Martin Jack

unpersonage

to lie is to protect the social order,

to speak the truth is to destroy the State

- Custine, La Russie en 1839

silence is a medium

of State that wages war

against being

in the Soviet Encyclopaedia

substitutes buried men

fallen from grace

devouring them under a tissue

of undoings, truth bent and softened

until names were felled

the root filed to unpersonality

in the halls of temples

erected to clerks

while the Emperor waved

hearing no evil in the Russian climate

untouched by a soul

Martin Jack © 2008

unborn

I am figment

no voice on the operating table

mother don’t look down

imagine blood isn’t thicker than water

I am jigsaw

morsels of me line the laboratory

doctor detach and study the harvest

imagine you did no harm

I am speechless

on the pulpit choice is for the breathing

senator I couldn’t vote

imagine you never kissed me

I am outside personhood

the law is dismembered by forceps

judge are your scales silent

imagine you never brought the hammer

down on God’s creation

Martin Jack © 2008