Divide and Rule Read online

  THE UNEMPLOYED

  Whether your people dropped out of the sky,

  or sailed near the wind from distant atolls

  when distance meant more than it does now,

  is none of my business. I’m unemployed,

  but pay your respects, because I fear

  nothing so little it becomes less

  than it should – can’t close a raw deal

  seguing soon into the hereafter

  you underestimate as vermicular,

  or look up to, appear ridiculous.

  Don’t spare me the superfluous details

  I spared you first. I hate imitators,

  hammer away until a slight dent

  is detectable in the anvil,

  and the sun sets in the west, then rises there –

  by west I mean, of course, the Far East,

  where, in my fantasies, you are dragged,

  kicking and screaming. Ronins demand

  totem poles your dead ringer was sculpted on

  by Abos you could swear you civilized,

  their lives, enjoyed to the full by you, over.

  Descendants, granted the bar sinister,

  bluff that it’s best to go out guns blazing.

  Best to go out and get some fresh air.

  SHOCK AND AWE

  We despise your subtropical accent,

  although it’s roughly the same as ours.

  Man isn’t rational, boy – boys are.

  Coincidentally, eternal youth’s

  our final offer. You’ll owe, in return,

  shrugs of the shoulders. Won’t teach you manners

  I’ve never quite gotten the hang of,

  torn from the womb mature, aging badly,

  not raised like you were, or as you,

  stating the obvious rarely worthwhile,

  a second front opening in the war

  I’ve been waging against a false friend,

  a correct one demanding the floor,

  convinced, when tanked up, years spent researching

  the forgettable weren’t a waste – he discovered

  peasants in a medieval cathedral

  for the first time channelled shock and awe

  more fluently than either good or evil.

  Unrecorded, their dialogue,

  as you wish your speechlessness were.

  INNER SANCTUM

  Tyranny, memories I’ll overthrow.

  Luckily, they aren’t brick and mortar

  holding me to the word I’ve given,

  not to charity, but for free,

  my inner sanctum non-habitable,

  my favourite sons in the entourage –

  fattening them with the calves wasn’t hard.

  It’s too late to find a hungry customer;

  they’ve matured into capable stalkers,

  recapture their humanity in public,

  Remains a mystery, if they’re watched

  by the ghost I will never surrender,

  though I may change my mind, the seat

  of relatively high intelligence

  I can’t get to touch down a minute

  on the throne. No man rules this world –

  if mad, he sacrifices at altars

  of divinities nobody else worships

  live coals walking on wouldn’t purify him.

  THE COLLABORATORS

  Independence I wouldn’t demand, though

  where they’re respected, I’m for my freedoms,

  schedule flights of fancy in a crash course

  we teach because it has nothing to teach us,

  the anti-occupation demo rousing

  a lion sleeping inside me. He roars.

  I rat him out. Vets put down this paragon

  created unequal before the number

  system’s invention – I mean its discovery,

  your faith misplaced in the infinity

  I’d define as completely losing count.

  Heaviest boxer here pound for pound,

  I could hand-deliver a lecture

  on life each calls his; that’s our custom.

  There’s no predicting, as we grow older,

  how much less possessive we’ll become.

  TUNNEL VISION

  You’re number one, and so am I – reckoning,

  in the nautical sense, won’t help us

  get from point A or B to the ecstasy

  with which I cross my legs, and bask,

  though it’s cloud-capped, brumal at the top,

  behaviour here inexplicable,

  hence best executed in silence,

  a feline you tagged with listening devices

  convicted for the ninth life he leads

  as if it were his to. Like him, we’re hungry,

  but is my appetite yours as well?

  Each hunts alone, for the nuclear family,

  you the person I expected you were.

  You shouldn’t be; we’ve hardly met.

  Wouldn’t know where to start, if the end

  weren’t visible: a tunnel, my studio’s,

  where, unrecognizable, you model

  for gouaches I hang abroad in the cyclones

  we’re neither saved nor damned by. They cleanse

  palates, skeletons also, and vultures

  some estimate have been around the block

  a billion times before it was built,

  a metropolis demonstrably too small

  for the two of us – perhaps more than two.

  Each dreams he’s primus inter pares,

  loves, doesn’t need, any introduction,

  an insomniac, restless before birth

  and after death – the rest isn’t composure.

