The second coming

No-one cares 

about the blood-dimmed tide

that stains the sand 

of your beach resort.

The falcon is not obliged

to respond to the falconer

in the widening gyre 

of the bigot and the woke.

We commemorate one genocide

as an excuse to ignore the rest. 

Doubt and intense conviction

are equally alien concepts

in this age of apathy. Everything

has been revealed and is ignored. 

The lustful sun lubricates

your thighs with perspiration

while you practice your porn face

in the mirror for the webcam.

What fans slouch lonely

to the laptop, desensitised

to anything but the roughest beast, 

crude, cruel, unborn and immortal?

We are experts in the code. We perform 

to hide our boredom, our numbness,

our failure to feel anything at all.

Avatar arithmetic is meaningless

to those who don't keep count. 

The second coming? A bad joke

to someone seeking the glittering entropy 

and glowing aftermath of another orgasm,

and nothing can be said

to persuade this animated mud,

this clay doll made from dust and jism,

that divinity could reside in anything,

and no-one cares anyway. 

We'll hail an idiot as our saviour

as long as the lies he tells

are lies we want to hear,

lies that give us permission 

to continue to lie to ourselves,

as long as someone else feels the pain

that is the price we must pay for all this,

some distant crucifixion of poverty

on a scrap heap Calvary scoured

for things we have discarded 

that can be resurrected and sold

to support a dollar a day existence,

some squandering of undiscovered potential

where sewers are open and schools are closed

and nights are patrolled by stray dogs and rapists,

some remote ethnicity obliterated

in a re-education camp somewhere,

some population bombed and resettled

to clear their beachfront property

for casinos and hotels,

some metal children, half prosthetic, 

playing hide and seek the shrapnel

in the scorched playground of their flesh,

some violence somewhere else

that means we live in peace

for now: we don't care. We won't care

until it's too late, until it's our turn,

but until then we are immune to sympathy 

and so are not amenable to salvation.