Tag Archives: war

SCRIPTURE

SCRIPTURE

thick smoke pouring
skyward indicating
target-rich environments

things
balanced on
a scalpel-sharp
knife edge
nuclear option
not least of all

and here I am in
the basement stack
a year before
we met
used to chat
in this exact place

half
a century ago

here I am
deep down in the
bowels of the University library
(the same
library destined
to burn)

reading
the Upanishads, wondering
about the nature
of consciousness,
transcendence and
this thing
they call the
soul

outside the thick rain clouds
hitting us with an
insane deluge
as they cross
the mountain

and
me diving deeper into
these sanskrit scriptures
(in translation)

losing all
sense of
space and time

the ghost presence of that
briefest moment
of being
together,

swirling about me
unseen, promise of
something
beyond special
never destined
to be

those thick clouds rising
above an expanse
of ferocious
flames

this is not going
to end well

chance that
what ends it
ends everything

so much
for all of us to lose,
we
played this so badly
so stupidly,

the laws of physics
that tell us
we are all
if small
matter

infinite energy
a small Sun a
flash of light of
miraculous intensity

and
crazy as it sounds, obessive
truly

the balance
slipping, tipping

thinking of you

something of the truth
of you there
in those scriptures

HALF-TIME SCORE

HALF-TIME SCORE

oodles of suffering
eating this icecream
without sprinkles

the icy cold vanilla
travelling down
a tooth nerve

but, hold your horses,
let’s get the half-time score
from the West Asia war
all those cruise and
ballistic missiles leveling
high rises as if
they were fragile confections

death feasting on the complicit
as ravenously as
with the innocent

death longing
for a war that
will annihilate us all
nuclear winter us
out of this,
bad joke of a time

THERE

THERE

there
at the edge
of wine-dark sea

justice and power
at loggerheads

power ganging up
determined
once and for
all
to crush justice
calling in
all an sundry

ash gray confederacy
of forces and armies
desperate to
cleanse
   five thousand
years of history
wipe thousand years
off the map

and they have been
redrafting, redrawing,
rewriting everything

this is prime nineteenth
century in a
Jason Vorhees mask

maybe
    before
one evil, stupid misjudgment
kills us

we will all trundle back home
call it stalemate
shake on a peace
to last until
new duplicity

there is no
decisive, definitive end
that brings honour
or any redemption possible

final resolution that
hope for justice deserves

GARDEN

GARDEN

hurry up
final brushstrokes
finish that portrait

write
that chapter
conclude your
epilogue

they say
shock and awe
    sturm und drang
they are
going to
decapitate the State
it will be a quick campaign
over in hours

I am neither tactician
nor strategist
but I would beg to
disagree (always
overthink things
a curse that genetics
handed down to me)

but for you
I would give time
infinite time if
I had the power
and I feel
   you might have
requested it

for what
in all you do
does the soul
not require?

when
    our music is all
discordance, dissonant
chaos symphony

and me
in this chaos space
so at odds
      with your careful
subtle
cultivations of tranquility

you
   with your precise
place to stand, viewpoints
and perspectives

place outside
this poem
         space of refuge
green sanctuary

everywhere
       nothing but sweet
sanity – – lesson, message
example
for the world

but have you now
quietly captured
        in my mind’s eye
(and apologies for
the trickery that
did allow
     me to intrude)

watching you
at work
    patient, careful, loving
every moment
knowing
       the secrets of the soil
how to make things flourish

painstaking, just a half a degree shy of perfection (yet
on the right side)

a teacher too, but I observe
in awe
     a lesson here, not
for me uniquely

but out there, right there
place of deserts and gardens
where
    life could
not be more sacred

bodies of bombed schoolgirls
lined up in rows across
the sand
        over four score (to give
it a Biblical number
a collateral quota)

faces covered (saving us
the trauma of
God’s maimed body,
disfigured image)

transparent truth
warning to
take care
    with what you
make of God’s image

image you
        carry into war

with prayers
for annihilation, banner
in blood-soaked hands

hurry
with your garden

last hope
we all have

IN OUR HOUR OF NEED

IN OUR HOUR OF NEED

so these are
our great leaders
the one we asked for,
begged for, swore
binding oaths
we would give
our lives
in the holy
protection of

most sacred symbols
creme de la creme

steering Ship
of State between
Scylla and
Charybdis

charting the perfect
course to ensure
the entire crew gets
devoured by
the former
before the Ship
itself gets
swallowed by
the latter
pulverized into
microscopic
perhaps subatomic bits

no fear
no fear
     enough spin
doctors on the shore
think tanks well
bunkered
to call this
what it no doubt is:
perfect solution;
strategic victory

reassure us 100, 200,
3000% in our
our need

and yet
our poets and philosophers
(bless them) the ones
already marked for death camps
but presently well
and living

try to
get through to us
contact us to
tell us

all
  common sense
is now
gone to Hell

something so fucked up
about our evolution

and all our voting, political,
social, economic
and natural selection processes

centuries we had
to see
    for ourselves, live
and learn

tragedy we didn’t

TABANDA

TABANDA

The President is boldly
congratulating himself
on his essential
pre-emptive strikes
on a vicious, terrible people

I met one of these vicious
monsters decades ago
(met quite a few
but this one
I remember)
pulled the short straw
and had
to teach her English

all the middle-aged
British tutors at the college
horrified at her
reputation, flatly refusing,
worst of all
    was going to be
one on one
me and her, head to head
bound for confrontation
nothing for
     her ever good enough
no possible placation
hope of pacification

so I passed
through that door

looked around the room
no sign of mortal threat
no sign of imminent danger

just
Tabanda
sweetest student I
ever had
Libra glyph on
medallion
about her neck

not that I
knew, barring her name,
any of that yet

trying to
introduce myself, words
a bit stuck
not really coming out

needing to
make an adjustment, take
everything in my side

never before taught, met,
a woman of such
astonishing beauty

crazy the
lengths we need
to go to demonize.

THIS PICTURE,

THIS PICTURE

it is not what it seems
nothing is
what ot seems

an armada
sailing East
sailing across a
sea of mist, across
Homer’s wine-dark
smooth as
glass
    could not
be unruffled

and in
its secret stockpile
many a
noose of light
for the Sultan’s turret

ships
    big as cities
whose meaning be war
war
   their entire industry
gliding to
their assigned
positions, making headway

nothing being
wrong with this picture

everything wrong
we can
no longer see

everything, everyone,
insisting it is all
a bad dream

the night, so dark
mother of
storms
      about to
break

the story
       so thin we are
about to see through it

far too late
to do anything

NO MAN’S LAND

NO MAN’S LAND

I dream
of the two of us
out in no man’s
land

making love on a bed
of thorns, barbed
wire, razor wire

perhaps
you dreamt it too
it is a dream
we shared

bodies panzered up
shock and awe, clattering together

love, in any sense of the term,
a flagrant euphemism
for whatever it was we sought,
hoped to achieve
desperate
to hit our mark, believing
if we graduate
to this level
things get incandescent

trading stigmata, as we stagger
towards that universe
beyond words, outside language

overhead the Sun
still
   in control
weighty, central, utterly
orthodox
frowning upon this
nonsense

terminally skeptical,
and yet
      so vulnerable

open
  to crucifixion, for
us to bang nails through

turn
   that powerhouse of
fusion into
one giant circular coffin