Sunday, December 10, 2006

Lost faces

What ever happened to those faces?
the faces of old friends
who drift through memory,
gently probing
stirring names as modern times rush
along the road to Damascus,
escorted by tanks and
grim-faced infantry.

A hippopotamus ejaculates for
the zoologist's syringe,
but another species just became extinct,
did you hear it's cry?
there will be no tombstone,
just a mouldy monograph in
some forgotten archive;
Do you long for the womb
when life was so much simpler?

Where is Peter the paranoid poet?
does he ever step across
his threshold,
the outside world is ugly
far better to be distant in
foetal position head space
Beirut safely on TV
smoke from a joint gently curling,
Velvet Underground on the stereo.

Lost faces of legendary days
a canticle to innocence,
melody an advertising jingle,
while the thousand-eyed beast watches sitcoms,
mapping the human genome,
all the better to twist you with
hyperthalmic reaction
blunted cortex
moral disorder.

Forget lost faces and
watch the particle accelerator
tick tock tick tock the nuclear clock
as a madman screams,
it's not real, it's not true!
just the seven o’clock Baghdad
market-place news
Himalayas of hate.

Glenn became a PE teacher
Theo a smack freak
some are dead
some may as well be.

Does the smelting plant still spew acrid
black clouds across the schoolyard,
or is it closed like the school
as industry and hope die in Brunswick?
Does John still go to brothels?
will Anna ever find love?

I dress in black to lament the
death of past lives,
for the faces are lost,
and there will be no late night B grade re-runs
as another Cambodian steps on a mine.

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