Roz Kaveney's Blog, page 13

This is the big poem I didn't feel like posting until after the election

WASTE
for CB





Dead buggered boy breath even if not true
a rumour's potent threat, gossip goes round
ties wrists. There is no air beneath the ground
where buried bodies lie. To me and you
word comes as fear. What might they do to us?
Restraint unknown. Broken ungiven word
story of death that may not have occurred.
Tale forged forgotten without noise or fuss,
each sin a chain of air that slowly binds
like wicked brothers tied by deed and blood.
They did the bad thing that they might do good
scent of sweet rot infuses changes minds.
Whispered betrayal poisons with a hiss
constricts our acts in numb paralysis

Libation blood soaks ground. Rare precious dirt
its clot crumbs speak to wrap the world in noise.
Red drip spoil mark stain rich neck's diamond poise.
Mock her – your speaking shares you in the hurt
done to the woman with the severed hand.
Talk to your friend with crystals that you stole
out of her earth. And back then she was whole.
Man came with knife. It was just as he planned.
Deplore their wars. And think your pale skin white
Not innocence, but ash or leprosy
Do it to Julia and not to me.
Death tick we hear in watches of the night
that stump drip. And we lie to get some sleep.
We did not do it. Blood earth mud we weep.


From the sky, falling, screaming. Dying. Fire
that day. And ever since, blood-soaked excuse
almost illegible. No win, all lose
stakes of revenge chips piling ever higher.
Eyes watching, everywhere is on a screen
real turned to game. And he checks in each day
presses a button when he's told to play
no talk or dream of fire that he's seen
He aimed. Fire fell. And so that one man dies
name on a list, it flies small vicious bird
bears fire. Might not be there, we only heard.
A wedding or a village or a child fries.
Fire is our fear and guilt, our fate, our shame.
We live from fire. Fire kills in our shared name.

We walked on cod shoals, but we ate them all.
The rains don't come and then the rice crop fails.
One voice another stilled, the song of whales.
Embankments crumble, profit towers fall
Gold church where money's Holiest of Writ
And dying with no toys the only sin
Tantalus thirst, it rises to our chin.
Undrinkable from oil, gas, soot and shit.
Lungs full we drown although our throat is dry
Black water's dead; it has nor leaves no air
Even the styx is dry. We need no fare
Bright burning bluer than your eye last sky
At dessicating lies we choose to wink
Crucible chars our throats melts gold to drink

What look like dunes are piled white dust of bones
what glints is buttons, fillings from our teeth,
the bullets used to kill us, and beneath
the rotting plastic of our mobile phones.
Elsewhere of course, just white. It looks like snow
for they had nothing. And now lost their lives.
One coughs, eight billion die, noone survives
for long. And through our roads wild flowers grow.
Silence at last. Before, a rushing crowd
running and dying. Trample and fall down
and trampled. Come to rivers, run in, drown,
last song, last poem. Is our screams. Are loud.
Deafen through steel walls the last rich man,
scraping last caviar from his last can.

Sort of VE Day, sort of post election...

MEMORIAL

Stone brass that lasts, not blood or ash or bone
The rain corrodes but not for many years.
It's not the thing for which we shed our tears.
The shot, the burned. It stands there on its own
holding a place, reminder of the dead
and what they fought for. But it's not their grave.
They are elsewhere. Died old; died young; died brave
storming a hill, a trench; or died in bed
did not outlive their wounds. Grew old. Reward
little enough. Rebuked for wanting more -
Only from fear will rich men thank the poor-
They die alone, in pain, in filth, ignored.
Neglect, not paint on stone, will desecrate
them, what they built. Fight now, soon is too late.

I've posted these before but....

You will not all live through this. Death will take
you unexpectedly. Shot in a crowd
rushing police lines. And if I am allowed
by circumstance and age – my heart will break -
I’ll write a poem for each death. My friend
was special and is gone. That’s what we say
in every elegy. And then I may
incite some sort of violence at the end.
I’ll still write sonnets, and that little turn
in the last couplet will break people’s hearts
read at your funeral. And so it starts
the peoples’ angry rage. I’ll see them burn
your killers. Yet know, with a guilty sigh,
It was my verses sent you out to die.

