Atrocity Machine

The mechanism is fully oiled

Gears, cogs and belts are primed

For the processing of those

Deemed unworthy, those declined

Keep them offshore

With a modicum of civility

See their basic needs are met

In state-of-the-art facilities

We have regulations and rules

That need always to be observed

Failure in this would mean chaos

Or freedom... no that's absurd

Men in suits behind desks

Must ensure the stability

Of the state at all costs

Regulating punishment of the guilty

And where remuneration is sufficient

Seeing to the needs of those

Whose guilt is questionable

Throw a few more dollars our way

Your application lands on the right table

You see Ministers come and go

But bureaucrats stick like flies to shit

Unelected and systematised

We love this infernal edifice for what it is

You the public should have known better

Willingly trading humanity for security

In your spurious quest for a just world

You blocked the last artery of democracy

Like scared and scattered mice

Your ingenuousness cost you twice

Once in the belief things would change

Twice in that they would stay the same

So look upon your legacy, which pays us well

It grinds innocent human beings into cement

They come running from war, death and famine

To face the atrocity machine of government

© shaun patrick green 2011

Black and Folding.

Auntie passed as was expected

The cancer had done its work

Skin barely covered her skeleton

No last words were heard

And what would she have said?

What speech can equal

That moment where our life ends?

To say we were people

And made judgments wise or ill

Doesn't begin to grace the monumentality

Of our effect upon history

Stirring those deep waters that run still

That was our being

A tiny ripple on the surface of time

A ripple cancelled out by other ripples

Wave interference the crime

Even in death life gets away

Slipping under our radar

Of attempted definition

So that we languish on a par

With our ancestor apes

Dumb to the wherefore and why

We gather in like umbrellas

Black and folding we cry.

© shaun patrick green 2011

Pandora’s Love Child.

Last out of the box

But first to be crushed

We give it life with every breath

And even in death it lives

Not quite vanquished

But quieter/cast-out/unwashed

It haunts us like a wraith

Not knowing a home

Willing us to give it a name

So that it might speak

And let us know we are

Watched by more than chance

Or the whim of vengeful gods

It is whispered

In the darkest places

Like a spell

And to tell is a curse

Worse than imagining

Yet we hold on

Riding the swell

Until the streets fill again

With young people running

Like thieves

Who have shoplifted love.

© shaun patrick green 2011

White Tank Hill

Heat beamed its wave

But we pushed on

Our bikes part of us

The hill conquerable

Its crest in clear view

Once at the top we knew

Cool seasons would flow

The trickle down effect

Of childish effort

But perspective

Is a trick of light

We reached the hilltop

Dusty, thirsty

Wary of the white tanks

Hulking like sentinels

On the rim of the town below

Their precious water within

A menacing reminder

Of our slim hold on survival

We traced their perimeter

Striking blistered metal skin

Hearing the solid tone

Of necessity

Bold and bulging

Knowing then

There was nowhere to go but down

Out from the shadow of the tanks

Reigning over a desert town

© shaun patrick green 2011

the tail of the whale

in the flailing gale she heard her name called

and followed that calling to the rolling sail

not used to maids amid ships the crew were appalled

but soon made peace with the captain as well

he was a bachelor born of Hobart sound

saw in the flailing girl his daughter long dead

did not think about the effect on the crew in the round

as men do when their hearts rule their heads

they put out to sea in search of sperm whale

she scrubbed decks and cooked for the crew

the captain kept shy not appearing to show favour

though every man on board well knew

at stroke of twelve her soft soled feet flit across the boards

to tap at captains door and enter there within

there they rolled like waves of old

the crew thought the captain thin-skinned

then the whales were spotted and the killing started

the captain out front in the boats

flailing girl left standing on deck from her lover parted

is it the killing about which one gloats?

sea turned red with blood of those mighty mammals

their skin was stripped their blubber boiled

flailing girl began to think men are animals

and at heart she questioned the world

her footsteps didn't skirt the deck to captains cabin

she stayed in the hold out of the sun

the light of day a giant knife stabbing

at her water life just begun

twelfth watchman was the one to see her

as she wandered lonely about the ship

she babbled about blood and broken covenant

grabbed a bollard and took her leap into the deep

the captain was stoic and resolved

he knew better than to mourn his loss

told his men we keep hunting the whale

their souls locked to its plunging tail

never stopping to count the cost

© shaun patrick green 2011

Reflection.

