Do not cover up the scars
In the quick distillery of blood
I have smelt
Seepage from familiar opiates,
Do not cover up the scars
The tuber of our common flesh, when
Trampled deep in earth embattles
Death, new-girthed, lunges at the sun
But lest it prove a hollowed shell
And lest the feet of new-born lives
Sink in voids of counterfeiting
Do not swell earth's broken skin
To glaze the fissures in the drum
Do not cover up with scabs
And turn the pain a masquerader's
Broken-tongued lament
Its face a painted mask of veils
Its breath unmoistened by the run of bile
A patchwork heart and death-head grin
To cheat the rigors of
Exorcism.
Paint cracks. Bequeath
The heartwood beat alone
To new-born
Followers of the wake.

After the Deluge

Once, for a dare,
He filled his heart-shaped swimming pool
With bank notes, high denomination
And fed a pound of caviar to his dog.
The dog was sick; a chartered plane
Flew in replacement for the Persian rug.
He made a billion yen
Leap from Tokyo to Buenos Aires,
Turn somersaults through Brussels,
New York, Sofia and Johannesburg.
It cracked the bullion market open wide.
Governments fell, coalitions cracked
Insurrection raised its bloody flag
From north to south.
He knew his native land through iron gates,
His sight was radar bowls, his hearing
Electronic beams. For flesh and blood,
Kept company with a brace of Dobermanns.
But - yes - the worthy causes never lacked
His widow's mite, discreetly publicised.
He escaped the lynch days. He survives.
I dreamt I saw him on a village
Water line, a parched land where
Water is a god
That doles its favours by the drop,
And waiting is a way of life.
Rebellion gleamed yet faintly in his eye
Traversing chrome-and-platinum retreats. There,
Hubs of commerce smoothly turn without
His bidding, and cities where he lately roosted
Have forgotten him, the preying bird
Of passage.
They let him live, but not from pity
Or human sufferance. He scratches life
From earth, no worse a mortal man than the rest.
Far, far away in dreamland splendour,
Creepers twine his gates of bronze relief.
The jade-lined pool is home
To snakes and lizards; they hunt and mate
On crusted algae.