The Americans now seem to live in a world where a man
Can be twice impeached and still get elected. Common sense,
It would seem is the sickness that a nation of conqueror
Worms can contract. But this is not an Edgar Allan Poe poem;
Its life, as here in the UK we await the television return
Of B. Johnson, and taste is spilled, while the gutter takes
Its improper place on the plate. So subtract,
If you’re my age, the world that you thought you knew,
Or remembered. Common sense itself is long sanctioned;
An antique phrase. Now its woke. But what have we woken to,
If their lies and these defamations against honest intent,
Aspiration (as opposed to greed or gain) form a joke
From which the punchline will explode either within,
Or around us. Rwanda rips, Israel inches ever further from
God. And that scum, that mad fool, mind marred by money
And all it bestows becomes bastard on a biblical scale.
Kingdoms in praising their hot daughters, come. But come
Far too late, either for Charles over here, or for their escaping.
Its as if we wanted chaos and crushing under the Gucci jackboot,
Before bobbing for bodies on a spittle sent sea where limbs numb
And can no longer experience waves of relief, or real joy.
For Joy is now fashioned from fragments, surfacing I am sure
In your moments, chosen or not between friends. Or between
Sheets and thighs, between capital or stalled dreaming.
Because if we allow this, then intelligence itself starts to end.
Is this really all we have left; Putin, Trump, and now Netinyahu?
And in the lesser sense Johnson, and all of his Beachcombers
Beyond, picking up shells as if they were in Neville Shute’s
Famous novel in which an Apocalypse entered honours
The dare in death’s bond. So just how long can we bounce
Before the bough breaks beneath us? And just how much
Can you stomach before the nuclear dawn sends you sick
On Shute’s beach, (or the bleached) to the place
Where you last saw you loved ones. The dead will have to
Negotiate for us. Our release is their burden as we become
Victims and Hostages too, to con-tricks. America! America!
Dude! We are calling. For you are already an island.
And who has you soul, man? Netflix? Or Fujitsu here,
Which can now not be removed. We run on it. Hostages,
Fish and seagulls shrouded and trapped by oil-slicks.
You could call for a cull, but man, its already happened.
We’re eager sheep for the shearing. We’re suckers
Who seek the same prick. And it is going to piss over us.
You might once have had a Pinter poem that said that.
But now I will. Trump’s token is a donkey ride
In a fairground where at every stage we get kicked.
Devils are real. They’re just not the ones Dore painted.
They appear now on banners under which
A mind warped crowd fall transfixed.
David Erdos 17/1/24