The fall of Rome

We benefit from a secret commerce,

a trade in an unexplored hinterland

between merchants we will never meet,

conducted in forgotten languages 

at unknown caravanserais, on silkroads

long since lost to the desert

in unrecorded histories. We inherit 

an unrecognised legacy of miracles

performed by saints condemned for heresy. 

Civilisation is a table set

with cutlery for cannibals

too ignorant to be ungrateful.

Meanwhile, the gears of fate 

mesh in a hidden engine

that eludes our understanding.

Descendents of mountain tribes

loiter at the coast, and still gaze 

at the mystery of the sea, stunned. 

Barbarians, seduced by the wealth

of the cities they have plundered,

squander their valour on bargains

with defeated enemies whose ancestors 

were themselves seduced by the wealth

of those who preceded them,

and so on, to the dawn of time. 

We will know the end, when it comes,

because it will not be amenable to barter. 

2023 BU

Imagine that tiny asteroid,

passing within touching distance,

then abruptly hoisted into slingshot

by the Earth's gravity, exerting 

its equal and opposite influence,

minute in comparison to the Earth,

a daimen icker of momentum

pulling us almost imperceptibly

off the course we were on, 

an adjustment overlooked by those 

intent upon the hyperbolic orbit

into which we elbowed the rock. 

Maybe it's still enough, though.

Maybe that rock gave us 

the nudge we need. Pray 

it gave us the nudge we need. 

Time will tell. Time will tell. 

(2023 BU is a small asteroid that passed close to the Earth on 27th January 2023)

The kiss

I hold my palm aloft 

bearing the still beating heart

I have just cut from my own chest,

and cry "I got it all wrong!

I was wrong about everything!" 

They all laugh at me. You pass me 

a piece of frayed blotting paper

with a lipstick kiss pressed on it. 

The Moon hauls tides of blood

through my rigatoni arteries

as we lie for seasons in the shade

beneath the hanging tree

wearing a halo of noose dreams

and performing our puppetry of words

for each other, laughing, conspiring

in the most childish of apocalypses, 

finding monsters in forgotten myths

and adopting them as pets. 

I thought perhaps you had rescued me

this way. "It doesn't matter," you laugh,

holding my heart against yours,

"it doesn't matter. Ignore

their indecipherable ridicule,"

and the world ends in your kiss.  

Lullaby

Close your eyes and sleep, my child.

Dream your gentle dreams and mild, 

about distant lands and creatures wild,

for tomorrow's the end of the world.

Now sing our innocent bedtime song,

then silent sleep both deep and long,

while parents their penitence perform 

for causing the end of the world.

Sleep, my child, close your eyes. 

Don't worry about what's outside.

No-one we love ever truly dies, 

and tomorrow's the end of the world.

Bastards

Feelings are bastards.
I don't recognise them. 
They are not legitimate. 
When some emotion
demands my attention,

I refuse to acknowledge it. 
I turn it away, ignore it, 
send it mewling back
to whatever mother
says she endured my presence
long enough to beget it.
These are children 
other people have. 
My feelings are all bastards.

The twin

What slouched from that sulphurous cave

on the other side of the world

the day I was born? In one room 

- painted white, scrubbed clean, hygienic, well lit, 

busy with love and concern and method and expertise - 

my mother bore down on pain and clench and spasm

to bring me out of the havoc of her tight swollen body,

then held me against her warmth, and fed me from it, 

and moderated the sudden onslaught of light 

with her soft, gentle voice. Somewhere else entirely 

- a remote island past Ultima Thule

on a map that exists only in my mind,

a violent, barren place, both hot and cold,

ice and lava, with no respite from extremes,

where day and night are counted in seasons,

in whose scalded soil life finds no purchase - 

a twin only I would meet, 

a twin no-one else knows I have 

- Not even my mother. Not even my mother - 

a secret twin who whispers shameful secrets

into my ear unseen even in the most crowded place,

came into the world alone, emerging emerald eyed,

forged in some volcanic womb from a meteor seed,

already lascivious, slick and bright with lust,   

a monster, proud and disgusting, 

with frozen heart and molten loins, 

come to thwart all fantasies of perfection.

"What none of the people here can see,"

he says, "is I am you, and you are me". 

Interplanetary

We don't need rockets 

to travel to other worlds. 

Mayflies churn the January air. 

Confused by the climate, my garden 

gave me an August rose for Christmas. 

We've already arrived. 

Smokestack and car exhaust

have propelled us further

than any spaceship engine,

and home is just a memory.

The ambush

The daughter returns,

three years older, 

speaking strange words,

wearing strange clothes, 

and confiding secrets

with strange companions

who had taken her captive,

treated her like a princess,

and now escort her home.    

The father puts away

the dismembered body parts

of his fallen enemies, 

back in the box under his bed

where he keeps them hidden

(his daughter found it, once,

long ago, when she was a child). 

He has been unable to make

a new daughter from them. 

He will send them to the academy

where the skulls will be inspected, 

categorised and catalogued, 

along with the other bits of savage

in their bone collection. 

He will build a New Russia

on the ashes of their villages,

where young girls will dance

and memories will be buried. 

He has set an ambush for the savages. 

They took his daughter

and cannot be suffered to live,

but she prevails upon him

to spare her companions,

whose language she has learned, 

whose customs she has adopted,

and whose story she now tells.  

"You keep their daughters' bones

in your box, father," she explains.

"You will need to find a box for me 

if you harm them". 

(Grigory Khristoforovich von Zass (Григорий Христофорович Засс, 1797–1883) was a Russian Imperial general known for his genocidal actions against the Circassians, who took his daughter hostage for three years.)