Stanzas Now we're bombing Syria

Stanzas

Now we're bombing Syria.

Iraq (what's left of it)

In sympathy with Syria

Soon will bomb us back.

Europe (Paris, London, Rome)

Unearths the undead spectre

Of the hateful anti-Semite.

Europe only had

Cathedrals, beauty, art and cities.

When those things are gone,

The earth will be a globe of dirt

Swirling round the sun.

And the ones who made the cities

And the art were not the ones

Who are glad to blow it all

To nothing – like the Sphinx.

Beauty, death – war and art -

Are incompatible.

An Image

Withered and slimy – umbilical cord

Attached to the monster from hell -

A mocking, laughing caricature -

Cleft foot and puckered lips.

Grotesque and misshapen, a psyche of love

That slept in its father's arms,

Then woke to death and a life of pain,

Without a sense of love.

What is an infant? Most women can screw.

The illness was just a spark

That steadily grew to a conflagration,

Blind upon a beach.

TA

It's been over 40 years!

Gone and left behind

Confusion, grief, regret and tears,

And still it's in my mind.

Transactional Analysis!

The devil's therapy

For the brain! Paralysis

Is what it did for me.

Wisdom

To hell with those who understand

The world and all that's in it.

Autonomy and therapy

Won't hesitate a minute.

Argue with them. You will feel

Your mindless frigate sink.

You'll dismiss the way you are,

And what you thought you think.

 

Vanished

Raw bones and broken skulls -

Ancient ships with rotted hulls -

And overhead grey mottled gulls

Dip toward the sails -

Had I wrote the thesis

On Keats – or anything -

I'd be rich as Croesus

And my world would sing.

I might live in Britain,

Alone and mad, but free,

Where once my heart was smitten

With English poetry.

I'd see the mist, each building,

The cobblestones, the air,

Though it would take some gilding

To like the people there.