DIG

Tags

Empire, History, Humanity, Imperialism, poem, poetry, satire

DIG

the deeper
you dig
the less
the glamour

bust of marble
turned to
feet of
clay

the mighty
testimony of
the Colosseum

not enough sand
to swallow

all the blood
that came its way

CLEAR AND PURE

Tags

Colonialism, diamonds, greed, Imperialism, poem, poetry, South Africa, South African, wealth

CLEAR AND PURE

these tiny little
stones glitter
are like
diamonds except
that is
what they are

pure carbon

you can dig
a hole that
if it does not
go all the way
down to
Hell
fund an
Empire

can scar the Earth so deep
she never heals

I have family named
Kimberley since
my cousin, her father,
must have thought
her his
little diamond
his
precious little
tiny star

and if you take my ash
compress it enough
you can,
believe it or not,

make a
diamond out of me

what little light I have shown
in this life
captured for
eternity

clear and pure

JETSAM

Tags

Empire, Fall, island, Ocean, poem, poetry, sea

JETSAM

jetsam
between
my toes

washed in
by the tide

last remnants
of Empire unknown
too far
across the ocean

for me to
have heard anything
of its rise
and fall

to find in these poor
trace elements anything
worth reading
likely to
paint
a picture

all we
can assume is
that
it outlived it’s purposes
lost
its logic

sacrificed one
last gamble on a
failure of (so-called) intelligence

how it is
always with history

(as we
are always forgetting)

the machine
that is time

washes, rinses

subjects
to recycling

ROME

Tags

Empire, Humanity, poem, poetry, power, ROME

ROME

the golden greed of Rome
marble knuckle-dust
of her high achievement

template of how
it is done
how it
has to be
done

a power standing in the way
simply burn that
city, annihilate
a people, dissolve
that civilization

no words, no trace,
the text of a history
reduced to ash

reduced to what
the victory column says it is

in business of war, in
business of
State you
came such a long way

shining example of
what an
Empire
must be

LESSON

Tags

BREXIT, Britain, British, Einstein, Ending, Intellectual, loss, philosophical, poem, poetry, Shakespeare

LESSON

it started as gut feeling
then intellectual exercise:
draw ever narrowing circles

on this same blackboard
where the dust itself
magically transposed
into telescope looking
into ever-expanding galaxy

into tiny equation
that said everything

how human being is
light might
be turned to fire

no one reads those blackboards now
the world they were portal into
simply run out of everything
except billboard idea

the change so fast
that dust so volatile

a country that has wished
the worst days upon itself
rushing towards
its gorgeous nemesis
like a meteor

let me
try the virtue of patience
staring deep into
that chalk

iconic chalk you
might
add in, your fivepence worth
wishing to caricature

once there wax Empire, for all its deep sin,
this place concentric, its thinking radial

now nothing crosses
to these shores, we have made
ourselves taboo, insufferably precious

that poet whose words they wrote in chalk:
now there was a lesson!

WHEN I RETURNED

Tags

BREXIT, Britain, British, decline, Empire, Ending, entropy, poem, poetry, Postcolonial, postmodern

WHEN I RETURNED
“entrenched and calcifying
class stratifications”
Gary Younge

when I returned
everything was crumbling
but not in that happy
melt-in-the-mouth sort of way

a land of
broken statues

historical memories
grown ever more painful
with each passing year

once this
machine worked

once it ran on ahead
outstripped the pack
at full steam

but now how bleak
how dour
cement coloured skies
divulging near toxic rain

that somehow, magically,
stays within official limits
and so no one gets sick
no
discernible ailments

and there the images
that once rejuvenated
reminded us of
the great musical hall and
other popular traditions
feeding into
the great Beatlesque
transformations of identity

anarchy in the late 70s
along those stone cobbled streets
where my grandad
returned from war with
dream of starting a family

chipped, cracked
whose face is that
did they ever see this Britain, this
England coming

not just rejuvenated, but
rising from the dead
(form an
all-star dead rock band
with John and Jimmy and George
and Mary and Percy
who wrote such blistering
odes in mode
of truth to power)

but now
not a whimper of
that poetry

cannot call it
a wasteland because it’s all
too hypothetical, digital and
completely plasticated

no memory of
what went blitz as it
streaked across
the channel

what went bang and

what Guy Fawkes cracker could

remove every stone, every blade
of grass
the name of every city

those names whose esteemed truth you cling to
when theIr failures shone brighter
than the brightest searchlight

why we
need the darkness

for their
power to grow
and grow

empirically, imperially, universally,
exponentially

until the
bubble burst

so fatally
expand

SOOT (MOGG’S VICTORIANS)

Tags

Britain, British, Conservative, History, identity, ideology, Jabob Rees-Mogg, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire, Tory, writing

SOOT (MOGG’S
VICTORIANS)

let’s sit down nicely
drink some tea
suck out of thumb
a history

so charming it reads
like a fantasy

or, aliternatively (for
an alternate history)
go down to the pub
called “the Victorian”
looks time of
Dickens (of “what
the Dickens”) but

was built in 1980
refurbished 2008
place where
you may
tuck into the old
cuisine, feel
the old ways

none of the early
industrial, capitalist soot
Lord Snooty
would be
having none of

NEW

Tags

corporate, economic, feudal, Humanity, Medieval, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, postmodern, satire, servitude

NEW

the new Medieval world
fully postmodern, fully feudal
no single, absolute authority
political or spiritual

just so many Divine Emperors
Godkings, ten-a-penny

and you
reborn into slavery,
resurrected under the
sign of the corporate logo
branded into
your flesh

no Christ
to save you

POEM ON WORKERS’ DAY

Tags

poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, ROME, slavery, slaves, socialism, socialist, Spartacus, workers

POEM ON WORKERS’ DAY

so I pulled into Rome
on workers day
to debate liberty
with some slave owners

wore red
which I had difficulty explaining
would be our colour

not the colour of Empire, of
its soldiers and legions

there, within earshot, a Thracian gladiator training,
his sharp Greek philosophical mind
listening to the debate
taking

as he dies on the cross of ultimate rebellion
all that was said to its logical conclusion

SALUTE

Tags

Britain, Colonialism, Ovid, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, post-colonial, ROME, satire, Virgil

SALUTE

that dress uniform
so ill-fitting
looks quite ridiculous
this moment in time

perhaps, it
never did fit, this
you must be prepared at least
to accept

as I write, poet stashed in a border province,
no gleaming Virginian golden Imperial Eagle
whose lines
out of marble chipped
with proposed gravitas

that I find
preposterous

which is what I suppose you would expect
from one lounging Ovidian, my verse sprawling
like a jump-up township, “informal settlement”

but you in your uniform
defending an honour synonymous
with carnage

your lies on this Continent
in this country alone

should cost you nothing less
than eternal damnation

but who
am I, are we
to judge,

as karma would have it, you judging yourselves
with terrible irony, worst
of condemnations

some literary scribe of

post-
colonial kind

drafting your epitaph
(the English
so powerful, revelatory,
beautiful)

just stand in your scarlet
and give the salute