  PYRRHIC VICTORY

  I was on fire to save you, myself,

  and the hoi polloi also if possible,

  the house sold out, but narrow aisles

  meant the saved were fewer in number

  than we might have wished. I lowered the voice

  to a lowest common denominator,

  finally hollered at my disciples

  hanging on words – or were they impaled?

  Either way, I had little control

  over instincts, least of all mine,

  you say you love, and fine then: enjoy,

  as you did land we’re occupying

  till you sign at the bottom motives

  you suspect in us are innocent

  of any crime except the importance

  you give abstractions, and whose fault is that?

  I see right through my own curiosity,

  get my kicks watching anyone suffer,

  could care less if a donkey or bronco

  is the support delivering them.

  The further from me or closer the end seems,

  the more loyalty I swear to mileage,

  last stand against incalculability –

  feared as much as extinction at my age.

  THE PICTURE OF CONCENTRATION

  I’m crouching in the landscape’s tall grass

  you sketched while I studied you closely,

  snapping pictures of your concentration

  I’m probably incapable of,

  supremely bored now, out of my mind,

  and plotting a triumphant return

  tomorrow. The benefit of the doubt

  I won’t give you and you can’t earn,

  the boy next door, his sister too, watched,

  standards either records used against you –

  encapsulating exactly how,

  the aleatory part of my job.

  Untimely, those pre-emptive strikes

  with which your labourers dug their own graves.

  Next time, you hope forces of nature

  do the dirty work. Anthropomorphist

  syndrome diagnosed, I fake great pity,

  then the greatness goes to my head,

  teaching me, since your complexion’s darker

  than
it has any human right being,

  you’d better behave like an animal –

  effectively ending the conversation.

  I find, when there’s nothing left to prove,

  a man becomes perfectly irrational.

  THE BARRICADE AUCTION

  I’m old enough to surprise my young

  fair-weather messmates on the Riviera

  when, at last, a harsh winter comes,

  a home-field advantage, and I act my age,

  forswear unprofessional heroics,

  though I’ll occasionally fall on my sword.

  Antique furniture you donated

  proved useful on the barricades

  I sold off, the highest bidder

  our government whose twisted logic

  wasn’t vandalized, always looked that way.

  Yes, if I recollect correctly,

  I was a chair, all but re-elected,

  rocking for office. The runners faded,

  hadn’t trained for marathons I soothsaid

  would punish those in the greatest rush.

  You couldn’t bring their endorphins to heel,

  some consolation waiting in wings

  you mischievously picked up at school,

  taught directions the wind was blowing,

  fixed your gaze after gaining altitude,

  captivated that much of the planet

  answers your thirst for money with water,

  integral part of human anatomy.

  THE ZODIACAL BEASTS

  I’ll sign: I misrepresented death,

  foamed at its non-existent mouth,

  oratory a far cry from knowledge –

  the gap in between’s my old stomping ground.

  There I developed post-domino theory,

  a Svengali behind the sages

  telling toppled zodiacal beasts,

  scrounging for scraps by the moat, to beat it.

  Before my birth, I revered newborn elders,

  lost a little faith in childhood, the rest

  since coming of age. I watched you grow,

  then shrink into a constitutional

  monarch, mongrel, your master the crown.

  I’m loyal to a fault, spit, wipe it clean –

  just had it on. Didn’t hear the bullet

  that can’t hear me either; we’re equals.

  As for the victim, the killer’s himself,

  not much to go on, our population

  mushrooming, increasingly desperate

  for solid evidence poverty’s shared –

  and it is, however imperfectly.

  The charities stopped knocking at doors

  you, if a foreign aid ship sails in,

  will have repaired – till then, they’re open.

  GREY MATTER

  We’re good and damaged – our voices can’t carry,

  bottom of my heart and pit of your stomach

  left unbandaged, wounded in action.

  You’ve debriefed a cutting-edge psychologist.

  Incurably yourself, you were told health

  might mean becoming another person,

  hatching. There’s neither shell, nor yolk.

  Follow the rules: mix yellow and violet

  into grey matter. My hypothesis:

  life is colourful. We scratch its surfaces,

  if I’m right. The day I’m proved wrong,

  I’ll run away, rejoin the circus,

  where round model Earths were my specialty,

  flat varieties a tougher juggle.

  The crystal ball’s in my court now – either it’s

  buffaloed (impossible), or I am,

  poorly positioned near the centre of power

  as the regime begins imploding.