I scrub my face

In search of feeling

And don’t know who I am.

I yawn like a tiger,

Fold my arms and pant

Like an polar bear.

Still there is no connection

To this visage with

So little visible history.

What if there is another me

Out there somewhere

Using the same face

To obtain recognition,

Love and happiness

While I am stuck here

In a one bedroom flat -

In a suburb full

Of one bedroom flats -

Beside a toilet

That needs cleaning,

Looking into this mirror,

Trying to remember my name?

© shaun patrick green 2011

House of Cards

He was twenty years her senior

But with microphone in hand

He seemed like some ageless genius

Knew how to work a crowd

Communicated every subtle move to the band

Was seamless in his delivery

That's what years in the industry

Imparts to a man, she thought

Can it be learned? Can it be taught?

His secret was what she sought

A surly voice in her ear was what she got:

Nah, love, you 'av to live it

She moved from playing bass to rhythm

Just to be nearer

He brought her to the front

Made her the face of the rhythm section

Aspects of performance became clearer

She learned how to swing her hips

Look to him while he was vocalising

Wore makeup and sang backup

And together went socialising

Though she knew he preferred boys

She was a muso fag hag

Here there and everywhere along for the ride

She didn't care, it was the band that mattered

Everything else got shoved to the side

So how wasted can you be and still function?

It was a question he had once asked her

And she was still pilled off her head so couldn't answer

But short of waking up in a pool of vomit

She could've she would've said:

not long, love, not long...

© shaun patrick green 2011

Young, rich and tasteless.

Francoise thinks it rich to do a line of coke

Off the passenger seat of the limousine

Who knows whose arse has graced it

But that's just Francoise, always high on slumming it

Adrienne, his fiancé, she's the same

Laughs as she burns cigarette holes

In her Collette Dinnigan dress

Which she bought today but has decided

Is SO yesterday, burp, giggle, pass the Moet

Kent is a cunt and everybody knows it

But fun to have around when he's pissed

Because he starts reciting Shakespeare

In the accent of a cockney gangster

His partner Giselle is fatiguing and that's being kind;

She's studying economics and is boring as bat shit sober

But whinnies like a pony when she's blind

The limousine carves toward the races

With the precision of a prosecutor's brief

Which would please Francoise's father no end

He being a QC and holder of tickets to the winners circle

They bypass the lines of plebs waiting at the gates

And track down daddy by a corporate marquis arseholed already

Much salutation and back-slapping and Moet lapping

As the geldings gallop by

Unespied amidst the talking and clapping

Kent goes for the canapés touted on trays by students

Doing hospitality because their parents aren't rich enough

To support them through University

He enjoys the perversity of dropping his finger food

And watching minions scrabble around cleaning up his mess

Yes, Kent is a cunt, but a few more glasses of champagne

And he'll be channeling Macbeth through Michael Caine

Giselle has collapsed on a chair nodding fatuously

To some twat bent on a betting system guaranteed to win

Adrienne is pole dancing around the lobster platter

But it doesn't matter because Francoise has daddy's ear

On a runner in the ninth, which he says is a sure thing

So they place lavish bets and cheer the race as won

Glasses charged, cheeks flushed red, willing the dumb animals on

The tip flags at the last but never fear more champagne is here

Francoise disappears to do a line off a dunny lid

Looks at himself in the mirror and thinks maybe I'm queer

But it's OK because daddy will pay for therapy

Besides he just snorted coke off a toilet bowel -

Who knows whose arse last sat here?

© shaun patrick green 2011

The Deal.

Brokered a deal with the devil

He said yeah sure you've earned it

By proxy you have won a major score

Yet I had no choice other than burn it

This thing too golden to flame

So I take it on as mistress, minister

And slave to all its faulty parts,

Such that simpletons will know difference

And those better informed their arts.

© shaun patrick green 2011

Visit from the Black Witch.