I have forgiven several of my friends
betrayals so bad they will break your heart
as they did mine. Quite soon, departures start
among you – lovers, comrades. Never ends
this agony of watching things go wrong
in times of trouble. One will turn to drink
and slowly die. Another start to think
small compromises best, self-sold belong
among the worst there is. And yet his face
still has the smile you loved, as with a moan
reluctantly he sends the robot drone
that kills us each in turn. I hope for grace
to curse, love, understand such traitors still.
Stare coldly in their eyes, then shoot to kill.

These are the worst of times that I have known.
I’d like to say they’ll pass, yet fear to lie.
It’s probable that some of you will die
before all this is done. Will die alone
in exile or in prison, slowly starve
die from diseases we know how to cure
be left to die from them because too poor.
Worse yet, know while you live your every breath
is stolen from those poorer. Make them count
each angry moment, live write fuck and dance.
You cannot choose your time. So take each chance
to live. Remember me. Give good account
of who I was. And make the bastards pay
who kill our world, our lives, our brief lost day.

To fight the tyrants we give up our name
become the rebel only. Spend each night
on different couch. No life except the fight
we fade dissolve. And so become the same
Anonymous as roses. Change our voice
to electronic buzz. A pastel vest
padded or binding hides or fakes a breast
The world has left us very little choice
Masked save for eyes and mouth, witness and speak
And have no fear of death, because no life.
The policeman’s gun, the state assassin’s knife
All power theirs. Our options are so weak
Save to refuse to serve, refuse to cry,
refuse to live and dying, never die.

We quarrel, often. And of course it’s true
and rarely trivial. We’ll get it right
although it means we sit up half the night
in rooms, on twitter. Such a shame that you
will not accept you’re wrong. As obstinate
as Trotsky, though no ice pick to the head
occurs. Because we do not want you dead
just very sorry, dialectic’s weight
heavy upon your chest. Then you confess
quite insincerely, but we do not care.
What once was solid melted into air.
The question’s time-expired, well more or less.
Just mentioned briefly in some final bitch
when fascists shoot us all in some deep ditch.

How do you love in hiding? On the run?
When every hour is precious, how begin
to talk of love? When there’s a war to win,
your deepest intimate a well-cleaned gun
For hours you practice taking it apart
putting it back together. You can’t learn
lovers like that; you’ve not the time to burn
learning the way to stimulate each part
take them to bits, then snap them into place.
Guns only ever talk to those they kill;
you have a need for conversation still,
or heart grows steel. It’s there in your cold face
Worst tyrants sometimes from best comrades made.
So risk it, fall in love, at least get laid.

It’s you instruct me. All I do is tell
you what I’ve learned. Perhaps I summarize.
You need to know what I’ve seen through your eyes
that we can use. My generation fell
Comfort seduced us. This time they’ll use fear
to break you into bits, devour you whole.
Each of us has a kapo in their soul
to do their work. And some will disappear
At random, just to keep you on your toes.
I’m old and toothless. I will write things down
you’ve told me, hold your words here, when you drown.
They are not quite as smart as they suppose
Some of us whom they thought they’d bought and sold
find something left of rebel when we’re old.

We might well lose. Our enemies are smart.
They have the guns and money. And the power.
Do not assume that this is not their hour
to gloat, stamp on each face and break each heart
that cares and weeping sees the world decay
music and kindness. They won’t understand
why victory seems to crumble in their hand.
We’ll die in pain. And quite soon so will they,
Our only consolation that we told them so
Cold comfort of correct analysis
inadeqately argued. Synthesis
Perhaps the last sad true thing that they’ll know.
Death’s dialectic. Ashes of our brains
Mingle with theirs. Hot winds sweep empty plains.

So many fights we can’t afford to lose
so fight we must. With blood upon our hands
perhaps. Important each one understands
it is the fight, but not the blood, we choose.
Fight that’s our dialectic changed to will
we do not fight to win, perhaps to save
some fragments of what Money would enslave.
Freedom and love. I do not want to kill
Reluctance has a price we might not pay
but others. Pox and ignorance and ash.
Unending brutal tyranny of cash.
Perhaps it does not matter what I say.
Blood answers me and sneers. Intoxicates
Kills innocents, yet throws down nightmare states.

It’s almost sexual, that sort of rush.
A meeting listens to you. Feel their hearts
your hand upon their strings. That’s how it starts.
You get addicted to that breathy hush
in meetings when you speak. Like good cocaine
it makes you briefly sharper than you are.
Words race round corners as you’d drive a car
hand brutal on the wheel. And it’s your brain
whose tyres you burn, but also it’s a cause.
That’s more important than soliloquys,
or disagreement sobbing on its knees.
It is the people’s struggle, and not yours
Beware of leading. Easy to enjoy
the ride. The revolution’s not your toy.