  For decades, I stuck to my guns, an outsider,

  then compromised when nobody was looking.

  OUTER SPACE

  Given more choice, I’d certainly take it.

  Instead, let’s conclude I’m indecisive –

  better that than the ignoble admission

  I’m awaiting orders from above,

  immediate superiors polytheists

  offing requires divine intervention

  tricky under the circumstances;

  the gladiators who speak in tongues

  are outside my circle I drew freehand.

  Insiders lost, ages ago,

  a sportsmanship they had, or faked,

  when our game was serious. It’s still no joke,

  and you’re winning, relaxed. The nerve –

  you beam, inculcated with grace

  I deserve. Unjust, my sentence,

  commuted from inner to outer space,

  trains of thought laid tracks at a loss –

  no paying passengers on board,

  man of the people, standing ground

  I, their absentee landlord, own.

  SABOTAGING THE CALENDAR

  Often misleading, the mood you’re in;

  one like a pond takes you out of yourself,

  invites a dip difficult to resist

  when summering – by the winter solstice,

  you are better off anyplace else,

  wet and cold, need dry clothes, a change,

  and so request an audience the doyen

  refuses. Arguably, your half-hour

  wait in a blizzard for an answer like that

  is predestined, and after the next day

  disappears into the subsequent fortnight

  you’re accused of sabotaging the calendar,

  songs you were pencilled in to perform banned

  by their composers – ah, to be young again.

  But you’re living under surveillance,

  unlike the powerless chattering classes

  who buy your forced cheerfulness at face value,

  judge you naive. They’re flush, wine and dine

  on Halloween while you trick or treat

  elsewhere, garbed as a wildcat striker,

  blood pressure data news fit to print I,

  a trained calligrapher, record shorthand.

  Humble words – hear them scraping by

  on what they mean, worst kind of peer pressure.

  THE MINOTAURS

  Fellow Minotaurs laid off at labyrinths

  Asiatic Maecenases purchased,

  let’s contemplate the emerging markets

  losing interest in our mythology,

  grasp the gravity of the situation,

  and the exception that proves the rule:

  their reps reached exits before we pounced –

  stitch up uniforms; pretend we’re doormen,

  me spelling out, and you misreading,

  my encephalon’s contents, wasted.

  I insist we lock arms, and agree

  on a fast poison for the food-taster

  whose job you covet, the belly a joy.

  Fire in mine may lustrate, may not –

  won’t leave ashes bitter in the mouth;

  they are all that’s left of my taste buds.

  HABEAS CORPUS

  I’ve caught traumatic memories experienced

  enough to dodge human consciousness

  the prime years I was right about everything,

  me forgotten now as my predictions

  that came true – your media reported

  my instincts were down, base, then kicked,

  man’s warmest contribution his corpse’s,

  if the last heartbeat comes from the right place.

  The dead can’t plead ignorance: we record

  what happens next even when blows are fatal –

  my throat slit during a siesta,

  I awoke refreshed in this new world,

  captaining ships, pulling strings,

  the sailing clear. I’m out of rope,

  wasn’t numbered among the prophets

  our special ops left swinging back home.

  We issued licences to kill or live,

>   though the ones you’ve applied for, to die

  under mysterious circumstances,

  the late admiral hasn’t signed yet,

  time passing quickly, slowly as well,

  depending on the mood he is in,

  sharing it with us a dramatic effort

  in which it’s every man for himself.

  THE MOBS

  Anticlimactic, carting martyrs off

  after the bloodbath, former butterflies

  I immortalized, flattered also,

  when painting was king and I court photographer,

  a mere mortal – there’s no other kind

  inducted into your re-education camp.

  I’m usually for a little of both,

  given a choice between two blunders.

  Like your fetuses, I can’t behave.

  Their excuse: they aren’t fully sentient,

  with legal rights of the lab’s Kalashnikovs,

  funny in part-time civilian hands,

  rawish recruits consulting lawyers

  wise, wise to the ways of the world.

  And repetition dulls the senses.

  Progress, our kids demand – sadly, the art

  of slavish imitation they’re against

  shares my patron saint, his oath (top secret)

  the devil’s eye for an eye, two on a bust

  well within an iconoclast’s reach,

  this comrade living in a private hell,

  till he offers the red-carpet treatment,