Tag: Abendland (page 8 of 12)

(1)

crystal: dignitary portraits
his men clean-shaven the women
stern children on sleds if you
remember rightly panoramas
of coal mine towns silly dogs
chins pointing to the future
the sun – gold haloes spirits
with whiskers windowframes …

(2)

crumpled: just out of bed
or home from a long night of
drinking all traces of artifice
stripped away peasant loves
more silly dogs the omnipresent
minarets bulgarian eternities
lifeless eyes trembling brushes
a grandmother in every canvas …

[plovdiv, july 05]

you dispense with direct emotion/
experience & become the second
person the observer – it’s safer
here you see & as for your reader
well she’s gone her own way she’ll
meet you later in the old town –
for now be content to sit & watch
as tourists wait impatiently for
their boat to arrive a three island
cruise you suppose – it’s late & the
harried salesgirl repeats in three
or four languages – one more hour
seven more minutes five more now –
then someone challenges her in
italian – that was ten minutes ago!

she raises her hand as if to hit
the sky & the frenchman looks at
his poor tired beaten wife –
at his command she rises – he
flashes his ticket at the brown
girl & demands the expected – a
refund & while she’s off to fetch it
you see the sad look in that
french woman’s eyes the impatience
in her husband’s & sensing some
small part of yourself there you
close your eyes to the beautiful
adriatic sparkle & sunshine &
for just that moment in your
shame you cry & you want to die

we landed emus on the moon &
fed them cake until they glowed
we could see them from space –
maralinga, woomera’s satellite
dishes grew absurd corruptions
our original superpower dreams

[hiroshima moruroa maralinga]

a future where girls worry their
bikini lines into shape formations
of crystals metamorphose into
undersea microphones in stereo
& we are alone now on our rocky
outcrop of a signal station (babe
did you see that flash? it’s british
aerospace dude & the natives can
go walkabout (the ground glows
underfoot persistent rumours &
illnesses dreamtime sicknesses

[los alamos nagasaki yucca flats]

somehow even general macarthur
got himself reborn in a loading bay
that night in incheon he gathered
mushrooms on the pacific theatre’s
map the optional korean solution
impregnated like a microchip for
lost dogs somewhere above these
nameless parallel babes go topless
in the radiant heat one size that
reveals all malignancies hot wires
to trigger the mutant marsupials
into action if remotely our lunar
armies blast into battle formation

[teheran pyongyang fallujah]

in a scene from the cassandra
crossing pitch black serbian
night gives way to the acetylene
of factories tunnels & dams ringed
by lights blazing passports waving
(facsimiles of concrete aqueducts
soldered bridges inch over ravines
& the night mists are pumped from
some arcane machines we followed
the blue line of the bosniak river
through that notional republik
stopping at magical intervals
along our meandering switchback
journey seeing the impossibly lush
mountains (giving way at last to
sandblasted hills – & the roman
semicircular white stone bridges
become perfect circles in dawn’s
reflective air all at once to be
resolved in the new stari most
winking in the fresh day glare
peeking around the green river
bend a new parapet from which to
fearlessly leap (prove one’s man-
hood demonstrate whisper secrets
a daze of new icons reconstructed
in unforseen though shady places

who will give colour to joe sacco’s
black & white cartoons of gora&#382de
safe haven – & who will go there
is it needed are the people safe?

when will the mist shrouds on
the mountains give up their secrets
these criminals those war dead &
weary – which daughters sons?

how are we to read the inverse
braille of bullet-studded buildings
riverside mosques that pierce the sky
the river itself a great onward flow?

what happened to the primitive generators
the flywheels paddlesteamers hydro-
power creators that fed the people
juice to watch war movies in the dark?

& where do you go joe sacco in your
sleep – is it black & white or do
colours invade that paperthin canvas
& bleed the edges of your stolen dreams?