A man is a poem
Many things to many folks
But I am a monkey with a feather in it's mouth
Watching cold words of modernity
Flash past the man outside
As he judges with morals he learnt in school
And from the television
What is this your society
Ours that bought a twelve-inch, ten volt
Hi-fi with Indian silver
When our grandfathers fought in Burma
We watch the happy peasant
Pipe in mouth
Go down to airs caught in smoky dusk
As the road corrodes
And words become solid
And all else relative
While he wonders what
Fast-food faith solution
Will please him today
A grease-paper church
With oil-glass
And plastic-hymns
And plug-in priest
Who tells you you don't
care.
There, the chicken
Steams in oil
Dreams of
Gastric juices
Lubricate
The rusty contusions
Of burnt-flesh paradise
Of delightful decay
With sex and songs and sacrifices
We don't have to make grand gestures
We don't have to die in glory
Only in hospitals
With rooftiles
Smashed on children's heads
And glass in the hearts of our sons
And negroes in shop-windows selling Powertools.
And today's special offer fireball
To clear away road-blockage
To clean up spinal columns
And heads caught in steering wheels
And arms out of wind-up atmospheric
Radios tuned to unpleasant angles
Dusty breeze
And babyseat
And minor peccadiloes
And politicians promising
This Summer's top sale
While Yesterday
Crumbles, the fire-escape ladder
Rumbles and falls The leaves
Of autumn ant-bitten Fly
Hot gasoline-oil to cook your smile
And basement-collections;
Tax-collections, French-connections,
Foreign-directions.
And all the young men fighting
And empty education snapping
The minds of block-cut products
Shrunk to fit their wrapping.