Diabolical
On the plasma screen I witness scenes:
A group in camouflage robes giggle like youngsters
About to receive their First Communion,
Their hair glittering like Roswell tinfoil;
Behind them bodies fall past towerblock glass,
See how they cry like Edvard’s pastel friend
As all crumbles into grey dust.
Even the pearl-pale cheeks of a girl with an earring
Crinkle impasto, become arctic crags.
On a high ridge a Buddhist monk meditates to death,
Mummifies his cause, the relief of his valley;
The salvation of impassive burghers whose ears are cocked
Like terrorists’ mercury tilt-switches, straining
To explode into action if the price is right
At the urging of golfing buddies, angel brokers –
Oh, what did the cleric say just then?
Eye off the ball; his hand on a hairless scrotum,
Scratching, tickling, urging with a twisted finger
The innocent to submit under the fist of the fiery-eyed one.
Hand me a plate, garnished with mangetout and carrot,
The centrepiece the raw tent of chicken buttocks,
Tear off legs, stuff its core to make it sweet,
Chop it up like the jigsaw of a Flemish painting,
As dancing girls in leather bikinis stomp and whip,
Gorging the masochist sprawling on the tabletop
Handcuffed to Heaven’s banister
Calling out to those on either side of him:
Franz, write me a certificate, 40 days remission from purgatory,
Heironymous, draw me a picture on the plasma screen
Of prisons in the desert or on a humid island
Where a group in khaki titter as they snap
Photos, posing like gods, imperial hunters who’ve bagged a kill,
Bodies writhing in glorious ecstasy and agony
As they crack the whip for the damned.
Spotlight the body, as the mountains erupt;
As hail sweeps, cuts to the bone, stings eyes,
Darkness surrounds; but the scene gradually focuses
On lichen-damp pumice walls - bobbing upstream
On a craft on automatic pilot, through the arch below the window,
Pray refreshment lies somewhere beyond the flickering screen.
Page(s) 9-10
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