Trinity

I've had with all those freakin' cats,
All those women fixing what she'd eat,
Or what they think she'd eat,
She'd race down Lexington,
Rather than touch more crab and avocado;
You and it make her (and me) more sick,
Than peanuts, cola and cold baths,
In the wind off The Cam,
After rations and week-old biscuits,
These whole girls, asserting some frail illness,
Are like cheap, 10 cent firecrackers,
With the fuses blown out by the Trinity Test,
Vaporized into next door and next week,
Still just waiting for the missing hero,
Which she (so manifestly) left out,
Not even parenthetical in her worlds,
(A clue you Harpies – it's all about her in there,
No sympathy or dread for you inside her head),
And wait! I have breaking news for all of you,
In your catalogue kitchens,
Preparing her “Happy Death-Day” cakes,
You think she'll RSVP?
I know she won't;
She's dead and won't enjoy it,
Standing there with all your friends,
All of you bated,
Waiting for her to say something,
You'll not quite understand,
You think you're sick and I suppose you are,
Not being so and yet longing,
For the solitude of a quiet ward,
With not-too-many crazies,
News again girls!
The others will all be well-and-truly mad,
Really off-the-scale,
All the meters over in the red,
Chasing you down the corridors,
Or flashing you when the nurses
(big, old bouncers By the way),
Aren't looking,
Or listening to the football,
Or trying it on with your only friend in the day room, “Place of safety” they call it,
And you seem to think you want to wake up there,
With the Valium seeping in,
And the world all soft,
While the wind lifts the detergent-white curtains,
And the crisp sheets clasp you in,
Like your mother on a rainy, summer morning,
Truth is you might be tied in,
Strapped and wrapped,
Like a maddened tom cat,
While they pump you full of Lithium,
And other chemical night-sticks,
Struggling after a while to find any veins left,
Perhaps you even think the ECT is cool,
Another badge of belonging or of not belonging,
Which is it today?
Membership of the club or the outsiders crew?
We want to know, if only for the paperwork,
But I can't warn you what this will be really like,
Maybe you could think of Trinity again,
That weird black sphere of lightning and hell,
Balled up in a split second,
Before all those demons leave the box,
With hope in the lead,
Racing for space and oblivion,
And you alone on that bed,
A crushed nutshell in a pile of them,
Just one of the mad and bad,
This is The Atomic Age,
And we are all just atoms,
Decaying from the radioactive elements of youth,
All the way to lead and lesser things,
Beaten down to inert metals,
Each of us a simple particle in the matter,
Which makes us all and everything,
And in Trinity we trust,
Betterment and godless bombs for you and me.

Complex Arguments

We are children of The State,
Fit for only nursery rhymes,
The metre of the nationalist,
Igniting the blood with anger,
Fuelled with artless argument,
That when observed will fail,
Like logic, spin and anti-spin,
To make annihilation,

A pilot only needs coordinates;
And querying his target,
Is simply insurrection?
But shaky politics is passed,
In empty houses, pressed to vote,
On nothing with a shrug,
A bell tolls in the members’ bar,
To lift cold gimlet eyes,

This is the stare of arms,
The dealer made of metal,
Gun metal if you want to know,
Funded through from prep,
To boardroom with a sneer,
This is the invention of
Inertial Dismay, Secured,
With mother’s money,

But now, the viscid senses,
Stirred by the scent of blood,
Are brushed away with mirth,
And rushed due diligence,
This is our worked solution,
Dismissed or left unmarked,
We are children of The State,
Ignored and forever ignorant,

The Last Dog Rose

Time is cruel, its measure forms,
Such barriers against our progress,
Stripping the world of syllables,
And rhythm until its simple blanks,
Are all that’s left to break a line,
Flowers wedded to design not space,

And if plants can muster thought,
And memory they must feel pain,
At loss, a grief for the ripped up,
Hedgerow, Autumn’s burning,
The unplanned fields of generations,
Turned to smoke and ash and lime,

Here’s our last pathetic Dog Rose,
Clinging to dead wood as if in flood,
It fears the current to the sea,
And salt which scours dry earth,
When artificial tides have turned,
And left the land for structure,

It drops its pastels to the stream,
That takes them greedily,
To drown or burn, no matter which,
(The project has no preference),
And we’re clear of them for ever,
Except for the wretched dealers,

Offering a precious stem for love,
A flower for your feelings and your bed,
It will sink beside you overnight,
Until disposed of in distractions,
Wrought from the pretend world,

And all are gone,

And all is gone.

A Medic Shouts for Bandages

I do not remember anything,
This unknown damage seems to be,
Just existing, always there,
But with eyes forced shut,
And my arms strapped down,
I only sense my own nerves,

The place of my face and eyes,
Runs red or white or blue,
With liquids, undefined by me,
Maybe viscous, slow-flowing,
Perhaps something thinner, rarer,
Brain fluids seeping towards earth,

It smells calm like camping,
But what breathes for me,
Is some form of blank mystery,
This enriched air forcing itself,

Inside me like a rough kiss,
But all the time wet and dripping,
As remembered summer rain,
Close before the second psalm,

Something is a slight burn,
A warm trickle in all my vessels,
An army holding the line of pain,
In an uneasy truce on the perimeter,
Out there in murmuring lands,
Wild with auxiliaries,

In this strange confusion of flesh,
And wet earth about my face,
Something not me, is tugging,
In the space behind my eyes,
The place of Self in quiet thought,
The fragile light of consciousness,

I feel a hook, dragging at my mind,
Liquefying  the useless cortex,
Perhaps I am in line for Pharoah,
Mummified, debrained and dried,
To keep for purposes now lost,
Stood up each week as non-voting,

And though pain camps in the hills,
Around its fires and standards,
I'd seem to welcome a blankness,
The gradual removal of memory,
Painless, voided and defuelled,
A lasting life, unbothered,

But another sense is mended,
The previously unheard ring,
Of extended detonations,
Fills the world with new sounds,
A doctor, with nowt but verbs,
Calls for picks and swabs,

Her voice a strained shriek,
Penetrates the worst of it,
And gently calls my name,
Still present in my mind it seems,
Held in the dulled grey matter,
Evidently not her target,

The hook has pressed my eye,
And though shut, it sees lights,
Mathematical progressions
Of dancing squares and dots,
And I tense in the white cot,
A straggling of near-corpse,

Soiling the clean rooms,
Vague medical facilities,
Erected in haste, memorials,
To those who died in filth,

The pals, the regulars,
the mud angels and martyrs,
Of a war we thought we'd win,
When the world had hope,

Brimstone

The photographer was felled by shrapnel,
Next to me,
His camera still clicking,
An ogive of decease,
Postmortem pictures,
Each focused perfectly by software,
Showed a line of steel and dead-eyed villagers,
Unshocked by just another life gone by,

My own skin, a little melted,
Caused no pain,
Until my fluids leaked into the chatter,
Of rescuers and outrage,
And carried by many bearers,
Like rivers between the makeshift ambulances,
I flew and fainted through the high dust,
Of felled and falling buildings,
Into an oven of bare and ringing metal,
Jerked into movement by a tuned hand,
That urged no delay,

But in a place of little safety,
Armoured with ragged crosses,
Painted hastily across the roof,
And struggling to be vertical,
I was marked as non-urgent,
By sleepless doctors,
Who made me sleep,
Until I woke up, automatically evacuated,
On the say so of my passport,
Empty of the memory of flight,
In a white room with curtains,
Lifted by the breeze of warm seas.