“The world changes, and all that once was strong now proves unsure.How shall any tower withstand such numbers and such reckless hate” JRR Tolkien

1.

First a personal response,
Let's get that Out Of The Way:
I don’t want to die.
I will not fight for
What I do not believe is right.
My dad fought in a war,
A younger man than me,
He was lucky, he never used
A gun,
He had an enemy worth
Destroying.

Just as I could see myself
Growing old and grey
With children flowing
From my fingers
A black shadow
Calls me away.

2.

Two towers have been cast down,
Industry and commerce.
Industry and commerce,
Our greatest curse.
I can’t smile at this irony,
Laugh at America’s folly.
People died.
People died.
People died.
People died.
I can understand dying
For a cause
But killing innocents,
Killing innocence.
But these men are not monsters.
Men not monsters,
Crazy, desperate, wrong men
Not monsters.

3.

Terrorist terror is not
The terror of war.
All the men at the top
Come out,
Shout hysterically;
Democracy,
Democracy,
Democracy
Won’t be destroyed.
Then they pop back inside
Their cuckoo clocks.
Lives lost is sad
But we must avoid
Losing our identity.
Democracy.
These mad men splutter
But were they truly
Raised by democracy?
Faulty ballots and
Saccharine.
There is no will of the people
Anymore
But if this madness
Spreads to war
It will be the people who
Will die for
Democracy.

4.

This may be a world war.
Pearl harbour mentioned
On politicians’ lips.
Hysteria pulling out
Sound bitten, emotive calls
To protect the sanctity of life.
War is anti-life.
War is anti-life,
The trouble,
The strife
That lies behind our
Safe-feeling world.
The world is not safe anymore
(They cry.)
The world was never safe
Let's try to minimise
All the people that die.

5.

The pentagon’s
Pent is gone,
The pentagon
Is spent.
Is this Britain's
Palace in the sky?
Is this the world’s
Lead spot?
The leaders of the world
Seem to think so,
And they are all we’ve got.
Not our problem
(As America said in WW2)
Not our problem.
Not our problem.
An attack on America
Is not an attack on us.
An attack on capitalism
Is an attack on a system
Not your grandmother.
People died
But this was no
Atomic bomb.
War is wrong.
War is wrong.
Please God let this
End in the best way.
Make it go away.
Save our souls.
Save their souls.
Let's end this all
The way of reason,
Stop this madness,
No drama out of a crisis,
No War film out of a crisis,
The least death in this crisis.

6.

“Nobody likes to speculate
In cases like this.”
Smug American
Ex-politicians say
Such sensible things
(After appearing all day,
Speculating.)
The news vultures
Are flapping,
Picking the carcass,
Dissecting the bodies,
Starting wars,
Speculating.
A media circus
Immediately biased
Towards these
Democratic martyrs
In their toppling towers.
Let's destroy
This Terrorist Evil,
Let's fuck up the fundamentalists,
Dead men,
Dead women,
Dead children,
These vultures pick
The flesh.
Everyone has something
To add,
Everyone has a view
(The view is true,
The view is truth
And is the same one
Almost every time -
The Party Line.)
The vultures that turn
Their beaks away
From judgment
Are plucked by
All that surround them.

7.

I call upon every member of urination
To play his part.
An attack on urination is
An attack on every nation
Around the globe.
Urination is strong.
They can try to choke us,
Stop our people’s flow
But we fill stand firm.
Urination is a shining pinnacle
Of all that is free in the world.
Our golden strength will prevail. Urination is brave
And powerful
And we will continue to be so.
Let us pray that urination will rid itself
Of these pollutants
Swiftly and
Potently.
We are not just urination
But the
Worlds
Urination.

AHHHHHHHHohyesyesyesyesyesyes.

God that’s better.

Wow.

8.

I love her.
She loves me.
We found each other.
That means there must
Be
Hope.

Doesn’t it?

9.

So many are dead,
Too large a sum for a head
To emphasise with.
Every snuffed out,
Scratched out
Mark.
You imagine one loss,
Ten, fifteen,
Then they become a number,
Horrific and distant.
How quickly dead figures
Become figures.
How quickly these figures
Are forced into political
Equations that equal
New deaths.
Additional pain.
Lives subtracted.
Families divided.
Bloodshed multiplied.
People died.
PEOPLE DIED.
Sums wipe out
The sum of their part
In this.
PEOPLE DIED.

10.

A day later:
Talk of war.
Then more
Talk of war.

The news on TV.
But tourists keep on
Touristing;
“Excuse me sir,
Can you take our picture
Please?”

