SAFE, EDUCATED WITNESS

SAFE, EDUCATED WITNESS

Safe, educated witness to bestial scenes

since I was born, the destruction of cities

and species, and helpless human beings

severed from their limbs like pruned branches

too close to the borders of warring powerlines,

whole families massacred like icons

in a video game by a real soldier

whose delusion wasn’t the same,

the blood-spatter of children

freaking the flower, I

loathe the indifference

of the one-eyed watchers

who look on impotently

like hardened gum

under their bomb-proof desks

weighing the risks for both sides

of unbalancing their covert genocides

like a second set of books of the dead.

Perverts blowing kisses like artillery shells

to children in their beds

who scream like murdered bells

and windfalls of deathheads,

billiard balls, and tiny skulls

that broke to start the game.

I thought I was a lucky man

to be born in the land of plenty,

and the cupboard is full

but my heart is an age beyond empty

and my spirit is savaged

by disgust and shame,

and under every pellucid, abstract thought,

laying itself down like money

at an ideological dogfight,

an abyss of bones

where the children rot

like the memory cards

of disconnected cellphones.

I listen to myself, I listen

to the distinguished commentators

and the prime-time spin doctors

passing out motorized walkers

like miracles for the mentally lame

and renewable treaties

for the kingdom to come

that fits over the head

of the planet now

like the used atmosphere

of a discharged condom.

Hell seems quaint by comparison

with the agony and the torment of here

where the natural, untaught decency of a human

is accosted by the atrocities

of a loveless heart

hooking the lives of children

on inverted question-marks

like flayed cattle

in an avant-garde abattoir of bad art

as everyone subscribes to the New York Times

to keep up with the latest alibis

to expurgate the mess

of regurgitated crimes

that aligns our vomit

to the wines of progress.

And everyone feels what they say

as if God sat in their corner

like a fool on a stool,

but no one ever says what they feel

when the heel crushes the head of a child

like a grape

and her sister is hauled away

like a voodoo doll at a gang rape.

Who caters the flesh feast

at these laden tables

of fat, old, impotent, girdled men

arriving in limousines

to discuss discussing a resolution

to put an end to a child’s screams?

Summoned like vampiric thorns

to the bloodbank of a rose

that bleeds like a child or the sea

everyone opposes saving the roses

until they can be arranged

like body parts and ashes

in the funeral vase of a policy

that crashes like a junkie

at the mention of withdrawal.

O mighty world

who eats the nations

like a pack of wild dogs a corpse,

necrophiliacs at a conference table

smearing make-up on the facts,

trying to turn their maggots into butterflies

by wrapping themselves in their flags

like the stars in the sky

and the waves of the sea

and squeezing the life

out of a child like striped toothpaste.

O vicious, pygmy abomination

you pricked your thumb

on the thorn of the crescent moon

when you reached out

to leech the blood of the rose

by crushing an army of four-year-olds.

O wild hog of runt-rage

goring the world

like a girl on your tusks,

it takes more than one star

to make a constellation

and a lot more than bloodshed

to school the eyes to see it

that look at you now

like children in terror,

the plinths of your shining,

sidereal teeth,

and the lonely myth

you drop like flyers over the city,

lip-service to a fraud without pity.

PATRICK WHITE