Philip Ruthen
Election Day
When the election comes -
Yes, there will be one -
As we have a Bill of Rights
Maybe even a Constitution…
In a cool air-conditioned room
(No smoke, democracy has seen to that)
They search
For a slogan
“heidegger heidegger heidegger”?
Not so catchy; trying
“education education education”?
Keep it simple, very selective.
In mind, the girl
With ‘an education’ turns
Nervous, her first break,
Her leotard uncomfortable
As ribbons replace bombs.
There are still bombs.
And the posters go up
With the absolute message -
No point arguing -
“Sartre has Gone”.
Cautious, he covers his closure,
The PR consultants
Re-write with nausea
The moral tales
Before the war
Before the wars
Before more wars
And there are still bombs.
The posters go up -
A distant relation
Of a distant man
Depicting and
Prominent
She lies on the billboard
Provokingly
Naked.
There are smart bombs, depleted, perhaps -
Very smart,
Quietly
Leaving
Only
Half a life left -
They say: “you must be weak to aim for a fullness of life,
the dispersal of divisions”.
No.
To the other strains of an argument
Instantaneous images become almost alive
Alive - as we are able -
Her breasts painted red
Draw us in
Colluding
And we know we can
Do anything
As if God was now and new bombs
Will always be better than the times that were bad.
Tomorrow and before are now slogans,
Gone.
No.
I choose my one book
I hide it
Maybe it was Gramsci, Marcuse, Freud, The Bible,
Half a life left, and, “you can go”, they say,
“try and think there are no bombs,
just fragments of a pragmatic imagination...”
“and oh, avoid using the term ‘socialist’, even when pressed
by the BBC,
yes, especially by the BBC”.
But I can’t wait to throw away the silver pieces -
Buy my Reserva case of European Red instead and scream:
So put the fucking money into
Education Education Education -
Maybe then we won’t be
Killing ourselves.
Philip Ruthen © 2009
Tour de grace
i. I am hollows, rugged
affinity, Pelops
ii. Outlined pure colour
tone of your eyes
I wake then
abandon my thoughts
this mind a fifth of a score or more
lies with you highwire of balance
iii. Island verge
the rock leans on a spar
above concentration
inside the wind’s blur
of deception solid
blatant sea rock
rises unfixed if you stare
your soul lent
to unweight Poseidon
the high seas’
standpoint
has seen you before, precept
on the clouds’
summer possible
up and opening the fulcrum God’s flare
the Sun makes its own sky
prises the hill
fists day in a ball
of red that carries longer
description
it knows
even a mist won’t lift mountains
the sea has its mass
it can, in a Mother’s thoughts that separate
the numbers
iv. At birth
each child shall have a tree planted
will you give your last water to the tree?
it will remember
v. In soil sought by creation her lullaby
one day you are moisture
become the eye of quartz
ingrained in the gaudy head-dress
of a lizard
roots deepen to you swept from the whispered spray
of the Meltemi’s tail
dampness in dust following
and falling on another world –
Andromeda?
Somewhere and further than imagined by God.
Water from a rusted fuel can
discarded spatula, lawn hose
or borehole
elevated to silence.
The outcrop on a blanket of foam
above storm-drain force that topples the undersea deities
the rocks are momentarily above air across the bay and it is the season’s tonal blues that have realised earth was before unfound
respite
the quayside crane
loads every distant-heard trade
tour – the page shows tourist;
the law of historical memory
on the floor of a crate
lifted to hang over the ship’s hold
the buried are the land of grace
for grace –
be still. To water three seeds
scarce-doused from a bottle.
let them pass
to find more.
vi. This guidebook, a present
opened before closed
without a view until
there is another now
telling, no name
on the retina for seven billion colours detected
all may be blue,
remembered, invented hills
let the outline last
the island rides
soft on the fulcrum
given watch for Poseidon’s cloud-boom
leaves the Pelops to brief dream that
all isn’t one.
We will be back to swim.
Philip Ruthen. From an idea of Maggie’s also;
Nafplio, Greece. 10th-28th August 2009
Philip Ruthen © 2009