YOU
would have loved it
if you had had
the chance
to read this poem
sometime in the life
you are never
going to have
outrage, revenge,
brutal inhumanity
turned you into
a statistic
and I am
not the right person
to tell you
about love, life, the joy
of being a human being
with your death
I have
lost the faith
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
NOTOKNOW
crash the cymbals
bang the gongs
trumpet the
chosen
for they
are multitude
you are
so holy
you are
so handy
are so
holy handy
you have crucified
more souls this month
than in its entire
history
did the
little city of Rome
have slaughtered
so many
seems you
were you
to go Genghis
given permission
from
up high
and dig a hole
big enough to bury
all of us
while we all shout “hosanna”
and raise nailed
fists to the sky
GASHED
a butterfly
flapping its wings
can tip
the scales
in a chaos dynamic
as can
as many bombs and shells
fired and dropped
onto an area
the size of a postage stamp
as dropped on Laos, Cambodia
and Vietnam entirely
to save humanity
from itself
lucky
we have
the power of
these skygods
to look out for us
this
the most angelic
of all butterfly effects
FOR THE GODS
“which to Angels look like torment and insanity”
― William Blake
Made in the divine image
(thus
fabricated)
but how come
we get
so demonic
allow ourselves this
most poisonous pleasure
succumb to the devil
in us
from
time to time
to most
apocalyptic
of times
all the time
(that
divine image getting
pretty mutated)
and then (stop me
and contest this) when
we think the divine
we get
so divisive
cannot tolerate difference
become uniquely genocidal
and so
here the question begging
to be asked (so
superb in
question-
begging)
which of all these
blood-soaked, blood-
spattered
images
is the one with true sanction
the one
from above?
All
from
below
equally above.
UNDESERVED
take it away
take this away
keep
well to yourself
I refuse to read rhis
we refuse to read this
you have nothing
to sell
you havs sold everything
this poem is immired in
bloodshed and murder
holy lies,
false propaganda
the slaughter of poets
right next door, through
the barbed wire
right outside
your secure (impossibly
insecure)
contrived
golden cage
take them awsy
these poems, your writings
this so-called poetry
forgive me
forgive us
if we give them
the contempt we feel
where you tell us images,
symbols,
metaphors
we see
only blood, find only
complicity
no matter how much you
tell yourself
do everything human
and barely human
to convince us
it is
undeserved
and so
plesse go
we csn suffer you no longer
take your sad, broken
failure of
a Muse with you
and
just disappear
UNDERWORLD
it is a war on the underworld
and so
they burn everything
and so
they burn the sky
the shades of heroes
long gone stare
across
the river
in supreme disbelief
not since
the Children’s Crusade
has an army of the tiny
mustered to cross
souls
that did not
have a chance to live
REFAAT
so now
they have resorted
to killing poets
because
the pen is mightier
than the sword
it is said
and they took that literally
and
as is well known
James Bond carries
his old Q branch
speciality
of rocket-
launching pen
nothing
more deadly
which
you know,
we know
every spy agency knows this
it is something that
military intelligence
even one
caught false flag asleep
at its post
has prepared for
extensively
trained for
exhaustively
knows
only too well
and how can
target
be a poet
if they are all animals?
that is the syllogism for you
to
take to heart
the
reactive-armour
heart they
gave you
as you plough through
guilty humanity
steel-skinned in
your Merkava
kampfwagen
hunting for the tunnel
will take you down to Hell
where
poets, great poets,
will all be waiting
to raise a few things,
take issue with you
by hook
or by crook
endeavour to persuade you
that there is
something in
this voice, about
this speech
that justifies itself
TEXTBOOK
it is a textbook case
need to
kill every
shadow
every
evil
reflection
erase
as quiet as we can
with total
extreme
prejudice
kill
every word
before
story escapes
anything
gets written
anything
gets said
it is
a textbook case
textbook case
for all time
remembered
as
true, necessary
exercise
the pages
soaked in blood
forever
forgot
what
the law requires
what
the faith demands
BUT THE SYMMETRY IS PERFECT
and now we
know that horror
the depth and extent of
its shadow
cast forward in time
for over eighty years
but time
future and past
it is all meaningless
relative
is thing of moment and instant
running forward and back
causality, karma, punishment
for those beyond time
who escape the limits
of our bound
wisdom
racing
helter-
skeltet to collapse, inescapably
fast-erroding
know that shadow forward
is also
shadow back
and your horror now
is your horror then
we see
no sense, no logic,
but the symmetry: this is perfect
poems 2 die for