Staccato guns
Drum roll bombs
Metronome whips and
Angry cymbal swords;
Solemn summings up of judges
Beating time with weighted gavels
And the minor monotones of priests
Spinning guilty scales between
The barking army major’s
Squaddie-snarling travels.
As this mighty melody expands and fills us
More voices add their themes
The certain sciences of pedants
And palaver platform politics
Pull the strings of desperate dreams
Embellished by the Babel of the market
Which blends dull descant city sounds
With its boardroom executions
Of canting capitalist pounds.
And then a darker underlying fugue begins
To hum the lower notes
Pornographers leer obscenities
Drug dealers sniff in cold indifferent coats
And snow-white supremo rabid racists
Chant clandestine tunes
Which brand the skins of souls
With determined nature’s runes.
Meanwhile coercive lawful husbands
Echo violations back and forth
Between dogging doctor jargon
And romancing beauty’s worth.
Butcher baritones add piercing volume
With their vicious rapist sharps
And the boastful bully bleatings
Of peevish persecution, in cruel crescendo
Assault our painful hearts.
Unheard beneath this deadlock discord
The audience whispers softly its dis-ease
And searching blindfold for the exit
Plugs it ears and tries to leave.