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