Monday, January 12, 2009

CIGARETTE. COFFEE. COMPUTER SCREEN.

CIGARETTE. COFFEE. COMPUTER-SCREEN.


Cigarette. Coffee. Computer-screen.

Now what? This as it is, no before

or after, nothing peering out like a squid

through its own inky simulacra

as it jets away

like a comet through the stars

that portends nothing but its own escape

though it’s impossible to elude the likenesses.

Illegal white phosporous

letting down its tentacles

like lethal Medusae over Gaza

to cook the skin of the children.

Now that I’ve said that,

show me the child that was saved

in Gaza, Darfur, the Congo.

Words do nothing.

The obscenity of the atrocity

deepens beyond despair

and the desecration of the innocents

is the foreign affair

of unindictable governments

setting fire to a child’s hair.

Are you appalled

or like the rest of the world

are you enthralled

by the chaos of the destroyers

as they colour outside the lines

of a child’s blood,

billions of impotent voyeurs

impaling children on hearts of horn

like kiddie porn?

And treaties are changed

like clean sheets and flags

as the entreaties of the damned

wring tears from the web-cam

that broadcasts the violation live.

Have you ever noticed

how many more cliches

there are for killing

than there are for peace?

And how eloquent and coiffed

and reasonably corrupt

the spindoctors are

who stare into the cameras

like the eyes of peacocks

and weep for the children

with the reservations

of rapacious nations

until they wash the obscene

clean from the lense

prioritizing the issues

make it crystal clear

a child is just a special form

of a blood smear?

Recipe for a country

in the twenty-first century:

First you make a concentration camp.

The Warsaw Ghetto, Sawetto, Gaza. Darfur.

Then you tie a child

like a goat to a stake

and demonize it

with your own sins,

jinxed swastikas

and six-pointed stars,

all the bogus constellations

that fall like white phosphorous

and cherubic gunships, Stukas

and F-16s from the heavens

as if God had spoken

and a child was broken like kindling

crushed like berries and twigs

under your knees

whenever you pray

for a greater good

than the children in your neighbourhood

and hatred gives you an erection

like a missile among your figs

no one suspects

as you assure the watching world

that when you rape the children,

when you dismember them in Gaza

like natural selection

or an upcoming election

you’re practising safe sex.


PATRICK WHITE