Divide and Rule Page 3

  and finds, if he looks too closely,

  himself in the middle of the picture

  taken, to prove we’re all colour-blind,

  in the black and white agitprop-meisters

  prefer, spectrums uncontrollable

  as the mobs. Don’t mean those assembled

  by the state – ones that form of their own

  free will. Mine, I wouldn’t share with them,

  more like me than they’ll ever know –

  I ventilate only under my breath.

  LEARNING CURVES

  Where I’m unwelcome, I directly go.

  In the old days, I had too much pride.

  Experience taught me: have even more,

  a mountain man’s as well as a climber’s,

  and try the patience of a time traveller

  whose every stop seems like an eternity.

  I was raised awaiting a messiah

  I knew inside out till you took me for him,

  life here cheap as happiness would be

  to a savage in a golden age,

  if he had the arithmetic skills

  you picked up off a missionary,

  swore, oath garbled, recovered, hummed

  the unpronounceable. Your hand deserves

  a second chance on the holy book –

  near-perfect circles, your learning curves.

  OVER THE RAINBOW

  I am so full of myself when I deal

  with others I go through the motions,

  and our voices share the speed of sound,

  appearances impersonal, yours mine –

  don’t insist on an explanation,

  relations built on the bliss of ignorance.

  I’ll treat you as a sharp shepherd might

  his flock outside a sacred text,

  teach an apocryphal lesson or two –

  third time lucky in the Church Militant.

  I prefer tokens to batons, proof

  I’m a tram conductor, not the coup d’état’s –

  still at large, the maestro responsible,

  suddenly dwarfed by monsters he unleashed,

  didn’t do time hiding in the orchestra

  pit into which he simply disappeared.

  Hunt the recidivist: savour a stupor

  relentless soul-searching throws you into,

  perhaps unwilling to believe eyes

  I’m for or against shutting completely,

  then calm yourself. I’d show you how,

  but I’ve already showered my affections,

  and the rainbow I feel coming now

  is cold and distant, its colours deceptive.

  MARGIN OF ERROR

  If you deliver belief in a saviour,

  you’ll receive my life savings, a sum

  almost equal to its margin of error,

  price of a holiday in the sun,

  where the rich disappear, suffer less

  than us voyeurs left behind in limbo,

  name we give an introspection

  we are constitutionally unfit for,

  shuttering windows when tempted to shake

  their transparent surfaces for the hell

  whose views I’m certain a crash wouldn’t change,

  plus we’d be left X-raying hands,

  vastly preferring the luck of a draw

  to either the winners or the losers

  sharing our salient character flaws,

  why we try to outsmart one another,

  help entry-level staff, learn to love

  watching ourselves wipe mirrors, such romance

  irresistible – we’re so repulsive

  on the inside we can’t look half as bad,

  desires burning with no objects in sight.

  I advise blaming an arsonist,

  and wouldn’t bother feigning surprise,

  should it emerge you were him all along.

  BENEATH THE LEVEL OF CONVERSATION

  In the beginning, we were compatriots.

  We’ve become what foreigners should be:

  figures of fun I love hating

  because they take themselves seriously.

  You’re glad I lost my public recovering

  in a private institution is costly,

  yet it’s been done, out-of-style incentive

  to do anything. Here’s how I view things:

  not as they are in themselves, or even

  as they appear – just under some influence.

  We’re feted and trashed, a good and bad thief,

  but don’t exaggerate the difference,

  my she-goat, cabbage and wolf stew a hoax,

  two out of three ingredients missing –

  you’re out of your depths, which are my shallows,

  so neither one of us learned to swim,

  music lovers, conversation beneath us

  in the lobby during intermission.

  It’s less trouble, pretending we’re strangers –

  bigger, though, letting bygones be bygones.

  THE ACCORDIONIST

  The accordion deserves equal billing,

  at peace with itself in between shows.

  Has nothing on its conscience, the instrument.

  If headcases disrupt, the front row’s

  sub-hypnotist should dial nine-one-one,

  new on the job, fired from the old,

  despite an Indian summer harvesting

  crops whose names the master doesn’t own.

  And I’m asked why I love the language.

  Nobody’d call us pigs at a trough.

  We’re not there yet – follow directions.

