[Me] It was easily missed – shared threats
of World War Three – Not being there – on
social media & spending one le week-end
bunkered – sat – before sport from Africa
& so few – too few – clicks of stately news
My hunkering against thought [to protect
& survive in our Brave New World of ego –
of tweets & news] Choose your consommé
& your plat principal – feed on your choice
but do also ask from whom it was sourced
Tag: NEWS
The Fishbourne Rabbit
A rabbit bone
found at Fishbourne
brings that foreign
creature here –
along with
an eastern religion
back in one AD
Smoke Over Paris
Their Lady of Paris burnt
in one online afternoon
Her re-imagined spire
tipped to robes of smoke
like a bloodied lance
in surrender – once more –
to politics and holy battles
in a kindless fog of war
Her heated metals ran
as dark beaded sweats
from her swealing heights
to leave cooled scabs
of Saint Thomas – and others –
spattered across worn stones
under her collapsed transept
Those slabs will be saved
with high relics – rescued
from clouds above la quatrième
No puzzle of scattered ashes –
France has her couronne d’épines
Old Devices
We’d race to get the telephone –
stating our number as rote taught –
our mother in her poshest voice
but rough for sister talk
Relative news transmissions –
but not intended to be heard –
I knew nothing of kindred facts
’til I stole truth from her words
We were ignorant between acts –
maybe flattening an irksome book –
we’d stare through the yellowed nets
whilst half-tuned to loosened talk
We tugged at the reluctant drawers
where our history was lost and found –
there tucked between old table mats –
sepia smiles were loosely bound
News bulletins marked the hours
or were shoved through the letterbox –
that narrow window on the world –
ink fears of the Eastern bloc
Ignorance was a short-lived bliss
in those disconnected times –
no algorithms on our wrists
to redress the truths and lies
#CPC17
Tossers, tossers,
tossers in suits,
groomed to an inch
of their Tory blue roots.
A lanyard, a sneer,
to let them in,
so the conference starts
and cock-sucking begins:
Motions are raised
in the near-empty hall,
as the screens are filled
by the faces of fools.
They bay for Boris,
pray to lose May,
pull knives out for Gove,
but no big beasts today.
They’ll ship in the blue rinses
on a new battle bus
this one will read:
‘You plebs are now fucked’.
[Poem 865]
Slurred
Timed Theft
These words will not be my sick complaint,
not my dull litany of low-dulled pains –
neither bellows of my half-swallowed fears,
no sandman damming floods of tears:
Instead, I will lift prizes that others miss,
those wasted seconds which they dismiss.
This is my crime spree, my timely dance,
I snatch, a poacher, trapping every chance.
Join me, in theft, even you, the still-fixed,
let us steal time before no time exists.
Please hold the torch high, it shakes in my grip,
aim the weak beam at that prize which I seek.
See there, in the shadows, a life’s remains,
a lost loot of time – which is mine to gain.
I will take such disposals, all so discarded,
and burn it with verse, now herein, recorded.
These words are the ticks of my observed tongue,
all that remains of our days that have run:
I reduce the weight of my loathsome disease
by stealing the life that others leave.
Button Therapy
The pushed-pushed
Lift-Shut-Now-Button,
[US-Eng: Elevator-Closure-Function];
pressed, but no more
electrical assurance
of any seal
of lift-shut avoidance,
now switched off,
under legislation,
some rights-to-access
codification:
Plus the kerbside
‘DONT WALK’ bright lights,
there to be poked,
under the Bill of Rights,
but now, not working,
not as useful,
one more gullible
Westerners’ placebo.
News story here
Collective Nouns, 2016.
A stream of migrants,
a flood of immigrants,
a stride of itinerants,
a slip of transients,
a confusion of foreigners,
a wave of incomers,
a steal of vagrants,
a thrust of aliens,
a landing of outlanders,
a gust of drifters,
a surge of unknowns,
a trespass of expatriates.
Rev
As youth we spoke
against political fear,
now in our dotage we only
SIGN HERE:_________
A petition easier
than kettled-streets,
thus avoid confrontation,
except in tweets.
Holier-than-thou-Saudis
Our dear Saudi friends
are trashing Yemen:
The city of Sana’a
is crumbling again:
Imported bomb-thumps,
and blast of tremors:
‘The Saudis are
fighting Houthi rebels’,
in support of
‘unity government’,
we help blast them,
‘the subordinates’,
across schools, homes,
and pock-marked parks:
Only the UN cries out
at such Saudi-led-larks.
MIKE BELL | 10,000 Poems 