Paramorphosis

This is probably unfair. 

It's probably me, not you.

No, it's definitely me, 

but I've always felt

left out. I'm sorry, 

I know you're not

some impenetrable clique, 

I'm not suggesting you are,

it's just I've always 

felt that way. I don't know

how not to be ridiculous, 

how not to be what I am, 

so all I can say is I'm sorry. 

Now that's out of the way,  

can I just ask why? 

What is it I'm not getting?

What form do I need to complete 

to fulfill the requirements

of interpersonal bureaucracy? 

What opinions should I have?

What music should I like?

How should I dress? 

What should I do?

Who should I despise

other than myself?

I still feel stalled

at the perimeter 

of the kindergarten sandpit

holding an invalid visa

for childhood, spectating

on the fellowship of others,

the frontier police indifferent 

or hostile, the border 

not an invisible wall, 

but a block of ice. 

I was born inside 

a block of ice 

which never thaws,

a frozen placenta, 

an amniotic crystal 

that still contains me. 

I watch people pass.

I am a brick in the wall 

that they walk past. 

Can I just ask, 

why can't I change?

There is no justice

There is no justice.
When the right things happen
it's for the wrong reasons
and the wrong things happen
all the time anyway.

The appearance of justice
is an illusion,
a temporary alignment
without real significance,
like that one day
your horoscope came true.

When you read in the paper
"justice was served"
it just means someone 
had the good fortune to get 
what they were looking for,
and someone else
got paid to write about it
for whatever reason. 

There is no justice,
and the rich get rich, 
and the children starve,
while a jury of celebrities 
says which of them got talent
and a parliament of scum
says none of them get food.

Justice is the smoke
they blow up your arse
while they leave you broke. 
Justice is what they call
the rules that they break
and the news that they fake
while they're on the take
and they take it all.

That's what they call it. 
Justice. There is no justice.
  

Dance, Fatima, dance

Dance, Fatima, dance. 

Never let them stop you dancing. 

They would rather you sold tickets

for a show that never opens. 

They would rather you sewed buttons

on the costumes no-one wears. 

They would rather you pour concrete

so they can build an empty theatre

that is part of a portfolio

they diversify offshore.

You danced here through barbed wire.

You danced through poison gas.

You danced through mud and crossfire

and you danced on broken glass. 

You danced across the borders

and along the picket lines

and among the queues of people

waiting for better times. 

You danced among the heavens,

each pirouette a star, 

in a constellation admired

by your audience from afar.

You danced where people needed 

to see they needn't be a slave.

As they obediently shuffled

from the cradle to the grave,

you danced instead. So dance, 

Fatima, dance and never stop. 

Exoplanet

It is a mistake

to imagine God exists as we exist. 

He is an air we breathe that suffocates us 

the instant we become aware of it, 

a water in which we are immersed

which waits for us to notice it

so it can drown us. 

His totality means as much to us

as our incompleteness means to Him.

One must cease for the other to exist.

The thread must forget it is thread

to become cloth. 

There is no life in the void, 

yet life is all there is, a mirror 

that annihilates what it reflects

to fill the space between the stars

with the image of you not as you are

but as part of everything

that is not you. 

The state of Denmark

What do you mean, "something 

rotten in the state of Denmark"?

There is always something rotten 

in the state of Denmark, 

always has been and always will be. 

Your statement is a tautology. 

Things are pristine and vivid 

only in the imagination. 

Reality is a still born whelp. 

You prod it with a stick 

expecting it to flinch 

and instead it bursts open 

and spews out all that feeds on it,

whole parliaments of maggots, 

and you act surprised? 

The state is a carcass

whose procedures are decay. 

Gestating better worlds in the mind

as we patrol the hard border

between possibility and disappointment

is a job that will never be complete.

On closer inspection

Ours flaws reveal our perfection. 

We are a melody performed on a piano 

with a degree of technical mastery

whose accuracy only becomes obvious 

because the instrument is out of tune.

We are butterflies of birefringence, 

beautiful nebulas of stress in gems

seen under a microscope, glassy flowers

blossoming around inclusions in a diamond, 

whose structure would otherwise be invisible. 

Our visible imperfections promise 

the unseen sublime, so let all my songs 

be songs of protest against the limitations 

of this, my hoarser voice. 

The ravine

We shout abuse 

at each other

across the ravine.

It fills with bodies

for whom no-one speaks.

From cliff edge we cast

words like quick lime

to cover the dead 

and forget. At night 

we tell our children stories

in which we are the heroes. 

In the morning we give

our wives a doorstep kiss, 

and leave, and return

to the ravine. 

Day after day,

shoulder to shoulder,

forgiving our brothers, 

condemning all others, 

we hate and we love

and the bodies float past.