Kit Kelen #23 - Revised Standard Dream of Little Johnny Howard

23

Revised Standard Dream of Little Johnnie Howard

following Peter Boyle 

in my dream

I am lecturing St John of the Suburb

and he is bound to hear

war criminal

hear myself nagging

and I like the sound

by what right

do you wreck their world?

by what right

make us all less safe?

little worm of a man

little hearted

little slug

so smug

so cunning

drainpipe rat

always out of harm's way

my turn now

it's not that he's tied to the chair

I don't have a rubber hose

but he has to listen

it's all in the rules of the dream

still he seems uncomprehending

has no idea where he is

throwback

dinosaur brain

so with-himself pleased

shaved off the whiskers

still he's all rat

where he's not worm

so many things are his fault

so many bad deeds

and worse intentions

didn't he do a job on us

mean, mean, mean

his dream for Australia -- forget

take the colour away

he made Pauline Hanson -- forget

she sprang fully armed

from his nethermost thoughts

he drowned the babies

he threw them overboard

he has made us much worse

made money the all-measure

made us to have business numbers

we were happy whistling

and he made us all count

beyond fingers and toes

look over the fence

have we more?

have we less? forget

forget

grow the economy

grow the house

let's be some cancerous growth

see how he torments the children still

see how he trips up the lame and the old

mean little man

little hearted

no soul

in my dream

I am telling him all this

how much less he made us

the little rodent man

all scurry

the no-target

cheese-nibbler

inheritor of conquests

of denial

look at him

with his column of figures

how high can the little turd go?

how much of our substance can he salt away?

have it all valued

then we'll all know

hates a story

hates it when the music plays

all those words

hidden under his cleanshaven breath

but the eyebrows

grow over him

they are the burning bush

of his Bible

the bigot's still under there

nice suit

he was made to our measure

the worse for the world to show

are hearts so dark?

surely we're better?

somebody voted this in

he is the tablet bearer

of Tories

he made us forget

who we are

could be

he drowned the babies

he threw them overboard

he ate them

he still drinks their blood

so nice, so white

scratch under for the savage heart

and rub the Gollum tum

his precious

three million kilometers square

all stolen and he won't say sorry

little man

made all of us smaller

mean, mean, he is the least of all

set us back

a long long way

grub

he threw the truth overboard

he is the great Galipoliser

grumpy old fuck

makes sure nothing's fair

I look into his eyes

he gives to the rich

he steals from us all

all that he worked so hard to forget

the how-we're-here and who-we-can-be

he won't be forgotten

we stick him on a wall

a stamp

he's the obverse of our coin

our hero-king

let's have a statue

lying little man

meek emperor

so lean with his cannibal vittles

how's his by-pass now?

his use-by's passed

like Pierce escaping from Port Arthur

waving the boat down

with some limbs of comrades

as yet unconsumed

does the cannibal king have comrades?

he is the starver of Wollstonecraft cats

exaggerator of fears

misery maker

hater

Scroogest of all prime monsters

he is our fear with a candle cast shadow

yes they're coming

to rob us

to take all we have

in the night

to take us

they have the weapons

of mass destruction

things we dream

are far past reason

things we do and say

war criminal

little worm of our rotten side

o it's dark

when you've forbidden ideas

dark all the way back to your childhood

but we're all white as bread

God save the Queen!

Long live the Queen!

that sunshine yellows the end of the tunnel

as if day would catch fire

he's the rabbit in the headlights

apoplectic with fear

our fears

the blacks

they're going to bail us up

the shanty edge of our hearts is rising

comes at us with tin for the sun

and the Arabs

forget China – they're buying

better form the wagons in a circle

good thing we have powerful friends

and buy the ranch next door

meek monster

ever so certain seeming

though it won't be enough

hear this, little creep

your nemesis is poetry

the worm turns

is there forgiveness

can I give him

the big smoochy dogslobber?

