Lawrence Mathias: Poetry
Poems
Alphabetical Index of Poems
(Click on a Letter)
A B C D E
F G H I J
K L M N O
P Q R S T
U V W X Y
Z
Can't Afford to Think
Take it on up, take it on down,
Keep it over-underground,
Whether in or out no consequence,so long as you astound,
Your agenda's all embracing,
Room for the bold and self-effacing,
If there's doubt about the matter just deliver some more patter,
For there's hunger in our eyes,
Which you might choose to despise,
The weak were ever willing, cozened victims of your lies,
So the bitter pill is sugared
As the stimuli are measured -
Maximum distraction breeding torpor and inaction -
And with options multiplying
And no deficit of buying,
Your client base is swelling, eagerly homogenising,
For you know we want to watch it
And you know we want to hear it:
We're processed in the queue for a supermarket view;
And the pleasure's that's awaiting
Is akin to masturbating
But without the peak of climax and the subsequent deflating;
Our desires will be sated
From the bland to triple-X rated,
(Brains like mushy peas, in our armchairs at our ease);
A two-way interaction
You might claim for this transaction,
Demand and its supplying you declare with satisfaction,
But as a mover and a shaker
You're a barometric faker,
The pressure that you measure feed through valves you turn at leisure,
And we're routed on a freeway
With no exits and no leeway,
Accommodating feeder roads ensure that we can all play,
But with bumpers getting closer
And the traffic getting faster,
We can't afford to think about an impending disaster,
We can't afford to think about an impending disaster,
No, we can't afford to think....
Cathedral
My love is a cathedral,
A trig point on the level hills,
A menhir pegging junctured leys;
It routes all ambulations,
Renders path as pilgrim way;
It sanctifies all mundane ministrations
Worked upon each matin-vesper day.
It has the sweetest hymnal:
Inside the nave a rapture swells,
Filling transept, aisle and apse,
A lustrous rolling nimbus,
The column feet it laves and wraps;
It settles on the salient of far ridges
And wreathes around the sarsen and ley tracks.
Mutable, measureless temple:
Its precincts lie on both sides of the wall;
No pulpits platform brittle creeds
Or ritualising precept;
The cloisters border public fields,
And ringing clear from steepling parapets,
Bells chime out our common parish needs.
Customers Beware
Really, really, just a simple joke?
Your finger sticking in my ribs is an extra-playful poke?
You've got my arm in an arm lock,
My neck in a neck grip -
I'm prostrated on the floor
With your knee upon my jaw;
If a sense of humour's lacking
That's because my ribs are cracking
And the laugh I hear you laughing is now proving quite distracting,
Furthermore, I'm troubled
By the pain which has doubled
For my first arm has just broken
And the second one you're stroking,
And my screams of submission
And professions of contrition
Are enough to melt the frozen heart of any politician,
But you're a motherfucking bastard,
You're the cat who got the custard,
Politics are risible where resistance can be broken;
So you kick me and you slap me
And you crush me and you crack me,
Pulverise and neutralise
While above you're laughing darkly,
But, oh God! It's not funny,
It's unmitigated misery,
The pitting of vindictive wealth against lame indigency;
And a sign of the times
With its unacknowledged crimes,
These cruel, decimating visits on our supply lines,
For I'm not a trouble-maker
Or a foolhardy risk-taker,
I'm a vital core supplier who has lost the final acre:
But my body has been mashed,
Spare resources have been cashed,
New Empires of Profit must have prices further slashed,
You've seen me cringe and cower
In my final darkening hour,
And now a crushing denouement,
Your apogee of power!
We'll fuck you in the pocket,
We'll fuck you in the brain,
We'll fuck away whatever vestige of selfhood remains,
What we do with our suppliers,
How we operate our buyers -
It's the model of good management to which all else pertains....
Customers BEWARE!
For What It's Worth
Blaring horns and shrilling whistles
Cancel out the shrieking missiles
Angry chanting in the streets
Spread confusion in the fleets
Scorn the canting hypocrite
Who wages war as he sees fit
Not to liberate the poor
But to stamp upon them shock and awe
Curse the tank, revile the gun
Make the vicious violence shun
Imprecate the bomb that's dropped
On those too weak to see it stopped
Despise all those who say to you
"We won't consult to guide you through
Our leadership is from the front
You'll fall in line when it will count"
Damn the bombers, damn the planes
Bursting cities into flames
Cast black oaths on shrapnel shards
Ripping children in back yards
Remember those who said before
They would not countenance a war
And now we see them on our screens
Justifying ends and means
Loath the warlords east and west
Spreading terror and unrest
Heap invective on the ears
On those whose trail leaves blood and tears
And now the lid is off the box
And we've grown used to those first shocks
We'll find the norm of war a lie
Unless we're all prepared to die
Unless we're all prepared to die
Blaring horns and shrilling whistles
Can you stop the shrieking missiles?
Angry chanting on the streets
How might that confound the fleets?
The Darkest Trail
My friend,
We were never close,
But nearer than I knew,
We shared a common crucible,
First matter there compounded:
Eldest among siblings,
Guiless as we scouted paths -
Unexceptional prime movers,
We navvied artless channels through the rock.
So when I saw the hearse
With box and wreaths inside,
Your wife and ashen children mute behind,
There was no containment,
My friend,
As I turned away from this lidding of your life,
That chimera of youthful alchemy
Now lost in the darkest trail.
The Road Ahead
Poppies mottle ochre fields with pink,
Above kites hawk a tinder sward: I think
It neat this cut so clean through meadowed hills,
A cicatrise from which the traffic spills.
My hands are light upon the steering wheel,
My mind is lighter yet, convected high
Above the snaking lines of hot steel,
Down adrift a thermal pluming sky -
And as the car crests easefully the ridge,
I see a vale below, its pastures parched
And russet brown, a panorama scorched
By searing sun, blurring form and edge.
There is no intermission, no swab of cloud
To mop the molten globe, limitlessly fierce,
Beating down upon the open-browed,
Routing fields with fire steeds broke loose;
But cool conditioned cars exemptions bring,
Or so we think, and as each engine sings
Its driver's wish, we look askance
Upon the droughted land, the nexus near undone,
Minding more the road ahead, and less
The vast periphery of distress.
Wealth
I have a trove of unimaginable riches,
The treasure heaped inside astounds, bewitches,
Enormous, yet unwitting, its amassment,
No greater dividend won through cool investment;
And I, so passively accumulating,
Spend with zeal the fortune incrementing,
Wondering also how the store increases,
The chest in size, the gold in precious pieces.
A proletarian wealth, it may be countered,
Whose worth in any case ought not be counted -
Thus the claim of lucral tabulators,
Business folk and global speculators.
Self-enrichers, weigh your deprecations,
Your coin is clipped and shaves your calculations!
Lawrence Mathias 2005