Standing. Still. Somewhere. Dislocated. Being.
On the pavement walking wounded sufferers
reeling. Terminal psyche-ache but still kicking
arses, still raging at those black dog demons
of depression, addiction, ignorance
and abuse. Look! We are drowning in the weight
of flat and unfermented, impotent words.
In need of the cutting syllable, the slash,
the slice, the scythe and slit. Wake up!
Feel this stabbing incisive thrust! We are
royally poxed with insipid, descriptive lines.
Mealy mouthed orators pout rhythmically,
stealing air with fish eyed refinement. Time
wasting typo terrorism collides
and colludes in curses that whisper from
lisping mouths. A neutral blandness- a grey
script tracing a sepia plot. For fuck sake!
The mystery of life occurs in comedy
and tragedy, in melody and silence,
in the pulsing throb of sex and anger, in
prayer, in meditation, in tenderness,
mysticism, intoxication, a
fart, a laugh, a mortal celebration that
still defies each bleak and final exhalation.
Have you still time to dream with the dead? Let
the dead get down with the dead. Let them hip
hop with the dead. Body pop with the dead.
Those pasteurised piss pots lilting in stifling
classrooms of like minded drones. Save us from
academics who can speak five languages
and proclaim the cure to all society’s
ills but don’t know their clothes colours clash. Save
us from those racist thugs dealing drugs shipped
in from Afghanistan, China, Columbia.
Freedom! Optimism! The New Existentialism!
Cry out for resolution, for exultation
and shit free revelation. Have we yet
forgotten the question? Listen! Who will
stand up with that weary silent majority
on the barricades? Who will mount the attack,
muster the vanguard. trample in the dirt
the gloss, cauterize with acid venom
the dross and triumphantly raise the
revolution’s ragged flag? Let us revive
the passion, the boiling blood of an older,
deeper insight. The line is almost broken.
Listen! Grasp it! The prefects from every
schoolyard conspire with the playground bullies
to intimidate and churn out their tight-
arse-licking control rap, their trite rhetoric.
The broken age of prosodic reportage, the
crafted constipation of observation,
form without content, tone without vibrancy,
words without fervour. Safely safe. No more!
Mike Mcnamara
Illustration Nick Victor
Mike McNamara (B.A. Hons.) Humanities was born in Ireland but lives in South Wales, UK. He had his Selected Poems ‘Overhearing The Incoherent’ published by Grevatt and Grevatt in 1997. Mike is a published songwriter. His poetry has been published in Acumen, Aji, Dawn Treader, Dream Catcher, Envoi, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Lyric, New Welsh Review, Orbis, Reach, Tears in the Fence, etc. Mike also had a selection of poems published in The Pterodactyl’s Wing (Parthian, 2003).
Gosh Mike!!
Comment by pete Ak on 12 January, 2019 at 10:42 am