally valid as a question so let me sit here debating whether to play solitaire or show my solidarity writing a poem must not cannot absolutely unable to face the thought that one less casuality one less maimed or broken soul if I had sat playing solitaire rather than battling with each angry bitter word trying to shape them shape of this poem

COMPULSION

COMPULSION locked and loaded driven and compelled all in lock-step all doing your part to make this truly obscene sometime if there is hope and guilt and shame to be found you will be returned to the pain doubt and uncertainty of your best humble selves without which you will never come to assess how you let your last shred of humanity kill itself in an orgy of murder turned ecstatic joy

WITH EURIPIDES

WITH EURIPIDES it’s a strange theatre we are watching one where the actors leap off the stage slaughter the audience kill every single one of us I am sure neither the Elizabethans nor the Greek tragedians foresaw this development this total identification of player with character in this strange new brand of history play

TANGENTIAL

TANGENTIAL

as the camera pans
and tracks

keenly observant
as the eye of God

    note all of it
down
take it
      into evidence:

here a triptych of images
from the bowels
of Hell
            avenues of billboards
picturing the unspeakable

and here words untethered, words
     of wild association

and here
in consequence, dancing
                         on fresh graves

grinding down the monuments
crushing the flowers

all we
need is a river
                    coiled like
a serpent
        and we have apocalypse now

      *****

Excuse me
          apologies for

throwing you into this headlong
without thought of a preamble

felt you are
so familiar with this
terrain
          no introduction required

observe us now: myself
and an odd band
of philosophers
                in open formation

making huge headway as
we navigate the path
between
      battlefields

move from battlefield to
battlefield
      observing with horror

how far we have slid
from regime of rational truth

and the care
of the wise gods

finding the think tanks and
complexes and factories

structures wide
as whole cities, reaching
upward to Heaven
                      portals to
supremacy

foundaries for the steel and ghe stone for us to build
our lush monuments

utterly expressive of our
desire
     for eternal comfort
and peace

and as
      for the price paid

we do not
         let it run away from us
but
   (in tight formation now)
keep it
      carefully monitored

the debt in hard currency
always balanced
in blood

for philosophically speaking
this is
    a landscape of division
cruel dialectic
and dichotomy

those who did this finding
means to speak that
horror

      terrifying their madness
out of them

sculpting the darkness
                    of the species in
such
exquisitely warped
                      form

A WORD

A WORD

let me have a word

let me fill
you in
from a poetry

am going to need
twenty, maybe
thirty
thousand
characters already

oops1 sorry,
my apology

did I say
“characters”?

that was a bit
of a fatal Freudian slip

I meant to say “words”;
no sorry: lines

no I am completely wrong

in the wrong

to do this justice
I need to write
the final
death count
as poems