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 next poem words home |
State Of the Nation 1998 The Questions exist Of this there is no argument The Logic is explicit Of that there will be no question The Answers are insatiable And may possess no logic The argument is clear But can provide no answer... Who, I ask, is the one to follow the masses into The process of mind and take control Of the universal chaos that no-one feels? Who, today, will risk his crucifixion For days in the wilderness of company? Who will glow like the beacon of salvation And lead the Atheist to his promised land? Who? or maybe Where? For where are the Atheists now? I suppose too entwined in wasting away defining Themselves as Agnostics or Humanists to replace the Belief system with a belief system to believe in their own Opposition. And Where are the socialists now? I expect in an armchair in Croydon With Das Kapital prominent on the Coffee table High on Cathode Ray Intoxicants and Consuming abbreviated food. Where are the loonies? Sucking their souls through a straw 10 days dead in a deserted street With blank eyes fixed on the stars Where are the interesting people? Hiding away in lucrative proffessions Allowed to mainline a hit of opinion Twice a day? Or desperately noted on a headstone A memory of the bullet that kissed them To sleep and loving the Joy Of exemption? Or maybe just given a name Which is the bitterest death of all. I demand a reply Where? Where? Where is the intellect? Ricocheting in cyberspace Between info and pornography Publishing its genius to an audience of none And drinking to the treasured memory of thought? Blinded by science Run-down by the Wagon Lost in a maze of expression? This can't continue This will fail You can't rebel through rebellion You will never find worth in psychology You can't kick the corporate world wearing Nikes You cannot aim at targets Assemble and you die a movement There can be no virtue in choice If religion was the Opiate of the masses Then Marx has become your narcotic What are you now? A believer A believer in the 'essential nature' And the 'Core of goodness' Its all OK because there's Some force Watching over you. Well fuck you. I Got a big fat cheque of resentment For the 'Che' shirt I bought at thirteen For a price higher than my age. For the passion that fled with the first endorsement And for every moment since. I am all hatred now And I know my enemy The Nameless Oppressor The Invisible Tyrant The Unsubstantiated Autocrat The Libertarian Dictator I know whats going on. There remains in blindness the memory of colour You have canonised uncertainty And falsified freedom to construct an icon And made understanding your god But I ask you: If there is no 'wrong' How can there ever be 'right'? You have murdered conviction The proudest pillar of them all Now a Mess on the side of the road A victim of Road-Rage, Rising accident statistics Drink-Driving, Reckless-Driving,Dangerous-Driving Joy-Riders,Young-Offenders any other excuse for Reality that looks good in the 'Mirror' This is your vital irrelevance This is why I bleed too Splitting my skull on the asphalt Adding to the Sanguine pool that shivers Feeling the cold distillation of hate. There's too much hate to handle this Or walk the desolate and ruined city of ideology. Too much hate to find inspiration In pragmatism or to silence myself In its name Ladies and Gentlemen We are living in a Mediocracy The Brilliance And the Beauty Are dead. Winter, 1997 Copyright Simon Clayton, 1998. |
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