Barriers
There were so many fences
there, in that place,
so many barriers,
so many ways of excluding
so may locks needing keys.
Then came the war,
the last one in that place,
when everything collapsed,
the war which ended everything.
Afterwards the fences were broken
the doors stayed open
with their secrets exposed.
The gold melted away.
The locks grew rusty.
Their keys abandoned,
hung out to dry
on broken fences
left to decay
like the people.
They’re all useless now
with no doors to open
and no doors to lock.
There is no place
now for keys
or people.
.........
The Enigma
Hitler was an enigma,
Dali knew it,
he could sense it
even in the nonsense of his dreams
he knew Maldordor was malodorous.
Yes, Hitler was an enigma,
such a master of communication,
but Dali knew that his communication
would be as broken as his old black phone,
no more likely to function than an umbrella is
to change into a bat and fly away when the end came.
But that was then and now Dali is dead,
perhaps more dead than Hitler,
who seems again an enigma,
a still unbroken influencer
of malodorous malevolence
in the era of mobile phones
and the reality of fake news
breeding New Pretenders to the crown
he left seemingly broken beyond repair.
So many now ready to pick up the pieces
and put them together to fly
with no umbrella for protection
in the perpetual rain of the present
which spells the death of dreams.
......
A State of Terrorism
There are tunnels everywhere,
they lie,
under every road,
under every building,
every field and every tent,
they lie.
They are all terrorists,
they lie,
the old men and women,
even the children,
even the babies
born and unborn,
they lie.
The journalists are terrorists,
the aid workers are terrorists,
the artists and poets are terrorists,
the medics and nurses are terrorists,
the teachers and cooks are terrorists,
the dying, the dead and the buried are terrorists.
In a state of terrorism,
a state of terrorists,
they will lie and they’ll lie and they’ll lie.
.....
The Melon Market
It was a small town,
Pec, in Kosovo now,
then in Yugoslavia.
It was 1966,
the year before watermelons became illegal
in Palestine.
It was a small restaurant
with no menu
so communication wasn’t easy.
But the guy on the next table spoke French
opening up a channel of communication for us.
John wanted to eat melon
but there was no melon.
Our French speaking friend,
he was a friend by now,
Had a late night solution.
He took us to a large dry field,
a melon market, he said.
There were huge heaps of watermelons,
dark green globes waiting in heaps.
Each heap with its sleeping seller
resting on a bed of melons.
He shook one seller awake
and carefully chose a melon.
We all went home with him,
he called the neighbours in
and there we had a melon party
eating great juicy slices
off tin plates
in a small house in Pec in 1966,
the year before Israel banned watermelons in Palestine.
.....
Tired of Waiting
From Langston Hughes to Ray Davies,
from the political to the personal
and back again,
back and forth,
back and forth.
From Kissinger to the newbie
pretenders standing in line
moving back and forth,
back and forth.
From Oslo to The Hague
back and forth,
back and forth.
We are so tired,
so very tired,
but all we can do is wait
to see where we shall find them.
Lynn White