You do the things that only you can do,
be useful, kind in unexpected ways
to sisters and to comrades. When malaise
creeps over you, accept it’s like the flu
you are allowed to spend a few days sick
a few days off your game. Recovery
is sometimes slow, never obligatory.
You learn doubt’s shape. It fits, a sudden click,
part of analysis, that’s never done
always in progress. Brick on brick gets placed.
Each momentary problem that you’ve faced
part of the process. Always try to shun
the simple lying versions leaders sell
that silence stories only you can tell

You’ll probably outlive me. Unless shot.
If things get bad, as very well they might
And we’re arrested on some foggy night
I will not last on Dartmoor. Feet will rot
joints creak I’ll catch the flu or fall asleep
and not wake up. This happens when you’re old.
Bad food, some brutal guard, or just the cold.
They’ll put me in a grave twelve inches deep.
And burn my poems. Keep them in your heart
where they belong. Admonitory advice
to learn, digest, remember. Once or twice
use them to teach. Yours is the harder part
suffer for years kept going by the hope
of seeing your tormentors choke on rope

It may well be that they will kill us all.
A thousand bullets in a thousand brains
would solve most of their problems. What remains
of any opposition will soon fall
to broken hearts and age. Yet, tense, at night
they’ll brood on murders missed. Fear that we’ll rise
somehow from death. Their lies will glamorise
us to their shiny children. What we write
somehow survives, however much they burn.
Regrows like bindweed, underneath the ground
Your essays and my sonnets will be found
on barrows, shelves and websites. No return
for you or me, my dears. We’re dead and gone.
Their children praise us. Freedom’s just begun.
Or maybe not. Perhaps we lose. The worst
not knowing, but suspecting, as we die,
these fools have killed the world. And don’t know why.
Desperate people rise up, and the first
shot down as we were, and the next. Paid thugs
kill sisters brothers hoping they’ll not starve
yet do. In south and north great icebergs calve.
Floods rise. Crops fall to blight or rot or bugs.
Last child falls to last sleep pus in her eyes.
The last birds charcoal on last burning trees
Art knowledge love just ash on burning breeze
charred dust with husks of roaches, lice and flies.
Those curses true we screamed with our last breath
Dying rich men will fuck the world to death.

Just one tonight

CATULLUS 100

Loving as brothers, as is only meet.

one loves a boy twin, other loves the girl.

Verona's small-town smart set in a whirl!

Caelius and Quintus – they are both quite sweet.

But if I had to choose, I won't be coy.

Love scorched me, turned the marrow in each bone

to wildfire. He was there. Caelius alone.

I hope he's lucky. Hope he gets his boy.

No, one more and that's the 90s out of the way

CATULLUS 98

You snitch and stink. Your pompous lying tongue

rots in your mouth. Find better use for it

There's many arseholes you could cleanse of shit

or lick a peasant's sandal free from dung.

Is hate the one idea left in your head?

Just yawn – the stench will leave us all for dead.

The last for tonight

CATULLUS 96

Perhaps salt tears taste sweet among the dead,

grief sounds soft music in their silent land -

So long since we were friends – I'll hold your hand.

Share mourning, yearning. Loves the years have shed

like leaves. She died so young, from Fate's harsh blow

Weep, and you bring her joy. Mourn her – she'll know.

Is this Cinna the poet that gets killed in Shakespeare?

CATULLUS 95

Nine years, dear Cinna, and it's worth the wait.

Your tenants brought rich harvests in nine times.

Nine winters froze. Yet 'Smyrna' isn't late...

Hortensius wrote fifty thousand rhymes

in those nine years. In far off years and climes

they'll read you. While his work will dissipate

forgotten; all those pages used to wrap

cat litter, fish and chips. It's all such crap.

On a roll with these

CATULLUS 94

Big Dick fucks. Fucks a lot. It's not a shock.

His name has made him into one vast cock.

Each spice you cook gives flavour to your wok.

Oh, and one for election week

CATULLUS 93

You're no one up to whom I care to suck.

Caesar – good man or bad? Don't give a fuck.

I've let this go for a week or so

CATULLUS 92

Lesbia can't shut up. I am so vile,

she says. I guess that means she loves me still.

And so I go on living. All this while

I love her and aloud I wish her ill.

That's how it works, will work until our death.

We love, but curse each other with each breath.