Poem: Angel Falling
I remember when Columbia first launched in 1981, the big fear was that the heatshield would melt. And I remember the shock of Challenger in 1986. Watching it happen again, in the run-up to the Iraq War, felt like an omen, a demonstration. This is what happens to democracies that aspire to empire. Torn apart by the bow shock, of the impossibility of becoming something they are not.
I don't know if that future, of a world without America, can be averted now. Perhaps there is still hope. Even if the worst comes, there will be hope. But not for the specific forms in which we used to give that hope a name, a shape. That moment is past, torn, burning gases already through the hull. The world is tumbling onto a new trajectory and it will hurt before we heal.
Angel Falling
(for Columbia)
into a cold blue sky
from cloudless black
our day has passed;
there is no turning back
the sun will rise again
on other shores
we who once glanced the moon
shall fly no more
beyond this sullen cloud
of scouring flame
a thunder sobs
across the fatal plain
no words can break
the dark that lies ahead;
bring out your palls and grieve
the future's dead
Poem: What Flames May Come
In the 1980s I used to dream of nuclear holocaust, even though I lived in New Zealand. It's not so much an actual dream now, just a dull ache. A tool wants to perform the function for which it is built in the same way that water wants to run downhill. A bomb is a desire for explosion given material form. Why do we have desires that we don't want to release?
What Flames May Come
I woke from cold sleep, sweating, numb. The TV
blared a band of white noise, headlines
smashing half the screen: IT'S HAPPENED. MASSIVE -
turned it off. I knew already; saw the sky
- in dream a half hour earlier -
the purple haze of ion sheen, white flash
sears city blocks to dust. - What did you think?
I said to no-one - Internet's offline today,
routes crashed with traffic - build these
things, deploy them, they get used, people
will die. It's what we're made for. What we do.
We ache. And in the vacuum of the updraft
burn.
Poem: Gilgamesh
Probably a bit pretentious. But I'd just read Derek Hines' wonderful translation of Gilgamesh and it had dawned on me for the first time that Ur -> Uruk -> Iraq. How old that region of the Earth is, and how entwined its history with war. Submitted to www.poetsagainstthewar.org in 2003.
Gilgamesh
The walls of Uruk now
are stenched with dust;
two-fifty klicks from Baghdad
as the coalition planes
stir shadows with the drone
of EM lock-on, target paint.
There was a king here, long ago
burned bridges sky-high;
war crimes stank to Heaven.
Hewed the cedar forests,
glared the Sun's dark rays,
spat out the plague
crashed finally, a comet
damned by stars themselves.
These satellites
know none of this;
they serve no god but Ada
and her consort SIPRNET.
The old songs bore them.
Hear instead the clicks of their
plutonic dreams;
an algorithmic envy
cold as Ishtar.
Were I Gilgamesh
and dredging that
eternal starlit black
I would say: do not seek
iron ore, petroleum, or bauxite
let them burn and rust
on battlefields
the victor shall not speak
in steel
put out your hand
and write your fate in clay.
Poem: X-Ray
Back when Guantanamo was first set up it was called Camp X-Ray. I had just seen Rabbit Proof Fence and there were reports on how tigers in Baghdad zoos were getting pre-war stress. There was a sense of the whole Western world caught in the floodlight of its own media and having no answers. The troubling aspect of official military torture seemed to me then as it does now: that it represents not a lower, but an upper bound on how civilised a society is. Not how we act in safety, but what we resort to in our extremity is who we truly are. The terror of being confronted with that self-knowledge still has not left me.
X-Ray
And we are all now
in Guantanamo
blinking in the light
of our most naked truth
dripped from needled veins
as this actinic glare
scorches soul and bone
calls us who we are;
rabbit at the fence
tiger in the cage
we bite electric wire,
bloodied paw and fur
with fear: it does not get
more civilised than this.
Poem: Vigil
Written after a candlelight vigil early 2003 before the war. Knowing it would not hold back the night but yet... we do things because we must, not because they bring us power.
Vigil
We stand at twilight's edge
between the light and dark
with candles in our hands
and silence in the trees
the day is running low
the leaves are autumn gold
and in the wind a chill
that prophesies of rain
do not mistake our peace
for abdication: no
this moment will go on
until the world is saved
Poem: Peace Is A Luxury We Can No Longer Afford
I kind of like this one.
Peace Is A Luxury We Can No Longer Afford
there is no denying it:
these are now hard times
in a global repression
securities will be exposed
it will be prudent for us all
to become economical with the truth
and learn to ration
our lies
we must tighten our belts
conserve compassion
reduce unnecessary expenditure
on frivolous externalities
like faith, hope
pity, doubt
we have learned to live without them
before and will do so again
love
is the single greatest thief of power. kill it.
without ruthlessness
we can save nobody
Poem: Unconventional Weapons
A random antiwar poem from 2003 reflecting on the peace movement.
Unconventional Weapons
How do you fight
when your enemy is no-one?
What do you fight
with?
A knife won't do
goes through ideas like butter.
Bullets, useless
even teflon coated armourpiercing hollowpoints.
-Blam blam-
Missed.
Hard buggers to target,
those abstract nouns.
But we'll get 'em,
all, in the end. You'll see.
War, terror
famine, death.
They've got a headstart
six thousand years plus of hatred.
Nukes
and AK-47s
full-spectrum geosynchronous air-space theatre dominance
blunt rocks
Apaches
COMSATINTELNEOLOGISM
and
poison gas.
Us, we've just got
hands, eyes,
faces.
Hardly seems like a fair fight.
Maybe they need
a few more tanks?
