{"id":75,"date":"2012-11-04T11:11:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-04T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=75"},"modified":"2014-07-02T16:42:09","modified_gmt":"2014-07-02T16:42:09","slug":"three-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=75","title":{"rendered":"Three Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

BLACK VESPER’S PAGEANTS<\/strong><\/p>\n

(after Cavafy)<\/p>\n

If what wakes you of a sudden, past midnight
\nare the war or mating calls from roaming kids
\nas they rush across the street from trouble
\nor in trouble, you shouldn\u2019t dwell on plans
\ncome unhinged, on how days you saved for
\nhad another you in another city, on the done
\nfor, the lost. Listen, the dash and sprint outside,
\nthe galvanized ring of sticks or coins to post
\nis undertow to the headlines that plot what
\nbrokers wrecked, whose pockets filled.
\nNo illusion what you\u2019ve seen in the streets,
\nthe sullen mouthed boys that pass you by,
\nthe averted look, hooded gangs on corners
\nstaring drivers down. The city is all too real
\nand you know it\u2019s going when you can\u2019t tell
\nfirecracker from gun, run-in from revelry.
\nStand by the window, the kids disperse
\nlike swarm from fire as searchlight weaves in
\nand out, back and forth a web around rack
\nand ruin, an evanescent safeguard that judders
\nwith the drum-roll of its thrust, like attendant
\nto a god entering a city it visits and destroys.<\/p>\n

 
\n<\/p>\n

KNOWLEDGE<\/strong><\/p>\n

is one thing to the middle-age guy
\ncrossing checkboxes in the food court,
\nprinting BA. for highest degree earned
\nin a job application for Salad Works;<\/p>\n

another, for the kids that spread out
\ntwo tables down and are back and
\nforth cell phone to school work.
\nOne, like a hi-tech, lovelorn schmuck<\/p>\n

waiting a love note, has smudged
\nthe screen ten times at least, keyed in
\npasscode, scrolled down, up, down
\nto come up empty, I guess, the way<\/p>\n

he quickly presses the sleep button,
\nputs the thing down. Another one
\nhas flipped her Blackberry three
\ntimes just to let it rest face down<\/p>\n

and mop her textbook with a highlighter.
\nThey\u2019ll wash whole pages in so much
\nsee-through fluorescence, let soul slip
\nin its dark night, it would startle, freeze<\/p>\n

like deer in headlights. I see those guys
\nbig guys, who turn to a reflective strip
\nbobbing in tunnel and fade to air horn\u2019s
\nblast. So I guess to me soul\u2019s the flicker<\/p>\n

of indeterminate work, with track rats,
\ndanger, dirt. These kids, like clerks
\nwith pricing guns on clearance day
\nwill chisel tip and color-code whatever<\/p>\n

comes their way: pink for the gunners
\non the dock-board track at Passchendale,
\npurple for genocides, green all over
\nDustbowl, yellow for Black Tuesdays.<\/p>\n

Not one Simonides amongst them,
\nno theatres of memory, forecourts
\nchambers. Face Time for one instead;
\nLOL\u2019s BRB\u2019s TTYL\u2019s for others.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll trim the bitumen of ziggurat,
\npatch the cracks of Wailing Wall with
\nLego-like chromatic, hedge famines
\ntidying the take over of tuff and weed,<\/p>\n

where knowing begins as weed overgrows
\nEmpire\u2019s crop and anything will do, fryer, mop\u2026
\nAsk the guy who\u2019s moved down another
\nfranchise and is thinking mortgage, food.<\/p>\n

He would color-code, if at all, like snake
\nlicking the odor from the air just to get
\na quick quiver in the threshold of infrared
\nthat means disquiet, heat, blow, meat.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s checked her phone again. Turquoise
\nwarped a page full with soup kitchens.
\nNo Simonides. Let edifice collapse,
\nnone shall know who is in the wreck.<\/p>\n

 
\n<\/p>\n

MEMORIAL<\/strong><\/p>\n

for the earth is filled with violence
\n-Gen VI. 13.<\/p>\n

A damp season, they\u2019ll seem like fungal spread
\non posts, a blight best understood in statistic
\nand crime report, crawling to cover the thick
\nof staples left to rust from lesser posting, yard
\nsale, lost cat, runaway dog. Lately, mind you,
\na bit more desperate, more out of work, less
\nhigh-tech, signs folks scribble offering to do
\nodd jobs, junk pick-ups, garden work, my favorite
\nrides to prison. Who needs a headline or speech
\nwhen state of the union is rigged-jobbed
\nto the creosote soaked poles on every corner?
\nAmericans Must Mourn, Make-do, this one
\nsays while the Times and Couriers elsewhere
\nsugarcoat what\u2019s fit to print. Churrigueresque
\ngone pop, they are, the piles of plush animals
\nmeant to grieve the seventeen year-old shot down,
\non the corner Queen Lane and Green, Alvin
\nthe Chipmunk, strapped by the neck, Sponge
\nBob wire-tied above, Daffy and also the generic
\nfauna spawn in sweatshop elsewhere meant
\nfor fair or dollar bins, plush teddies, lucky dogs
\neglantine owls, Noah\u2019s every beast every creeping
\nthing of the earth after his kind, it seems, left
\nto tuft and mildew after rain, blanch in the sun.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If what wakes you of a sudden, past midnight
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