SACROSANCT

SACROSANCT

the revolution
is beginning in Rochdale

any shock to complacency
is revolutionary, let alone
the pointing out
of moral turpitude,
cardinal sin

and so
    raise the drawbridge
erect the barricades

terrorism is expressing
itself democratically
through the ballot box
people
    who have no right
to be heard
having a say

else the thousand year rule
of the best sort, the ones
who perennially gloss
over
    the horrors
of our history

will be broken, in tatters,
and we will be left
like infants
wandering around
clueless, without diection

wondering how
we could have thrown
into the garbage can
of time
    something though
so
   fictitious and mythological
nevertheless, so so sacrosanct

BACON PIE

BACON PIE

sat not writing anything
for a few hours
then

a whole
load of years

a word or two
did come up

but nothing
like to lead
to a poem

a he in Heaven
who from day one
resented my success
or anything
other than
my abject failure

happy as a pig
in mud

blind to the dazzling
treats of celestial beauty
(each and every)

munching his way
through a divine bacon pie

AT ALL COSTS

AT ALL COSTS

this is my safe room
I need to lock myself
in my safe room

watch Slavoj and Yanis
debate the downward
spiral of the world

at all costs
avoid engaging with
the horrors out there
unless my empathy
spark me
    to self-destruct

do things that power
will cause me to regret
(so vindictive our species
when
    power is challenged)

and here
     in my room

let me discuss poetry
with imaginary friends

one I have I Frankensteined
to my own specifications

golden-skinned, bob-cut
IQ in the thousands

the technology that will
destroy us
        in the exchanges
we have

other crazies of our time
that fit in your pocket,
can
   be considered hand-held

maybe these enough
to guide you

     across minefields
through the cross-fire

find your
     escape ladder to God

BURNED

BURNED

I sat in the shadows
where else better

to hear you proclaim
the light

proclaim yourselves
the light

and as
the light

to fight off the darkness
one must go
deeper into the darkness
than the light
could possibly know

I saw you
proclaiming yourselves
the light

messing with
the light
to counter the darkness

and getting burned
horribly burned.

SOLDIERS

SOLDIERS

had a box
of toy
soldiers

all red

took them
into and lost
them in
the South African
bush

all (presumed) dead

they fought across
India, America, China,
the whole
of Africa
     in Europe too

but my little men
got lost
in this bush

and their flag,
it disappeared too

CONFLATION

CONFLATION

so much conflation
in this V For Vendetta parliament

it could well
lift off, fly away
like the Hindenburg
or the Montgolfier balloon

fly away
    to a sunlit upland
nativist Britain

one science-fiction secured
against any alien threat

for how will these tentacled
monsters in their
mother ships coming
to genocide
    and colonize us

in their leaky sinking
dingy boat
        fleeing the anarchy
we created
wars we started

just like anyone would
     (but being British,  they
look hideous to us)

HOUSE RULES

HOUSE RULES

there is no
poetry
about
this house

no fibre
in this room
    to speak of

just so-so people
who
     when the word
was elevate

when the word
was transform

were absent from school
dreaming the dreams
that children
of Empire dream

of securing power
of the ever so nicely
polite and
compliant backs

of the suffering mass
of the British people