[DEBATE] : (Fwd) Two Brutus poems

[Patrick Bond]

(Forthcoming in a compilation - but he says they're fine to share around...)


Entering Table Bay

Dance with a skeleton:
macabre jollification:
below saude beat of tam-tambs
hear creak ofbony joints
shuffle of splayed tarsals:
ambivalent embrace
of bedraggled amour
beauty dedizened for brothels frolics:
rank scent of withering petals
sprawled from disassembling heart
rotted crotch of a decaying rose
where still, absurdly, stamens gleam
with pledges of resilient life



LETTER TO CAMDEN

You old greybeard poet
who sang of a free world
where men loved men freely
and all enjoyed earth’s bounty
still I salute you
and wish to send words of praise

but if words cannot make something happen
cannot ring out to crack
this obdurate and heartless firmament
let me be dumb
let my lips be silent
let my mouth be stopped
with grime and dust
here where I see decay
where blood runs in the streets
earth shudders in agony
and men gagged by blood clots, plead for pity
let me be courageous
to cry out for a just world
cry ‘Justice’, Justice’. Justice’
or let me fall silent.

What will it take
to make the heartless unhumans of the world
listen to our cries?
I will go on my knees
and howl like a dog
a starved chained dog
howling at the moon
and cry ‘Justice’, ‘Justice’, ‘Justice’
until my corpse falls
worn-out and rigid and silent.