Listless

Wrote this on my Ipod!

One: Cricket!

You sit,
fingers in mine,
perhaps a little loosely
when you consider our passion.

The sun bathes your face
in eloquent rays of gold.
Those features of yours:
freckled/ pale,
framed with
errant red curls.
Your beauty stings my eyes
with its melancholy.
Your scent of orange burns.

How angelic you look
reading The Times.
I have the sports page
in front of me,
a coffee in my hand.

“Bemoaning England Cricket,”
again I see.
“Strauss and Cook make 16
and not much more between them.
The shame and Strauss the Captain.”

(Listen, listen....
bodies strewn,
strewn everywhere.
Strewn listless, still.
Bodies torched, trapped under rubble.
Think what horror-
a fiery burial for the dead,
mothers birthing in the street.)

“Oh, the agony, the Aussies reckon
the ashes will be theirs again.
Strewth!
We’ve had them for how long?
Six months!”

(Are you listening?
God what goes on in that head?
Either up in the heavens
or down in the dirt!)

“I assure you
I was attentive as always.
Fiery burial, you say?
Births out on the pavements?
Bodies buried under rubble?
Burning?
Children crying?
Without mothers I expect!
Starving I’d dare say!
But still,
little does it affect you!
The Times -
you have with breakfast.
The Evening Standard -
with tea!
Why worry?
We have fortune,
wealth in our pockets.
The past, present and future
on our side.
What else could you want?
What else would you need?”

(What a fool you are sometimes!
We sit round,
the three mad dames
of fortune telling at your side!
Disaster Proof are you?
Have a little compassion!
You did once!
Or if compassion fails you,
at least ask one of three!)

Two: How my Head Aches

Future, Past, Present.
To my left, to my right-
everywhere!
Coffee tight in my trembling fingers.
I shall not be forced into
Compassion!
And for what?!
My head how it aches
how it hurts....

All this talk of disaster,
all this waffle.....
Compassion hah!
I am self sustained.
I have made my way;
I sustain my creature comforts,
and do it with or without pity.


Each of us is born alone.
We will all die alone.
We all live alone.


I shan’t be pressured into
caring.
By anyone!
Even you.
Still a pretty little girl,
look away with me.
Smile at the,
bric-à-brac that lines the walls!
All paid for.

Superiority,
how it breeds contempt,
either you build yourself up
or you allow yourself,
to be bowled over!

Don’t look at me!
How I see your face,
little rays of gold on your cheeks-
Red ringlets over your eyes.
And pity,
sad but you’ve mingled it with tears.

(más é do thoil é)

Must I?
My pride!
My mask!
How I hate looking into
the past,
the present or
the future.
How my head aches,
how it hurts.....

 

Pretty little girl.
For you-
your tears and your
pity /those eyes.
I will look to the blind,
and seek directions.

Three: For Neda, or for nada!

Meagre sightless Tiresias sits,
coffee in one palm,
spoon in the other stirring blindly,
refusing to see me
I’d hazard at a guess.
I expect he knows what I’m after.

Tiresias, how he has opened my eyes,
just to see me close them again.
He knows I prefer it when-
we look away:

“No, no! I shan’t tell you that.”

You refuse?
I plucked you from the river burning,
dressed you in your paper suit,
fed you from your own female breast.
You are mine.

Though you are blind,
look at me.
See me.
Answer me as if I am not a fool
heading towards calamity.

“No, no! I shan’t tell you that.”

Perhaps then Madame Sosostris,
famous clairvoyant in all her glory,
lost her vicious deck of cards.
Fear death by water?
Not this time!

She is wailing,
“No, No, No, my cards go blank!
They’ve all gone blank, perhaps!
Have I? Perhaps, I’ve gone blind
like that old wrinkled fool.
No, no, fool.
I can’t speak now.”

Full of hot air anyway, she is!

And Esther the prophet,
one of seven they say,
sits piously,
arms erect,
praying.
For what has been?
For what is to be?
Who knows?
God on her side!
God on my side!
A female prophet they say,
she has told me of faces
caught on camera,
bleeding life,
bleeding spirit,
bleeding freedom.
We shall bring down those walls.

Neda, Neda dead and buried.
For Neda or for nada.
Allah, God, Jehovah, Mohammed.

Esther goes on praying
“Heavenly Father,
Heavenly Father,
Forgive me/forgive us!
Save us/Save them.”

Etc. Etc. Etc,
“Amen.”


Four: Fiery Burial

Compassion!
Who needs it?
I have you
with errant curls,
playing games across your face.
How pale and freckled you are.
How angelic you look in your melancholy!
Pretty girl you are,
pretty girl.
No need to burden yourself with troubles.
Frivolity, that’s what we need!
A day at the races?
A day of cricket?
Lords?
Edgbaston?
Let’s get away!
No need to read
about such horror.
My heart murmurs when you mention it.
I am old you know!
My trousers
look how high they are rolled!
I don’t need to think
of fiery burials.
It will be mine soon,
And God has pain in store for me!

(Be compassionate then?
Redeem yourself?
Think!
Fiery burial!
Birth by death!
Death by horror!
Out on the pavements!
Bodies buried under rubble!
Burning!
Children crying!
Without mothers I expect!
Starving I’d dare say!
Horror!
The agony!
Have compassion!)

 

Author's Note

Constructive Destruction pretty please

Reviews

[heido]

Compassion!

Who needs it?

I have you,

With errant curls
Playing games across your face,
How pale and freckled it is....


This says it for me, it is our RELATIONSHIPS with eachother that influences our focus, our cares, our concerns. If I am tragically in love and focus only on that love, than yes I will forget the rest of my inhumane world coming down around me in natural disasters and genocide. BUT if I immerse myself in activists who are focused on bettering humanity, will than I will eventually even if I try to resist, become more focused on the betterment of humanity.

[AtticusBlack]

wasn't what I was expecting, but that's a good thing, such a dark piece between the lines really, I love the basic description of you with your paper and your coffee, with her next to you, it's quite heart warming, but then the poem changes. Really good read.

[Mary]

i liked it, it was very deep and covered issues that people don't tend to talk about much. It made me think but i will admit i was a little confused but i think that is my fault not yours:)

[Alicante lullaby]

witty write,,,Haiti,kashmir quake,ahmadabad,tsaunami,,,disasters around us and we,,,good people sit in our cozy warm houses indifferent,,,,Allah;should have a doomsday now,,,,humanity has rigor mortis,,,soon corpse will decay,,,