poetry – Page 161 – poems 2 die for

FARM WITH A BARN

the farm
with a barn

and a silo
underground

wants
a world
without
consequences

world
for and
by
the exceptional

for your
disinformation

as their
forever playground

DEAD

morality is dead
it died before
our very eyes

both slow
lingering death

and death like lightning
death by lightning

but don’t
say anything

let us pretend
morality is still alive

otherwise
they will shoot
us where we stand
or where
we kneel (execution
style)

as is
their moral duty
moral right

ANYWAY

my love
was not enough

stuttering, halting

it was
never enough

and so
we lost each other
lost life

hardest price
to pay

we paid
it anyway

love
the commodity
cannot bear
exchange

INCOMPLETE

IMCOMPLETE

do not learn

we never
learn

what have we
learnt?
don’t hold back
just
let rip

tell me
tell me!

look at me
pay careful attention
thorough scrutiny

all those years
gone to waste

sitting down

lying down

standing up

writing something
learning nothing

what in here
worth speaking?

out there
worth reading?

what
good are books
when there are tanks
in the street?

indiscriminate slaughter
clearing a path house
to house

room
to room

every alley
every precinct

this book of horrors
as yet unwritten
as yet incomplete

one two
three four;
every paragraph

breaking
every wall

VILLAIN

each of us are a villain
in some origin story

my phone alarm sings
celestial cosmic sounds
at 5.20
in the morning
(exact
moment I was born
making me an
ascendant Aquarian)

and news of airstrikes
all over the media

preparations
for the SuperBowl, one
week away to see
which team of
scarlet supremos

will
be champions of the world

the world
being America, it is a
killer synecdoche,

poet as villain

not with you
thetefore against you

further from grace
with my every little diatribe

SAD TO THINK

SAD TO THINK

can’t put
my finger on it

something seems
off

the wind feels odd
the TV
looks wrong

everyone I hear
feels that
the truth
must be hidden
cannot be
uttered at
all costs

the plot
has been lost
the record stuck

and those who
deny what we see with
our own
eyes

are believed

cannot put my
finger on it

seems like
the beginning of the end

we had
our run, had our time

self-destruct is
now on
override

sad to think what
we might have become
could have been

SUFFER NOT

SUFFER NOT

suffer not
the children
to come
unto me

whole
and alive

or in
bags of pieces

CASCADE

leaflets cascade
Iittle
life-parachutes
they

flutter down

tell you
that if you are
at all disinclined
to follow
the stairway
to Heaven
at this
very jumcture

you had better leave
ditch everything
you had better move

because
whatever ladders you thought
doors gates windows

they are all
about to be removed
pancaked out of existence

a time of wandering
is at hand

as has been written
in blood
in the book of centuries

GREY

GREY

fell
into a world
of colour

the colours
so Heavenly
saturated, warm

but immediately
I felt so
lost,
uncomfortable

my inner palette,
to the best of my knowledge
only running from slate
to the lightest
of ash greys

VICTORY

VICTORY

You were screening
a film about your victory

when news
of your defeat, your
complete defeat came

sudden consternation
in the projection box
reels were exchanged
and that
film replaced

by one so different,
one that dealt
with the death of hubris,
end of arrogance

and a way that slowly,
painfully
the sins and crimes

might be
confessed before humanity;
some redemption take place.