It’s not just the swift-handed pill
knocked back with a double shot of whisky
that blocks the demons, the shakes,
all that squats below the surface;
not booze, dope and other drugs
which numb us out, switch off the mind
where the sorrowing eyes of Alzheimer’s
Monkeys are burned, appear on random loop.
Nor is it TV’s anodyne offerings;
tabloids dragging Amy’s tattooed bones
around the walls of Troy.
Nor is it a new Puritanism
that denies the senses, the bacchanals,
ecstatic flight –
but our prickly fear of peering deep
into the pit. There, like Sows harrowing
in metal crates, our souls are pressed,
and Piglets wade through blood and shit
with amputated teeth.
Helen Moore
Image: Mike Lesser