Most people ignore it all.
Even Americans focus
On sightseeing trips.
Old men pause,
Shake their heads,
Then place them
Firmly in the sand.

We don’t know yet
Where we stand
And how this will end.
But few care here.
They drink their beer
And chatter as if
These small things matter
In a world on the brink
Of war.
No one thinks of war
It’s too easy to ignore it.
No one thinks of war
Only of better service
And salt and pepper.
“War! What is it good for?
(Absolutely nothing)”
People! What are they good for?
(Absolutely nothing)
Even if anyone cared
What power have they
To shape their lives?
We are at the mercy
Of the puppeteers,
We wait to see what
Strings will be pulled,
What roles will be filled,
How many people will
Be
Killed.

11.

We are sitting here,
Ducks with our beer.
Celebrating promotion.
Promoting celebration.
When all might be fucked.
When fucked all might be.
Crossroads is on TV.
I drank to forget
But I forgot to forget.
And there is no news
When you want news,
When you need news,
No news is good news
(Except when it might
Be war)
Though there are hopeful
Signs sometimes
The skies are not yet
Clear,
So we all drink
Our beer.

12.

If we are all to die tomorrow
Let's drain our drink
And sing our sorrow.
This is all too large to bear
So let's sing for tonight
And forget all care.
“This is a weeping song
And we won’t be weeping long”
But who cares.
Let's take this madness unawares.
To “truth, beauty, freedom, love,”
To what matters inside,
Love.
Love can’t save our souls
But sing and kiss
And tonight be whole.

13.

Sitting in an office,
Filing a paper clip,
Filling a minute,
Sky blue view,
Humming gently,
Thinking about chocolate,
Beanbags, teething,
A lovers embrace.
Then plane in the face.
Windows broken.
Life broken.
Insane plane pain.
This is Monty Python territory
But with more death.

14.

We are waiting
Like Cuban missile crises,
Like nuclear bunkers,
Like before Poland was invaded,
Like bus stations,
Like pre-seduction titillation.
We are waiting for death,
We are waiting to continue life.
We wait for the all clear,
Or sudden fear,
For a new year,
For sleep, silent and safe.

15.

The newspapers are screaming.

In this rubble,
This bone swept landscape
Of War, sensationalism
And self-aggrandisement:
I break the habit of a lifetime.
I am weeping at the news.
I am weeping for people I don’t know
(I only do this for fiction -
Till now)

Why don’t I cry for flybitten blacks?

A man escapes
To find his wife and child
Died in a plane.
How he must wish
He had stayed,
To die together.
Cruel twists of fate
Twist my gut,
Increase the death rate.
Phone calls of people
Saving lives by sacrificing
Theirs.
“I love you, honey,”
Then a blank phone line,
Crushed planes and heroic fame,
Hero or victim, they are dead
Just the same,
The rain outside
Won’t wash their imagined
Faces from my brain.
Thousands dead
And I am weeping for them
And I am angry at my own
Fear and sorrow as it
Seems to thrust theirs far away.
All I really care about is me.
But I cry for them.
Hypocrisy.
People are dead.
I can’t help.
People are dead.
I can’t help.
People are dead.
I can’t help.
People are dead.
I can’t help.
Tears won’t bring them back.
Selfish fear will wash them away.
They are dead.
I can't help.

16.

A quote from something I can’t
Remember:
A pained screamed soundbite
From a play or film,
Maybe Pinter,
“The Evils That Men Do”
The pain in the voice.
Evils they do, not evil they are.

17.

They played the American
National Anthem,
The queen’s guards.
This futile attempt
For these great nations
To feel great.
We will overcome
But do we deserve to?
Nationalism meets nationalism
In harmonious sorrow.
Let's face it we are
The democratic fundamentalists,
The capitalist fundamentalists,
The global fundamentalists.
And the line between
Us and Them?
We don’t need to use
Terrorism (or at least use the word
To describe our actions).
We are strong
Enough to force minds,
Bend wills, propergandise,
Destroy, without looking
Desperate
(Till now maybe,
Now we are desperate.)
We can terrorise
With a good name
And a smile.
There is no line.
Just different names for crime.

18.

These men who died,
Who killed themselves
For a forbidding God
Are No Cowards.
They were brave enough
To kill themselves,
Take countless lives,
Keep a cool head,
Attack the most powerful
Country in the world by
Daylight.
They are dead.
But they were brave.
It was a brave evil they
Wrought,
A cause they believed in
For which they fought.
A brave enemy is a dangerous
One. Remember This.
Remember this or
Be damned.

19.

