power – Page 2 – poems 2 die for

AWAY

CHILI FRIES

went to the drive
through at
the fast food
outlet

came away
with a couple of
presidential candidates
and a load
of chili fries

the candidates
were not
up to much
looked nothing
like as advertised

but the fries were
piquant

and were not
crawling
with grotesque lies

OPENED

THANKS

thanks for protecting me
against evils known and
unknown

possible abd impossible

real
and imagined

and even
imagined-imagined

thank you for protecting me
from my self, all my
avatars and handles

thanks thanks thanks thanks
thanks
but no thanks

I’m too useless, uneducated, over-educated, uninformed,
misinformed, disinformed,
to know
anything anyway

do what i am
supposed

do what
is required

follow the plan
execute nicely and neatly
alomg the dotted line
tick my tock tick
the right box

be the perfecr customary
idiot you can package
in brown paper

send off to
war (just saying, just
saying!)

prime human material
ready to be exploited

smothered
in your love

suffocated
with affection

and now technology
world of
science fiction horror

alien
event horizon

thanks
but no thanks
thank you for protecting me
from it

must say this
demonic technology

was only
a pleasure, a joy
in this shit life you
do manufacture

milliobs of us
zillions of us
having fun, being
creatuve
feeling the same way

not feeling all
that mind control, becoming
other, changing shape
changing form
as our world turned pink
and then red
and then,
as that poison did its work,
complete Chinese
Communist Party

wonder what
we can do
now its gone, Devil
loving hands
idle

need a new vehicle to
go same-same to
ridicule this nonsense
throw
your democracy
back at you

mock, scoff, laugh, sing,
dance, ridicule

tell a little
needle sharp truth
to ridiculous power

STALWART

one day
not upon a time
the plants
elected
to row straight

electrifying with joy
stalwarts everywhere
every
treacle-thick politico
in
wotlds known
and worlds
unkown

fairy tale
and the political
racing
to conclusion
running in parallel

Oh happy day
exclusion of the middle
extermination
of the extremities:
it’s so
axiomatic, lowest-
common-denominator
raised to the heavens
square
root of zero
dutifully delivered

and in the woods so
much smoke
the trees so
covered in soot you
cannot see the leaves

but
Pan’s man, fabulous
Guillermo has
set a fantastic trap
they are
bound
to fall into

surrounded by thorn bushes
in the light of their shadow

you could not
do anything to look
more enchanted
surpass the mystery

conjuring up
a string of images

burrowimg in
wormknv deeo

teaching us how
to align, accept
the imperfect, rough
and smmoth

how to accept what is
for what it is
become part of
the picture

native to this place

OVID IN EXILE

in the Senate
on the Forum

they are not talking about it
no one is talking about it
Ovid
is in exile

the young Emperor
Augustus, formerly Octavian,
friend to the poets, patron of the arts

has blotted his copybook,
sent Ovid
into exile

no headlines, not a
scrap of graffiti
to record this event

too much truly momentous
on the horizon
to let this
sublime moral moment
undercut, let alone
overshadow
the great transformation

civil war over
the Caesar legacy entrenched
for who knows how long,
even the most conservative guess
will kick off with
a century or two, a good
few centuries

an Empire has been born
and Ovid missed its birth
for Ovid
is out of town

and, to be honest, who
really cares,
gives a damn about the impact
of this on his poetry

lately become
what was promised, always
promised

as the statues go up
to enshrine the new image

Ovid is in exile
and Rome and its fictions
transformed as expected
continue to be

and always
same tune, old words,
old laws
and prohibitions
jazzed, re-
fashioned to fit
the glitz of
an age

double-speakers
forked-brain thinkers
trouble-
breeders
in the extreme

you
will be
the death of us

our death
our human
mutilation

as you
have been,

throughout history
from
word first
recorded

so many
millions and now
perhaps billions

lives of suffering
to attest to this

THE LIGHT

they switched off
the light

but could not
switch it back on again
or maybe
just refused

leaving the world
nor in state of day
neither that of night

just in that limbo darkness
betwixt and between

where all
their machinations
burgeon and thrive

reducing the value of
all that is
loved, all
that is life

taught
from the cradle to do so

finding this state
of being so
infinitely agreeable

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