Metaphor Shear
Deep in Plato’s cave
the projector is overturned,
the lens is cracked,
its delicate machinery exposed
to the supreme blasphemy
of revelation:
Between input and output
lie infinite translations
of unreadable code,
liminal grey counterfeit signals,
eldritch gobbledygook
translated into reels
shining through the pastel anemia
of vampiric light.
Bloodless corporate covens
feed on isolation, on our loneliness,
a method of exsanguination
favoured only by
the most insidious parasites.
And this epiphany is all it takes.
Soon the veins and arteries of cities
are clogged with caravans of the outraged.
Robbed of nescience
they hunger to devour
the prophets who dissolved the enchantment
and the profit-seekers who wove it.
The mob opera reaches a crescendo
in paroxysms of bile and broken glass.
The night’s obscene,
filtered through the sicknesses of screens.
Barbarity’s denouement reveals
a line of Luddites garrotted with telephone wires,
phone chargers, fibre-optic cables,
all along the municipal mainframe.
Peace!
The grid’s gone out.
A Girl from Gaza
She is younger than you are,
university physics her dream
She adores playing football with her brother
and the taste of fresh oranges
The beaches on the coast
were her sanctuary
Her legs turned to fins in the water,
her cheeks grew gills
Surfacing
she felt lit from within
Tonight, tent-bound, she thinks
I will again
To Visitors
If you should see
muscular vines strangling concrete pillars
or a lone cat giving birth
under a mailbox full of
unopened letters –
If you should hear
a full-throated symphony of birds
engulf our Nirvana
or your own thoughts
amid the absence of roaring engines
and droning generators –
Know that we embraced catastrophe
when it arrived,
with dignity and grace
Know that eternity is vanity,
that there is no death,
only transformation
Know that we are freer now
than humans ever were
Rejoice for us
