my heart bleeds
there are people
suffering
in this empty world
around me
and had their hunger
come to a stop
my heart
may have chosen today
to tell of a life
that bleeds for those
with no dreams
other than
to want
to become
what yesterday
would have had them be
but
nothing can be the same
nothing can even struggle
to come to a stop
while so many are there
all without the passion
to believe
in the times
when the times
were then
just as the times
are now
but
clearly careful
in creating their own downfall
as if always to be in need
trace of the disaster
you have
a certain way
of dying
real or apparent
difficult to change
to put a finger on
only stumbling
among the obstacles
of the ignorance of others
us with what we are
the one thing to have come
from where we made
a lie of forever
well beyond
the blowing ashes
well beneath
your view of
nothing now to see
nothing to be hoped for
nothing new
composed of fear
consider what we know
of how soon we know nothing
talking of things
we know nothing of
until there is nothing left to say
then think about those
who have long followed
somebody else
and their utopian ideas
of what free will means
those same people
who have denied
there is a way
still to be followed
at all
as if
having only to find
the answer is not
what they thought
nor perhaps
that it was ever so
and finally
admit to everything
you have already
admitted to
care with force
on free agreements
steal
rather than take
die more than once
© John Mingay 2015
Illustration Nick Victor
These three poems, consisting of quasi-random lexical manipulations set within poetic parameters and incorporating subconscious association, utilise text originally produced by Errico Malatesta as his seminal, anarchist work, At the Café: Conversations on Anarchism (1922).