Tuesday 24 December 2013

End of Days, part III


On a dark and dreary street
In the deepest darkest heart
Of the capital of a country
Still reeling from the shock
Of the discovery of its own frailty
On a Christmas night, hid
From the reaches of holiness
Peals of laughter sound

Beneath a railway bridge
Men and women gather
In a tavern, gaily lit
And warmly welcoming
To travellers on this night
Damp and dishevelled
Clapping their arms
Against their sides, they rejoice

Glass of wine in hand,
They greet each other
With kisses and slaps
On the shoulder, as if
In congratulation
For some deed or other
They form circles, smoking,
Drinking and ever laughing

In their hearts, they believe,
They are invincible
Protected by their own mirth
They feel no pain
Shielded by a smeary, bleary
Window, at which I can
Only press my nose

Outside, I am a spirit
Ephemeral as the winter wind
A ghost of a ghost, unseen
And unremarked by revellers
With good cheer in their thoughts
And no room in their hearts
I will lie outside their shield of glass
Forgotten for another year

Tuesday 10 December 2013

End of Days, Part II

As you sit breathing in
The foetid urine stink
Of the city evening
You find yourself guilty
For thinking your plight
To be worse than others'
And a million million
Big wet eyes well up
At you in the dark
And give you hell
With the tale of their hell
All broken limbs
And stories of desolation
With no self pity
In their silent song
They weep inside you
You coward
You soft, weak puppy
You coddled child
You remonstrate with yourself
But you know
You'll do the same
Nothing you always do
And time is slipping
More quickly than you'd like
Into the swirling sucking drain
Beneath your feet
And your safe city night
Races on around you
Your snarling serpent train
Winding on and on and on
And you feel the hands
Of a million million million
Doomed denizens of
The same planet as you
Albeit a different world
Begging you to
Pull them free
But you kick them away
Still chained to your own
Pedestrian woes
And in the blink
Of the blink of the
Yellow sulphurous light
You let them go

End of Days, Part I

I have seen the end of our race
Crying men, chasing bloody oil
Their grandiosity not enough
To heal the open wounds
That they have wrought
On ground made unholy
By screaming desperate struggles
To come out on top
And angels themselves have
Ceased to guard these men who
Have no idea of how to gaze
With love on the creation
That they swore was above
All else and worth the fight

They have lost their own salvation
And now they are coming
To snatch it away from the
Shrunken hands of starving
Mothers whose children
Have been sacrificed to the
God of progress

They believe unfailingly
That they will be clean
And the stains that
Soak through their skin
To their very being have
Been hard won
They believe that
They will wash away when
They come to ask for
Their reward and they will be
Children again

But they were never children,
Only prototypes of their savage
Future selves, waiting to
Let loose the greatest devastation
Of an age and drown their
Own wicked emptiness, for they
Were made ready in the womb
To cut the throats of infants and
Never cast a backward eye
On the ruined women they
Left behind, calling them
Collateral damage

I have seen the battle scars
Left by men who would shred
The flesh of weaker mortals
To satisfy their blood lust
From behind the solid walls
Where they give their orders
To the hardened, haunted youth
Brought in from hungry streets
And promised hope
Decried for their vicious ways
By hypocrites whose eyes
See nothing but the feted
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