The witch came again last night

Scratching about in her cloak of maggots

Fingernails caked in red paint

She wanted what she always wants

And I am in the dark as to what that is

Made it through the front somehow

Then started working on the lock

I installed to keep her out

Paralysed I watched her pall

Seep under my bedroom door

Her rotten onion breath smelled of spells

Taking away my voice

So I was unable to scream for help

None would have come of course

She is the black siren of my soul

Where doubts and fears dwell

Such nightmares are a prefiguring

Of a real and living hell.

© shaun patrick green 2011

Another Political Poem.

Perhaps there was a time when democracy

Meant something more than a free-market shake down,

When people with an eye to the future planned

In the service of the common good and their fellow man.

I hear the ideals of the Declaration of Independence

And at once know those noble thoughts are strangled.

Politics is no longer 'the art of the possible';

It is the art of making the impossible seem possible

While working to ensure the possible is mangled.

Maintaining power, no matter what the cost,

Is the focus of today's politicians,

And if this means any vision is lost

To appeal to the lowest common denominator,

Such as prejudice, fear, economic uncertainty,

Then, like the whores they are, they will do it.

To fail your constituency is acceptable

But to fail your party is a hanging crime,

The punishment being Death By Media.

If politics has become the entertainment arm of big business

Then we are watching the dreariest reality TV show of all time,

Where the participants are dull and unattractive,

Who speak in clichés and show no nous

So that in the end we don't even care

Who gets kicked out of the house.

© shaun patrick green 2011

Listening to the Dead.

We have no way of hearing the dead

Except in dreams where we remember

What they did and said in life

Even this may be false

Like a glitch in recollection

Our own bias played onto the tape

That makes it skew and sway

And ultimately leads to data loss.

There is no perfect record

No way of holding every thought

All the minute details that compose

Our being gone with our passing

The only trace that which we keep

Smell of fresh baked bread

Faces smiling over a dinner table

Wishing this joy were lasting.

We have no way of hearing the dead

Their fear of going beyond us

The ignominy of plaques and headstones

Biting in turn with wrath of worms

Living was all they knew

And the leaving it tears them to shreds

Roaming like disgruntled shoppers

In a mall full of graven urns.

We have no way of knowing the dead

Being not dead ourselves trapped in limbo

Seeing them as wraiths or poltergeists

They veer out in dreams like human beings

And make demands of our hands

Seeing me they mouth with no sound

And I follow them quietly into dream court

Witness for both blind angels and the seeing.

© shaun patrick green 2011

valediction embracing morning

warm feet on cool

wood of stairs

golden morning breaking

waves through glass

smell of coffee

fried eggs and toast

sparrows pinging off the porch

like feathered sparks

and the way your hand

plays over my back

looking to the garden

diamond dew on grass

your touch ghosting

warmth of bed

unfinished dreams

curve of your naked arse

wishing it were like this

always and forever

as we smile and rise

to the triumph of J.S. Bach

© shaun patirck green 2011

Love is a cul-de-sac.

Life's boulevards and avenues all led her to you.

Now this home lies empty and there's nothing you can do

To bring her back the way the sun rises each morning -

No light here to live by in suburbia sprawling

Without end, houses laid side by side like appalling

Coffins in a graveyard theme park, a land of the dead.

You're only here because of her: its what she wanted -

Mock Victorian, three bedrooms and a big backyard,

Slate grey driveway, paving stones, white roses standing guard

Did you miss something? Was some detail wrong with the scene?

You were husband and wife, then mum and dad, king and queen...

But somehow it wasn't enough, she wanted much more

Of everything, even of you: she wasn't settling for

Peace and security. It was like she needed war.

So it all began with you. You were the enemy.

She wanted life beyond her means without alchemy.

Doomed before you started, didn't know it at the time,

She was aspirational, always the social climb

Was what mattered; bigger house, bigger better car.

One night, you found yourself looking in the huge mirror

You had installed in the ensuite and didn't recognise

Yourself, as if you were a stranger in your own eyes,

Locked in some fatal embrace with a normality

You couldn't reconcile with everyday reality.

She said the voices in your head drove you to do it,

Though they only came afterwards and she knew it.

Giving all you had to her will never bring her back:

Life is a brief one-way street, but love is a cul-de-sac.

© shaun patrick green 2011

Night in Istanbul.

