A Cacophony of Grey

—I’m afraid of this new world, nothing is certain, nothing to rely on…
~ Overheard fragment of a conversation between two women on a bench.

“The infant hydrocephalus who sat
at a bridge end, by a dried-up water-course
and fiddled…” ~ T.S Eliot

1. Surfing the Apocalypse

Running malnourished into the welcome arms
of Forgiveness, familiar distant love…a hug from an Aunt.
She’s got the staggers, (afternoon birds beneath the strawberry tree)
has knocked back six shots of schnapps. The plasma head behind her
says ‘everyone’s a spy now…like in China.’
Patriotism, that supermodel sexy bitch, tears off her dress
and then, when the crowd is more aroused than shocked
(a billion views on YouTube for the dropping of a frock…outrage?
I think not) because she is beautiful any malevolence is gentle
(only a few are moved to boo and these sink beneath the whistles).
But suddenly center stage a new player, jaw set with malice, shoulder
coiled for a straight arm punch, produces a blade and murders her
(the audience sprayed with blood). He guts her like a beast, practiced,
precise, with lust. —Beauty. Skin. Deep, he murmurs, untouched.

There are still Kings and Queens
tho’ it’s a dying thing. We have presidents and CEOs, people you can
trust (they say) who shark us at the game. We elect, we do their
bidding. War is cleansing.

Ninety six years since the pit was opened and the demons came
screaming…the earth has started healing but the World is still
broken. We’re all born to this, all the diggers dead, Granddads’
caved in head still haunts the halls.

In HD digital today soldiers are just stooges in black and white re-runs.
Only God gets the joke in this comedy of errors. What dread beast
approaches the breast of Peace, its mandibles gnawing?
What secret bones support the now redacted
carcass of the pageant winning Patriotism?
A gang of party crashes raped her pre-debutant
(that’s how the shrink diagnosed her nymphomania).
She whispers in the ear of the mass of Man she’s fucked
(so easily swayed) that unless they believe the Government stable,
Judges objective, politicians friends, that the stranger
in the alley behind you means no harm, that a job is a living, then
they will kill you.

2. Halitus Phylum

Those pale cold days of pigeons in the warehouse alcoves
unsettled in the wind, have given way to the
clamor of black cockatoos in coconut trees on the beach.
The corners of darkened halls and people shouting
in the streets, erased hushed beneath the sea.
How have you imagined it?
The end, the whole illusion
collapsing. A matinee disaster,
a salesperson shouting, the
same slogan for eternity, a nightmare bought
on by fever? Have you thought about it?
You are worth it you are worthless you are worth it, you
are worthless. Fingernails, petals.

Azrael has an eye for all of us, (vision fades with age)
moans like bruised children who suicide (a few then more)
to observe this burning one must be blind.
The breath breeds virtue, violation and ambiguous consent
a hiatus to a place a refuge from the flames we dance on
uncertain but then assured —the serpent again becomes
a worm.

The builder of the brow of passion cultivates its ruin,
—it is he that loathes the human and his daughters
the sweet and sad rhetoric of someone’s mother singing
them to sleep
melody that wanders gracefully beneath impregnable
cliffs.
Screams from a factory in flames…
The shrilling organ an engine failing on an airbus
Divers floating victims from plane wrecks
bodies all bloated and the same.

The judicious arise and wander
casual through the great halls of the
sacrificial and the sacrificed.

Death a slender gestation.

3. Dark Suits & Shadow People

of
power Within
these broad castles, palaces,
governmental collapse
force breached, solid(ar)ity
metallurgical death knells on the beach
home a market dead in the impregnable park dead
malcontents in the halls
pushers in the doorways
whores in the stairwells
sharks in the lobby
invented indebtedness legislation stuffed in the arse
machinery free values unstructured heart attacks on buses
financial ruin public amusement
public ruin financial amusement
death
before
living
end
before
beginning
o inverted world
is it true?
The television executive hires men to abuse him.
He collects rare books of the Devil’s composition
by Dictators (genocide for breakfast).
You could get your father to shoot you in the garden.
Like learning as a child to ride a bike, that’s the fastest
you’ve been under your own volition, a fine vintage
of Freedom, but then you hit the gravel with your face
-your first crucifixion… cold as the winds blowing on the
House of Windsor it is for those CEOs. Captured with
a wide angled lens, by kidnappers in Ecuador, with his
wife’s best friend, with a rent-boy, with ‘the last who lives’.

—