  May the Lord grant a second wind, demons

  in you because He told them where to go:

  this wilderness – for your homecoming,

  no scapegoat’s either. Irrigation

  squads transported the soil you were born on,

  not exactly of your own volition,

  bird of paradise captured and sold

  by fellow natives. Man’s at his worst

  when he’s himself, and now enough

  of struggling for half-decent alternatives

  generation after generation

  ours doesn’t outclass, dialogue free

  as hydrogen drunk at public fountains.

  My acolytes, they love a bargain,

  and are agog: yours is a higher

  state of consciousness I would let

  speak for itself, if it could. It cannot.

  A FLIGHT OF STAIRS

  I never claimed you were an archangel

  invisible to the jet-setting eye

  of a designer so busy starving

  his runway’s lycanthropes they ate him –

  their guru: the Rubicon’s ferryman.

  I pace the bank, weighing pros and cons,

  while he contemplates a jump on my scales,

  the competition in these parts a travesty –

  no decorations should I come in first,

  my heart wherever your heart is,

  pumping blood, the rest of the body’s,

  a dirty job we have down to an art,

  beneath the radar, under our breaths,

  winners and losers at the mercy

  of what we can lose, what we can win:

  these stairs of yours, for example, a flight,

  the protocols of consciousness spoiling

  scenery that otherwise wouldn’t register.

  No diplomat, you cover up

  secrets perfectly charming open,

  we saints patronizing you incapable

  of harder power until we’re canonized.

  I’ll visit heaven even if the trip resurrects

  then kills me, the wits battling all mine.

  You can’t pin life like a wrestler;

  it’s inside you when you’re in the ring.

  Let’s applaud your loudest detractors –

  you chose the wrong sport, crowd noise deafening,

>   yet retain the right to remain silent

  I rarely exercise. It is written:

  a man shouldn’t fear the sound of his voice

  if he’s the only fanatic listening.

  FALSE FLAG

  We’re huddled together – stabs in the back

  you might interpret as self-inflicted.

  I’ll campaign in favour of stem cell

  research, proving love for the casualties

  follows shows of force, almost passes

  legislation that routinely dies

  on the floor of the house where no grass grows,

  because farmers won’t vote with gardeners

  who neither ignore insults delivered

  by their rivals nor stop denying

  they could have possibly heard what they heard.

  Demand again that they hack the ice,

  so we can whip out our rods, go fishing.

  Out of spite, they squat meditating –

  in our pre-fab monastery no less.

  I kick novices seemingly fading,

  though in this climate nodding off’s a plus.

  My clearest views don’t interest me

  as much as where yours end and another’s

  begin – can’t expedite the transition;

  it calls for pampas, a vast buffer zone

  through which I’d ride, tall in the saddle

  like a gaucho, if the nag weren’t a chariot’s,

  if I weren’t preparing a buggy for battle.

  ATHELING

  Peace, atheling, we freedom fighters

  procrastinators who, though we’ll become

  your allies, aren’t yet, seem, in the interim,

  unpredictable. You were irrational,

  yet still lost the religion. When you stink,

  there is no soul to side with against

  epiderm you haven’t washed for weeks

  in solitary, your quondam bookies

  my confidential sources – you gambled

  on their wrong odds. They apologized.

  I wasn’t there, but believe me: applause

  died at headquarters, where I spank

  memoirs out, your finalized draft

  of history my first. I’ll close your eyes.

  I’ll bare your fangs, the future tense

  an anaesthetic, and I speak its language.

  FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY

  Run along into oblivion, or

  I will bump you off in the limelight

  before your heldentenor imposes

  restrictions on the music in my head,

  the tunes less globalized than they could be

  in various money-spinning ventures

  vulgar to the aristocrat in me.

  He’s equally vulgar – born a peasant,

  I celebrated any holidays

  we could get, flexibility a sign

  from heaven we were on the fast track,

  though that interpretation is mine,

  mine the glory, and if it turns out

  I am wrong, I deserve applause

  for essaying the impossible.

  Who else around here takes the trouble,

  the majority of our population

  bowing and scraping as if outnumbered?

  I was calculating the ratios

  when I received a generous offer

  from courtiers hardly worth bringing up,

  but we’ve drifted onto the subject:

  I suggest a moment of silence,

  more than sufficient – they’re alive and well,

  each disguised as none of the others.

