poetry – Page 143 – poems 2 die for

BLOTTED

the lie spreads
seeps into, flows
across the page

as soon
as pen hits the page
commiting such
magnificent untruth
to screen
and paper

you need
air-tight law
to protect the lie
from truth’s
unholy power

make sure it
feels safe

has the space
required
to enact its alchemy

turning blotted
copybook

ink spilled across
so many fronts
to rivers
oceans

of blood
(enough
to paint the world
twice over)

EARLY

going to bed early
want to, and so let me,
sleep through thr most
gorgeous
and most
harrowing dreams

and those dreams
that provide a mixture,
a melange
of the gorgeous
and what is harrowing

a new, alien world,
full of new vistas, images,
stories, beauties,
fears and horrors

where the monstrous
otherness we fear
is what
we brought ourselves

so leave me in this ghost
world of such promise and
achievement
and, yes, abject failure

wake me
if ever
it should set itself
the task of a journey
of transformation

both outside and
in, searching in the hope
that it did
not die

can still
be found
lomg thought lost,
murdered, imprisoned,
coopted

its
true, better self

going to bed early
so
much to sleep through

SPRING CLEAN

wish I was young enough
and close enough geographically
to join you in
your protest encampment

a swatch of colour, a carnival
vibe, foregrounded against
the grey architectural
ersatz imitation of things
Athenian that marks
your alma mater’s
mode of academic being

the joy of community,
diversity
and alternate, far more
utopian
student perspectives

is not a thing to be tolerated
by a militaristic, utterly confused
and confounded, imperialistic regime
you just so happen
to call home

you are subjecting to a fantastic
targeted spring cleaning

throwing out the old
that you do not need
that all
too painfully
does not fit in

STEPS TAKEN

wash the blood
of these steps

scrub the plaques,
the statues until
it all looks
pristine
ersatz Athenian

shepherd in your student flock
they are your volk
you are
responsible for
their
safe-
conditioning
(yet still might have to
get some tasered;
still might
have to get
some heads beaten in)

sitting securely in your much prestigious chair,
huge and padded
to signal desinated role, supposed supreme authority
power
totally screwed in

and yet
to
remain on
the safe side

better
stuff your ears with wool
turn headphones
up to full

for the skies are screaming,
the heavens thundering,
the ghosts of great
intellectuals who
graced your halls
are Siren-shrieking

throwing out of kilter
all yout factory
procedures

your vaunted
education
is nothing
but lobotomy

duplication of
all
that is
crass, all that is brutal
all that is pitiless,
merciless

apotheosis
of horde

SLAP-BANG

I took Socrates
on a tour of the campuses
in turmoil

they were peaceful
but then the cops
and every kind
of president demanded
they be taught a lesson

I watched the old,
self-appointed philosopher
shake his head
wondering if these
were not,
given the architechure, given
the phalynx formations
graphic scenes from
a battle
slap-bang in the middle
of the Peloponnesian War

NEON

darkness has a logic
for every logic
an anti-logic

but
let us forget this
and proclaim
a realm
of Neon

neon blossoming
on trees of perspex and plastic
glass abd steel

in the rain
these flowers
beyond perfect
in a
forest of neon
such enchanted being

no one will have need of
darkness
the very

thought of
darkness
for whatever reason
ever again

OPENED

SALVATION

mind your.
Ps and
Qs
watch
your gramnar

any mistake
they will pounce on it
use it agsknst you

who.would have thought it
this is
hearf of darkness
double standard
beyond double
standard

the belly of the beast
where
eveey madness, every
distortion
every Frankenstein monster
of the political
imagination

they are all
engineeted

and it
is venom to them
this tiny protest, voice.
for humanity
is every
kind of toxin

it is Holy water
to a wicked witch

it is
a powsr that shocks
since no one foresaw it
in their
wildest dreams
no one
thought you had

a light
in this darknesss
out salvation

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