Bricks of antiquity flaking
mortar and dust of Adam’s bones wherein
words encrust modern day ballads, cheap
songs echo in search of a god to enslave
and here it stays as
times new roman and pooling ink.
(a forgotten murder)
Who have built thus these iron bars?
William Blake weeps while
the moans of the diaspora rise
from Babel’s lost foundations, weeds
of voyeurism pushing between
typeface and print.
Collective memory bewitched
by poppy heart, black with
the carbon of final breaths,
flushed red with gasps exhaled in
revolutionary song. Better to
inhale and forget.
Neon fragility skirting harbour
yachts, sinking in a light pollution
shrouding forgotten stars. Huddling
around the city in spectacle of
modern self-immolation –
the fire the pyre the lyre.
Written and oral rhythm: an undying
pulse within white fingers
creasing history along a church
bloodline to which all return
again again again.
