Dreaming of a Swamp and the Holy River
As we starve in our secret Alaskas
Ignoring the news of the flood
That is drowning the road to Damascus
And daubing the city with blood.
We shall don the disguise of Quixote
And empty the coffers of lead
While our buttonholes, primed with peyote
Were all that prophets had said
Will ravish the quick and the dead.
As we reach for the tabula rasa
Yearning for absence of mind
Reading from "Eyeless in Gaza"
In a version unknown to the blind
We shall finish our hymn to the holy
With an anagram garnered from Hell
In the hope that the martyrs die slowly
Each wish being wide of the well
Their prayers being drowned by the bell
As we sink through a mire of our making
And swallow a mouthful of mud
As we dream the half-dreams of the waking
And the nightmares that course through the blood
We kowtow to each brazen Mikado
In the hope of a new set of clothes
The cast-offs of Beckett or Bardot
In fashions that everyone loathes
In garish greens, yellows aand mauves.
Now we know who has stolen our future
Our pistols are ready and primed:
We sunder the temporal suture
Where the rampant hysteria climbed
We go over the ramparts to glory
Though our heartbeats are stiller than stone
Foreseeing the end of the story
Traced out on each withering bone
When all that's revealed has been shown
| Contributors: | Roland, P, TG, Bop. |
| Poem finished: | 21st February 1997. |