In search of Kafka
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Stark geometric lines
intersecting clean marble
and steel;
horizonless concourses
deserted entrance halls,
empty corridors
vacant escalators
ascending,
descending
in relentless
progression;
Walls hyphenated
with reminders
to purchase,
to consume
bellowing mutely
into the void;
shimmering platform mirrors,
clipped automated announcements,
data screens streaming
their silent prophecies;
Inexorable arrivals
whooshing
and rumbling,
debouching into
the gleaming Now
of a glass-towered
morning amid its
awakening rage
there on
the bench
face down,
his skin again
punctured,
no-one.
We went into the Valley of Elah
looking for victory and reasons to carry on ,
when we got there those reasons had gone ;
they’d quietly slipped away
leaving us with nothing more to say ;
when we got back
we didn’t recognise ourselves ,
we looked at our faces in the mirror
that only showed someone else ;
all our words too had their meaning changed
for something that we couldn’t understand ,
and we who were born here
became strangers in our own land .
Listening to faltering surreal broadcasts
serenading another Summer equinox,
the composition’s title eludes him,
Miles;haunting contemplative succinct
flags down thoughts mimicking melancholy,
Gil Goggins’ circumspect piano
embedded in the spent day’s residue
receding like the listener’s reverie
broken by random sniper-shots of glass,
endemic tension flowing,
burst-veined onto midnight alleys
of this midnight City,
frantic frazzled red ‘n’ blue
taking some more cold meat
away to the coroner’s slab,
away from midnight streets
haunted by ” Yesterdays”,
that title hunted down and
captured by a desire to
have words for that spell
cast on a night long ago
in a faraway City where
another night-listener
heard the night
with its surreal,faltering..
When Summer returns,
the last of the bones
will have been buried,
the endless lists of names
will have been erased,
even the memories of those names
will be forgotten;
When Summer returns,
meadows again will bloom
hiding their terrible scars,
under the green and growing
nourished by the dust
buried beneath;
When Summer came,
the gates swung open,
they poured in,
one vast tide of flesh.
The Last Cicada
The sadness scattered
over the walls resonating
with what was
in the heart
of the mountain.
No sound could be heard.
A myriad of eyes belonging to cicadas
were shrouded in mist.
A somewhat long-winded
like a speech
surrounded the sky.
Maybe it was an echo,
a sesquipedalian one.
It wasn’t breathless at all.
Nothing could have saved
nature around.
Neither of the forests,
neither of the birds,
and neither of the bears
could survive…..
Nothing more
could have been done.
All the moving peaks became
small stones, as solitary
as the moon,
at the fugitive horizon.
The last cicada
disappeared.
Everything became motionless.
There were only the shadows
of the trees
to follow the sunbeams.
The nature game
turned detrimentally
into a disaster.
In an illuminated city,
a man bought
a lovely bouquet of red roses
wanting to bestow
what it is considered to be
a symbol of romance.
This man needed
to express his love
and to let his woman know
how he feels about her.
This man disappeared.
He was the last one.
Nothing could have saved him.
Nothing more
could have been done.
The name of the painter is Adam Sturch.
Get me to the dream on time,
the one I’ve just left behind,
the one that’ll still be waiting for me
in that somewhere otherplace
kind of space without time
reason or rhyme;
Just get me to the dream on time
and the clocks shall all move on,
up and over and over again,
When I’m there again as if I’d never left,
I never will so I never shall,
so I’ll not ask of anyone to get me
back there to the dream on time,
the one that’s waiting,
breaking,
fading,
that leaves me
YELLOW taxicab lights
fire-flying across the
Gothic span pumping
metal adrenalin into
the heart of a City
surrounded by
skeletal Goliaths
their electric rage
surging down humming
wires criss-crossing
searchlighted avenues
and shuttered alleyways
cluttered arteries where
buzzing BLUE copcar lights
gasp for breath amid
rotten flesh late night bars
and crowded vibrant streets
aisles of reverence
down which worshippers throng
beneath clouds of incense
floating high above
the dark dark City and
its YELLOW taxicab lights..
Burn the pages
of all my poems
of all my dreams
of all my thoughts
burn them all;
let the flames consume them
reduce all my work to ashes
then let the Wind scatter them far far abroad,
till they are all lost
and gone and no longer mourned;
All that is left behind is the empty grave
of hope betrayed, desire abandoned, ambition thwarted;
Bereft of significance
slung with abandon onto the Pyre,
scenes from the flickering dusk
its orange and reds dance
across our implanted memory,
our specious thoughts thought by someone else
their currency forged,their lies spoken
as if they alone were truth,
but the flames only know anger
and they consume all.
Blank eyes,
a detonator
a trigger mechanism;
They stole our heritage
from us,
they made us forget
all we once were,
they made us bury
our dead,
we buried our dead
in autumn;
Autumn is a time of slow dying
there is no need to hurry,
the leaves will have time to shrivel
the branches of the trees will be denuded,
the leaden clouds will drift across the sky;
Blank eyes,
a detonator
a trigger mechanism;
Now there will be nothing more.
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