  When he’s himself, he improvises,

  occasionally speaks his mind, the idiot –

  not a mother tongue like you, and I’d

  happily leak almost anything

  if I were you, as I wouldn’t care

  about unintended consequences.

  I’d only be you temporarily,

  the weight of the past unbearable –

  a fraction lighter, though, than the present.

  By the time it makes me gasp,

  I have had a chance to rehearse.

  WATERBOARDING

  No depths to which my people won’t sink;

  fortunately, these aren’t inside us,

  a few underwater, your oilfields

  halfway around the globe, most landlocked,

  opportunities photojournalists miss

  worthless – supply far exceeds demand.

  Instruct your lawyer. File for bankruptcy,

  while brothers rot in your debtor’s prison,

  this much learned: fighting to the death

  beats either surrender or victory.

  You know where you stand, your posture less well,

  navel-gazing a discredited option

  when the hunger starts. No poaching for

  talent unavailable in the food chain

  lunch hours at the hourglass factory,

  any sand certainly contaminated,

  the correct time my least concern,

  victim, like you, of uranium poisoning.

  You came up with the wildest excuses

  for air after the waterboarding,

  said one thing, meant another, believed

  a third, self-destructive before we arrived

  in tall ships. We merely continued

  inflicting all you’d inflicted on yourself,

  if only, and not only, because

  our logic’s cold-weather. In wrong climates,

  it wilts – a flower, it isn’t. A miracle

  hatred, though mutual, didn’t unite us.

  STILL IN THE CAMERA

  When the home team bends unwritten rules,

  visitors are set free, start scribbling,

  what’s on my mind just passing through –

  the tradition in there isn’t hospitality,

  the stiff you dropped off today unwelcome.

  Only bodies of childhood friends

  granted the privilege of growing up

  should be brought back down to our level,

  surviving heroes advised against

  defying a superpower I,

  who’ve served twisting loyally in the wind,

  might sabotage from the inside mañana.

  Last time I was at the end of my rope,

  I envisioned skipping it in heaven.

  To perish exploring bang in the doldrums,

  you need a single trait: hyperactivity.

  I’m the first person I ever controlled –

  nostalgia co-exists with temptation

  to curse my disputed date of birth,

  though I believe in reincarnation,

  life after life wish I had control

  over either the slaves or the masters.

  A neutral observer, I watch revolts,

  cheering on the right side, then the other,

  help myself, scarcely commit treason,

  pick through merchandise, searching for bodies,

  admire a few – never mind the reasons.

  I’m of the old school, swatting at flies

  you keep releasing to irritate me,

  and I keep killing. Your endless supply

  proves I can’t win. We remain close.

  Purple prose that justifies your actions

  won’t do much by way of improving

  your bad image, mine still in the camera,

  beneath contempt but above suspicion,

  unless one dark day the film’s developed.

  THE NATURALIZATION

  Took our telepathized gods seriously

  as possible for a while – in the end,

  you roared I was all of them, once feared,

  rolled into one. Well, monotheist,

  look me in the eye, as if it belonged

  to forecast hurricane-force winds.

  I’m not myself, no more than the cost

  of knocking off a luxury item

  is its pr
ice, and you’ve paid; you were captured

  near your manor, sold into slavery.

  I beat you in the humiliation

  department, voluntarily relocated

  to a continent whose victory over us

  I was hired to declare a draw,

  each rung of my ladder the last,

  and so on ad infinitum – correct me,

  for any appearance that’s deceptive

  is definitely mine. Driven mad,

  those whose power overwhelmed us cannot

  resist it now – it’s all they have left.

  If you were dead, you couldn’t imagine

  dying. Since you can, stop complaining.

  I’d plunge in, save your drowning emotions,

  if mine were as undisciplined,

  and I pushed unflattering comparisons

  too far by making them sing like praises –

  a citizen of the world’s, in theory.

  In practice, I’m from where I’ve been aged.

  NOT SO THE OCEAN

  Always impolitic, biting the hand

  that’s the heart and soul of your body.

  You would find declaring independence

  a hollow victory, and a puppet’s.

  Go side with light against the visions

  I toss and turn expecting, didn’t need

  when my simoleons could rent first-class

  compartments, human beauty sleep

  a cause I was unwilling to die for

  till I avenged the time to be lost,