I am his judge

I put on the black rag

I stare into his blinking doubts

just a dream

just a dream

o it's fun to catch him like this

Magdalena Ball #16 Pale Shards after Peter Boyle #4 Post Howard

Pale Shards 

after Peter Boyle #4 Post Howard

agile, laissez-faire, free-market

coal gas oil: profit 

to the bottom line

is this a war

loyalty 

for your country’s sake

is this a country

pareto of unspoken

greed which proves everything

without question

swallows and swallows and 

no drips

money is always relative

a question of scale

when you struggle to exist, when every

breath is pulled in against the 

machine, the cage, pale ribbons

if I were the only person without a gun

in this violence

eyes focused like a weapon

the subtle motion of lips, cheeks, twitching

walking with difficulty through the snow

first there’s fear, the alien recoil

then recognition

# 16 Béatrice Machet Cherry-Lackered Nails...

# 16  “answering” Dominique Hecq's Red (# 12)

 https://conversationinpoetry.blogspot.fr/2018/04/dominique-hecq-12-red-after-melinda.html

and  after  Peter Boyle's lines  (#4)  (after Melinda Smith # 6)

"When we look in the mirror

our faces do not know us

and our hands fall asleep in their glum citadel

eyeing the chaos of a life."

…

cherry-lackered nails at her fingertips

holding somebody’s hand tight

like she’s back in childhood

when there was no boundary

and two as one was easy …

                       walking silently she wonders

what girl         for what woman to become

what woman             for what girl to forget

what man’s hand for this being on the run

drowned                   in an ocean of dreams

Peter Boyle #4 Responding to Melinda Smith #6 13 April

<starting with a line from Melinda Smith #6>

Post Howard

In his slowly rising cage

the inspector of underwater prisons

files his report to the Ministry of Hatchings

and where the script says "Abandon"

he digs his crab-like claws into

the minutiae of all dredged-up grief.

When we look in the mirror

our faces do not know us

and our hands fall asleep in their glum citadel

eyeing the chaos of a life.

What have you gathered about you?

Why these pale shards

arranged like signposts guiding the lost

to a missing waterfall?

The inspector is trapped in his gently rising cage,

in the flurry of his jacket and boots,

as the life he almost had, the parallel mansion

with its turrets, its swings and slides

and balustrades, its five-tiered gardens,

drifts downward to where the plankton feed.

A glint of light passes down the cable

showering with its sparks

the prison world below him.

However he turns the phrases

cruelty defines him.

Dominique Hecq # 12 - Red - after Melinda Smith & Co

Red

The sun, a glistening carmine clot. She daydreams, her ears plugged with Red Hot Chili Peppers. Contemplates the ruby on her finger. Takes a bit of her Royal Gala. Punches keys on her KreAtiV laptop that go clickety-click at each brush of her cherry-lackered nails. A shadow hovers above the window. She is caught red-handed.

Melinda Smith #6 the glass which is keeping... after Kerry Shying #4 (and the rest)

the glass which is keeping the air out, the workers in. He thinks nab means opportune theft

(elevenses for Kerri featuring buildings and theft)

after Kerry Shying #4 we accompany ourselves by slapping at flesh 

The April air above the office blocks is guileless blue

and too warm to trust. On the corner there is a situation, cordoned off, a jumble

of witches’ hats and high viz. The building says nab. The logo is a bloodied red star. One point

is striped with absences, sharp parallel scars, twin zebra stripes of gouge, they gesture

to the window washer, white helmeted, in his slowly rising cage, who tends to the dust. He bathes

the glass which is keeping the air out, the workers in. He thinks nab means opportune theft

Inside, on the window ledge, a dusty white peace lily calls to the white helmet. Beside it a woman

with a headset and bitten nails, her roots starting to show. Her screen says nab. She tends to it

like a duty, like dusty window, it does not always obey her instructions, there are wilful red absences

starting to show. In her mind, a dream of a day with no gouges, no glass, a portal she sails through,

opportunely, on a Vespa, in a sundress, unbereaved again, unmarked, impossible to catch.