(car / east)

I enjoy being a passenger in your car,
first climbing through gates
to touch the faces left back where we started –
interrupted by radio
dirty “programme of abuse”,
hear “systematic failures”
question why no one
stopped.

But home in the car I’m safe,
you drive I’ll watch
for all potential left by the roadside:
goods and services
ramshackle market stalls
old men asleep on straw
dogs scratching patterns
dead masters;

the difference is telling
but we drive on in silence
perfecting beliefs only when we pause.

Radio reports “feral children”
doctors fed them full for asking in sign;
is emotion taught?

Straw beds appeal
but we continue the road,
driven mad
by no sleep.

Each day we kiss up quick to the dawn
and he looks at me –
licking dew off a cut lip;
“with occasional access”
to desperations –
thinking too much about progress
is to miss the truth
that you are driving
and I am watching.

At speed the windows are film reels
stretched out beyond sense –
bands of colour differing in width.

Heard “everything is together”,
when the celluloid burns
we can stop
and think about what we have done
where we have come –
always refusing speech.


Alexis

Spare Me " * "

In this particular kingdom of the blind
the one eyed man is too busy
shepherding to brace the reins
of a king,

warding off the accidents of human traffic,
the stumbling patsies of misplaced trust,
another lusty collusion of genocide and fun.

Yet a mile high above
in the flight paths of the blind
a stewardess advises her passengers
thus:

‘At the command: brace! place your head
between your legs and
pray - or trust at least

for the plane is losing
altitude fast
&
we all may be obliged to acknowledge soon the moment
in which
even the Beautiful People
won’t be leaving
good-looking corpses

But in the locker above your head
you will find confirmation that

even the visually challenged
will have every right
to have seen and not seen the fire at the end of the universe
which the scriptures say
will burn seven times hotter
than the sun.’


Ade Jackson