Objet trouvé

All art is found art, discovered
on the peregrinations of inner exile,
sculpted from flotsam combed from beaches
in our lonely patrol around the limits
to which we are thrust,
gems found in the gravel of river beds
on our private Serendip, and polished
at our melancholy leisure.

Miracle

Love makes us immortal, 

even though we are flawed. 

It is in everything, everywhere,

and we are uniquely blessed:

we can put it into words,

and when it is expressed,

by us, we make ourselves 

into the image of God.

The trials

When lies are so commonplace
one assumes all words are lies
and discourse so degraded
we lose the habit of thought
and truth subordinated to authority
held by sham, self-serving charlatans,
it is then the gods release
the trials with which they test us.

The barbarians

We were so confident once. We believed
the righteous held the commanding heights.
Occasional expeditions against recalcitrant chaos
were sometimes required, but we were civilised
and our politics was a cavalcade of rationality.
We made art to celebrate our triumph.
We felt good about ourselves.

Now we are the outlaws,
cowering in some mountain refuge,
and the barbarians sit where once we made laws,
declaring their passing caprice
equivalent to our most solemn deliberations
and toppling our monuments for sport,
but remember: they will not remain;
we don't have to become like them;
we must never become like them.

Someday we'll raise our banner
over the ruins of everything we ever achieved
having driven the enemy away, a victory of sorts
in a war that should not have been fought.
Even in our moment of triumph we will know
lessons have not been learned,
and our victory is not final.

Victory does not vindicate the violence
with which it was purchased, it buys time,
creates a breathing space where we can talk
about doing things another way, for a while at least.

This barbarism was not new.
This barbarism was always there,
but we had grown so accustomed to its habits
we deferred to them, applauded even
those moments of finesse we called civilisation.
For all the corrupt advantage taken of the present,
the past had always been more brutal, but extenuated
by a recollection that must make peace with it.

And so, again, every common cause is subverted.
Doubts grow from whispers to shouts.
Every altruistic impulse is stalled by second guess,
and public space is surrendered to private security,
as we retreat behind the walls of our compound,
and safety becomes a gift bestowed by gangsters
to whom mock baronial privilege accrues in chaos.
Yet I will fasten my banner to the barrel of a gun
and raise it over a burning Reichstag once more,
and you will call it righteous
and do the same yourself someday.

In Cathcart Cemetery

I look in through the crypt gate:
overgrown, untidy, neglected.
A small bird flies out from the cavity
beneath a broken grave slab, startled,
escaping my sudden, unexpected presence.
It has made its nest among bones for branches
and now its note of alarm celebrates life
inadvertently, without self-regard,
in the ruin of our futility & conceit.

Sloth

Back off.
Leave me alone.
I'm not being lazy.
This is more
than mere indolence,
or less than:
laziness is effort
compared to this.

It's not that
I'm disinclined
to lift a finger.
Some limitless inertia
rests on me
and makes
all motion impossible.

My heart does not
circulate blood,
but siphons it
somewhere else,
an otherwise
inaccessible chamber
whose capacity is so vast
my few drops are
a vanishingly infinitesimal
addition to the void
pumped into a firmament
filled with black stars
among whose constellations
my own heart is lost.

I do not just
sit still.
I imagine myself
draining away,
becoming empty,
like an cavern
leeched from limestone
by centuries of rain
to provide a venue
for the futile echoes
of stalactites
weeping in the dark.

Some things scar,
some stay scabs,
the damage never undone,
and we never heal
to fill the hole
we had to learn
to grow around.

Page four girl

Back in the day you'd hear them say
I had great ass and tits
but I grew old and caught a cold
with five hundred and ninety six.

You would see me nude on page three
when I was in my prime.
Now I am dead you'll find instead
I'm on page four this time.

Drawing up a manuscript

Declaration of Arbroath, 6th April, 1320

Take gall of oak, and rain water,
grind in a mortar, and boil on a hob, and once you have brewed your ink, apply confidently on the vellum, remembering first to add, of course, vitriol of iron, wine, and liberty!