When Iraq says
“Down with America”
Over a picture of its
Crumbling phallus
At least they are honest.
Though foolish.
This is only
A temporary
Loss of erection.
The ejaculation could
Drown us all in nuclear cum.
But at least they are honest.
I would gladly cry
“Down with America”
If none of those people
Would have to die.
I would gladly cry
“Down with Iraq”
If innocent people
Wouldn’t die.
Fuck them all
These towers of arrogance,
Fundamentalism and
State Control,
But never forget that a
State is a whole
Made up of people
Who live in fear,
Made up of people
Who cry blood tears.
Let all the bastards die,
But if they do don’t look
At the sky,
The next rainfall
Could be heavy
And metallic.

20.

Some preemptive words
From Shakespeare:
“The cloud- capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples... shall dissolve
And, like insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rock behind.”
But poetry is hotter
And more beautiful
When it comes from the mouths
Of survivors:
“Everything went dark,
Dark like snow.”
As black and white were
Turned one colour,
And dust cloaked
The land like
A cocaine explosion
Making Manhattan
A Forbidden Planet.

21.

Taxi ride.
Radio ride.
Phone-in show
For local people.
Interviewer loses his cool,
Presenting real anger:
“I wish all religion
Was locked away
In a box somewhere.”
He is superior and
Patronising.
He is an American
Fanatic despite
His British citizenship.
He argues with his caller,
An Islamic fundamentalist
British citizen.
Then the presenter
Presents his fatal flaw:
“Of course innocent
People died in Iraq,
Innocents are always
Lost in conflicts,
But Saddam had to be
Beaten.”
He says this, not
Realising that if you
Insert America into
His statement
He has excused
The terrorist attacks.
But make no
Mistake, the caller
Is not faultless:
“You group us all together,
1 muslim is not all
Of Islam.
You cannot have one way
Of treating people
And treat some differently,
You should respect
All people whatever
Faith or colour.”
Then later:
“Bin Ladin is a hero,
You don’t understand
Him.”
(And maybe he is.)
But can you blame
Either man?
Both were taught to
Follow their creed
And defend their faith.
When America demonised
Bin Ladin they made
Him a hero to those
Who hate them.
When Islam attacks the
West they confirm
Their demon status.
Locked in these
Rat mazes of power
And status
We are all ringing our
Opinions in without
Thinking.

22.

On the train I observe
The three minutes silence.
Around me people laugh
And talk about train stops.
No one seems aware.
Perhaps I am, only because
I have a radio to tell me
When to be quiet
(But I only turned it on
To do that
So maybe not.)
Perhaps I’m only quiet
Because I have no one to talk to.
Three minutes isn’t much
To ask
Is it?

23.

There was a loud man,
An old(ish) affluent man
Who strode into the bar
Expecting instant service,
He carried himself like
A ruler,
Gave out his patronism
With grace and gruffness.
He sat at a table
And ignored all the rules,
He shouted his business
To the roof.
Later he spoke of America
Failing to realise that
This - thousands dead -
Is what happens
When you act like
You rule the world.
“What did they expect”
He said.
What a sensible
Middle-class man,
Full of reason and
The graciousness
Of the oppressor.
Except that he is,
Like America on
A small scale himself.
This is what happens
When you act like
You Rule The World.

24.

As Israel hits Palestine
Under the guise of being
Justified by America’s pain,
And Afghanistan waits
To be fire-bombed,
I feel sudden relief.
We might get away with it.
World War Three
Might just be
The destruction of a network
And not country
Against country.
We might get away with it.
We might get away with it.
This will not comfort
The bereaved
That will surely multiply,
The Afghans,
The service men,
The innocents,
Caught in this whirlwind
Of conflicting ideology.
It won’t bring back the dead
Or stop future bloodshed
But the world may survive
A little longer.
But real World War will
Come in the end
(Who knows we may still
Have it now.)
The Cat has spent its
Nine lives,
Not even the strong will
Survive this
In the end.
We might get away with it
For now,
But it’s waiting.
And poetry is not the answer.
Poetry is not the answer.
Poetry is not the answer.
Poetry is not the answer.
This is a world where
Words mean nothing,
They are used so easily
And without thought.
It will end
With a final stanza:
Poetry is not the answer
SoLet's
Drop
The
Bomb.

25.

It already feels like
A disaster movie.
And like a movie
America will be
In The Right.
They will not fall,
They will fight
Till Democracy
Sleeps safe
At night.
Here’s to the movies.
God bless us
Everyone.

26.

And because I thought the world
Would end,
I stayed one more night with my
Girlfriend.