To tell the truth to power
Is to go under a steamroller
To tell the truth to power
Is to be a tree trunk in sawmill
Power has that dirty laugh
That fools enjoy
Power has an ocean of rusted keys
thrown away
Powers idea of judgement
Is a secret train ride through a wood
Powers idea of judgement
Looks like an inferno for truth
It’s become the norm
It’s a brain worm
Called cancel culture
Take your judgement seat
In the courtroom of the tweet
It’s a new kind of vulture
Called cancel culture
From neighbour in the street
To critic of the police
If you say what you feel
And your friend disagrees
You will get cancelled out
No one cares what its about
It spreads like a fire
It transmits from it holy spire
It cancel culture
A prejudice
Is easy to spread
When you use
The internet
Judge not me
But judge yourself
Care about
What comes out your mouth
That it isn’t
Cancel culture
I’m living in a slow death country
That’s part of a slow death world
I’m living with a slow death woman
I’m living with the slow death blues
The rich own all the factories
The rich own all the farms
The poor survive on benefits
Listening to the slow-death alarms
It was true about billy Hogarth
It was true about billy Blake
It was true about billy turner
that the whole world is a fake
You could say that I’m not happy
You could say that I’m dissatisfied
You could say I woke up feeling bad
To a whole world full of lies
in the words of Tom Paxton “we all have to feel bad sometimes “.
After the feast was over
When the boulders had crashed onto the table
And the birds came out to eat the crumbs
And the snake coiled itself up to sleep
And the rebuilding work was underway
And the naked bodies hung in the sky like rain
And the blood of the meat was splashed like graffiti on the wall
And the wine could not find another vein
And all the hero’s had left their seats and gone their separate ways
And the dust settled right up to the roof
And we wandered about the sand with only the myth
And we looked for the gate that was gone
And we searched for the table that was sawdust
And hope took us into the wilderness like starving sheep
And the signs pointed to a storm out at sea
And darkness finally covered over our bones
And the epitaphs on our tombs read – born too late
once again I was thinking about the decade of the 1960’z when we were overloaded with a cultural feast, up to today, when it’s obvious that it’s gone for good now.
the system of youth
Is frost between layers of time
It is called upon
To carry the world upon its’ back
It is expected to answer
To the man in black leather in the Norman tower
with blood and tears
with sacrifice
The system of youth
Is a green velvet wheel
Turned by a river of Iranian oil
Turned by a river of liquid sugar
Always it is traded for goods
Goods for blood
The system of youth
Now I see it
Like a Ferris wheel turning
In the ice of tomorrows tragedy
Leaving its parents
Broken and confused
in Media Control by Noam Chomsky, in his intro to is little book, he counter poses two views of democracy, 1: that democracy has the public participate in its own affairs with free information, and 2: that they are barred from doing so with controlled information. He argues that it is the latter that prevails in our society. What do you think?
Counter poses means set in opposition to.
Media Control the spectacular achievements of propaganda. 2nd edition pub by seven stories press.
They are turning off the tap to the fountain of youth
Inching it imperceptibly closed
You’ve seen those taps in the plumbing beneath
Where only the assassin goes
They are turning of the tap to the fountain of youth
That spouts in the Garden of Eden
Atlas holds a nuclear bomb on his shoulder now
They collect the blood he is bleeding
They turned off the tap to the fountain of youth
With their hands in their sleeves they go puff
Are they printing out money to buy themselves things
Well they really can never have enough
They turn off the tap to the fountain of youth
It has sprouted plenty for the now
They jump in their cars and drive through the mud
Passed the old barn and the rusted plough
All of that stuff about the fountain of youth
All harnessed up like an oil field
Young hearts that flow into oil drums
Equality bartered by deals
It’s harvest time for youth again
They’re sure to make you some money
You can send them abroad to do great things
They will make your life more sunny
You can sit there amused by their sweat and tears
You can steal their Olympic fire
When it’s over you can return to the vault
And converse with the idols of liars
A government of false hope
Slugs it through the weeds
It takes the virginity of boys at exams
It offers them women on a billboard
Nicely framed corpses of human rights
Pockets filled with eyes blinded by atomic lights
Witches flames around a Christmas tree
A shovel full of poor people’s bones in the cellar
False hopes like flea mange on a dogs coat
I wander down the street as old as a drawer full of pop art
I come to the end of the pavement, where did it go?
Pulled from under my feet by someone buying a Van Gogh
I reach out to touch the phantoms of society
That are dressed in silk and Spanish leather
Made from glass and images lifted from the air
As the black wind of nights gust by into death
False hope in the mineral water
Drink this and you’ll become a star
False hopes in the ballot paper
Vote for this and you’ll become utopian
How sick of it can a 70 year old get
Battling the storm clouds of false hopes
Funny thing about this poem is that, I write in pen and ink t then type it up, that as I was typing it up I had an Audie Murphy western film on TV called Walk the Proud Land about an Indian agent for the Apaches. Anyway it struck me that the film dialogue for the apaches was similar to the way I wrote the poem, maybe.
anyway I decided to call the poem Reservation poem because it feels like I am living on a reservation, maybe.
It’s not real Christianity
Like it’s not real democracy
If the birds nest is broken
The bird should quickly repair it
Most of them are career people
They want to climb to the top whatever way they can
Whom they hurt along the way they don’t care
They stick like glue to their plan
If they make a mistake, they don’t admit it
They’re afraid of how it looks
They put on a face and get on with it
They don’t care whom they fuck
If there’s something they don’t know they will lie instead
To make themselves look good
They can deceive anyone and everyone
They take pleasure in the sight of blood
They don’t like polyester
They prefer the feel of silk
They think that they’re the cream of the crop
But they’re just the skin on the milk