You sat outside in the square

Eating Turkish Pizza from a café

Sun setting behind the Blue Mosque

Muezzin calling the faithful to prayer

She caught your eye two tables across

Smiled and motioned you to her side

You sat a while playing hard to get

Thinking her gain might be your loss

She had jet-black hair and dark eyes

And there was no dissuading her

She got up and walked over to you

Seated herself all smiles and thighs

She spoke English though not well

Asked where are you from

And you unthinking said Australia

Ah, she says, you know I could tell

Our two countries have relationship, yes?

She might be referring to the war,

Gallipoli, a shared history of being fucked

By colonial powers, but that's just a guess

I like Australians, she says, don't you like me?

You want to say yes but you know

She's on the take like everybody else

In this place where every tourist is a money tree

You order another beer and one for her too

Not because you're buying her hard sell

Or because you think she's going to put out

But as a tourist you don't want to appear rude

I know a bar close to here - you will come?

You think what possible harm can it do

She's lively and cute and could put you

In touch with locals who know how to have fun

Why close yourself off to experience?

Life is to be lived - at least before you die

So you say yes, letting her take your hand

Cursing those beers but hang the expense

She leads you through night streets dark and near

In a foreign city toward you don't know where

Alarm bells ringing but dully quashed as they are

By exotic perfume on the air and too much beer

Suddenly she stops by an ancient vestibule

Her arms around your neck lips on yours

Dragging you into the deepening shadows

The pull of her taste and scent irresistible

That's when they jump you - two of them at least

She steps aside, punch to your gut then the head

Rip off the coat with your wallet and phone

Kick you in the balls then sprint into the street

Lying on your back, swallowing blood

You look up at the distant stars and laugh

Knowing life is meaningless in the dark

Yet there are a billion suns burning above

© shaun patrick green 2011

The Love Song of Sergio Leone.

I looked into your eye

Told you it cannot be this way

You spat clean against my cheek

When the moon had told you not to disobey

How did you come to this disfigurement?

A close up reveals more than words can say

These broken hills hide all manner of things

Like men without a past or a name

But women cannot hide in the West

And not a gun slung among

Can ease your widow's duress

You gilded by campfire glow

As the reason for your living slips away

Slit mouthed and split tongued

Evidence to those who done you wrong

I say vengeance will hold its sway

Curling you tight in this bittersweet night

Such that the dawn finds your enemies

Unhorsed unmanned and gun-shy

Mark my words sure as a pistol shot

Many ends will come this day

To those been living on borrowed time

To those with debts to pay.

© shaun patrick green 2011

season of harvest

in the season of harvest he met her

she not yet ripe for the picking

he found his tongue would not work

in her presence and thought this

basis enough for his proposal

his father warned against betrothal

the thought of it sticking

in his old heart like a dagger

planted there by all women

though only one of their kind

had long ago done the stabbing

but love being blind they married

without his fathers approval

and were happy for a time

working the fields together by day

lying side by side at night

until the season of planting came

and he saw the light in her eyes

begin to dim noticeably

at least it was noticeable to him

he put it down to mood or whim

busy as he was getting seeds

into the ground before the rains

so days ran into weeks

she complained of exhaustion

began to move more slowly

as if in walking she were forcing

one foot in front of the other

though the doctor could find

nothing physically wrong with her

in the wet season she took to bed

for days on end without speech or

movement of any kind except for

the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest

now and then she would moan

or her eyes would roll back in her head

the doctor took her temperature and

prescribed tinctures of roots and herbs

but the medicines only made her worse

in desperation he turned to the town midwife

who some thought a witch but never refused

her services or advice in return for food

the old woman took one look at the girl

she has a gypsy soul she said and frowned

you have taken that which should be free

and rooted it to the ground

in the season of growth one morning

he found her out in the field lying

arms outstretched silent as a fallen tree

her chest did not move no breath

passed her lips her skin cold to the touch

he wept in hope his tears might seep

into the good earth bringing her back to life

but in his heart he knew he asked too much

he had sought to tame a thing born wild

nature cared not that he didn't know

it seemed to him the cruelest of truths

that indeed we reap what we sow

© shaun patrick green 2011