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Posts Tagged ‘consumerism’

A Specious Species ( fragment from ‘Book of Voices’)

Nothing sacred now but our innane, profane cataloging of elements.
Delighting amongst minute, defined aberrations of despair.
Tearing wings off angels, pinning demons, peeled, perused and wriggling.
A reduction to the economic, to the social pressure, to the self-deceived confection
Of low-fat, sugared reason.
Too smart to see the mirror’s edge,
Too self-congratulatory with resonant parsimony, (our rounded, generic, philistine voice),
To notice the hysteric, farting ghosts gesturing in the shadows,
(Who hold all the prompts, pimp and pump the lines).
All the angry poets implode with bluster, become politicians of meagre degree,
Smutty with oiled conviviality, lugubrious with reasonable desecrations.
This world, too sharp, too uncoloured, subtle and muddied,
Requiring battened-down, serial numbered, thirteen-digit barcoded, sixteenth- level encryption, a designed decorum, ready-mealed, chill-packeted
For whenever the sudden, certain hungers disturb the entertainments
Of the bland and chained perceptions.
Blake and his roaring spirits plummet burning from a pest-controlled heaven,
Nicely neurotoxined, polypropylened, thin smiled and NVQ’d.
History scrubbed and redactable, requisitioned, gilded, sold off.
Each empire and squalid colony vacuum-packed,
Date-stamped, forgotten in elusive, intellectual deep freeze…..

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Surely it cannot be sustained,
This comfort resting on the back of lies.

Etiolated, we stretch tall and wan,
Straining to leave behind every root, even.

Hungry for withered light,
This forced flicker of cloud vapours, this promise of better,
This regurgitated psychology.

Every home in each mausoleum city:
A crowded tomb where the living stumble mummified,
Salivating new updates.

All the small gods gone,
Growing potatoes and beans in hidden valleys, forgotten,
Resigned to wait.

Only the blustering bullies remain, the greedy,
Insistent on their protocols, their visions for growth.

A short experiment. Forced fruits. Temptation
Of full ripeness turning to ash, turning to dust.

Make way. Make way. We study the death of stars,
Anaesthetised, unaware of irony.

Remove from us our craft
And we shall all become beggars, lost, drowning sorrow
In rainbow-stained pools, slow and viscous folds.

They stretch tall and limp, loud, enabled.
Their magic: monotony and ennervation.
Their ropes, their chains: the promise for better times.

Inertia, the slow, wearing away, the blocking of roads,
The pinching, the slighting.

We retreat from day, back to our tombs.
Too tired, even, for our own dreams, we collapse into parody.

Etiolated, we stretch thin and will soon wither.
Redundant.

Somewhere near,
The small gods dig rocky soil and wait.

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THE GREAT ONES

We make our own monsters,
Feed them and sustain.
Dark mirrors
That crush, embitter,
Defining right,
Ripping nerve from muscle
Leaving insensate force
To rule and chain.
Their names
Will live forever
While the quietly good
Dissolve back
As if never.

Their rise is ever
Our failure.
A choice,
A strong dream
Promulgated, given,
Over-ruling a more
Delicate path.

(The willows with their wicks of flame,
The hollow, tumbling call of the owl,
The sky’s gentle rain, fingertip chrism.
The hearth cracks as it cools).

The demons we have cast out,
Those we despised and disowned,
They rage free now, running the world.
Exultant, sure, unconstrained,
They know the fertile, dark earth,
They taste the mellow, crumbled humus,
The undigested decay of hopes,
The ephemeral, hesitant prayers
Laced through with doubts.
Wherever they step,
There is the cooling shadow
Of their triumph, the withering
Of breath, the tunnelling of sight.

(On the still air of morning, dew and mist,
A wood pigeon sails, glides, broad-keeled,
Down to its new nest, its new mate.)

Fire of mind spits and blusters,
Fire fanned and racing, consuming
To continue, eating itself, moving on.
Ashes, dust, smoulder, we eat all, move on.
A bitter combustion lacking all restraint,
Lost in itself, howling, ever hungry.

(The six lokas gently dance,
A play of blossoms, syncopated motion.
Gentle rattle, the bone ornaments,
As rainbow dakinis sway cloudwards.)

The rebels refuse to see any ineffable now.
Enough, they think: a trick that breeds complacency.
The will of Heaven: a slave chain.
Deceit they know: deceit they expect in all.
Their flowers that flourish are the bloom of pain,
The mistaken identity, the immortal secret.
Inchoate, needing all, it grows in secret,
Displacing order with hierarchy,
Growing its own executioner.

These are the Great Ones,
The Immortals, draped in gore.
Do not turn away nor shudder.
Only a clear morning gaze will cool them.
Only a tear-fall of bright dew will wash.
Refuse the spark to fury and fight.
Refuse the glory, refuse the judgement.

Our medicine. What shall be our medicine?
Measured poisons, a taste of death,
A return, a clearing of spaces,
An emptying, an unwinding,
A gesture of removing fear,
A small laughter, a shrug.

What shall be our medicine,
What our poison?
Stillness is an action.
Silence an answer.
No choice, still a choice.

Still the choice.
Remain,
Unhindered.
The roaring fires extinguish themselves,
A transmigration of souls.

**

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