Going Down With The Ship - poetry by shaun patrick green.: February 2012

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Shallow (A Whaler's Prayer)

Shallow be the second sail

Shallow be the one

Shallow be the voice that wakes

Shallow be the sun

Shallow be the waves that break

Shallow be the run

Shallow be the sea that takes

Shallow homeward come

Shallow be the tempered depths

Shallow be where your love expired

Shallow be when he called your name

Shallow be his dead blue wife

Shallow be the green that took him under

Shallow be where his bones made a reef

Shallow be the fluke beneath the waves

Shallow be the head breaking to breathe

Shallow be the harpoon's flight

Shallow be the riches we heave

Shallow be what the ocean takes

Shallow waters shall wash our grief

Mother.

Mother stripped bare

On blood red stone

Her with two sons

One on hip

The other strangled

Like an afterthought

His squint and fly net

Strapped like a limpet to a rock

Her teenage leg his bulwark

Against feverish adulthood

Her determined view

“That’s just how it is”

A resolute optimism

In the face of this desert

Married to a man

She barely knew

Met him at a party

Her nineteen dancing and drunk

He five years older with a car

And in the back seat it seems natural

Like rivers flooding in April

That she should nurse this life

Into the puking shitting world

A Catholic Catechism sanctified

By both sides of the family

Them all drained of fluids

Husk people hand of god

That feel nothing

Where is your touch

That gentle hand upon my head

Sighing me to silence

That sends my body to sleep

And brings me dreams of violence?

inspiration

thought filled it

motion of dust in air

till sympathy lagged

and the idea was gone

like Venus disappearing into the sea

when she'd only just been born

The Power of Positive Thinking.

The mind nazis tell me: Think positive/Be positive

Put positive energy out there into the universe

And in time good things will return

Don't get me wrong but this sounds like delusion

That mighty force that keeps all dickheads smiling

Because they choose to ignore the freight train

Heading in their direction down the tunnel of life

Give out positive energy and good things will happen?

That's like asking me to believe in an

All seeing all forgiving god that judges not

That's like asking me to believe in the Tooth Fairy

Or Santa Claus or Krishna or Jehova

Besides they have drugs for that now

With names like Zoloft and Prozac

Neither lofty nor prosaic but still effective

If your goal in life is to be a fat white

Stupid commercial TV-watching hamburger-eating turd

I am a son of the age of rationality

A product of this most unproductive time

And the next person who tells me

To turn my frown upside down is getting glassed

That's my positive thinking. I sit here waiting

For some supercilious prick to lecture me

On the paths to happiness in point form

(Powerpoint presentation optional

with subtitles for the hearing impaired)

So I can drag him into the street

And beat seven shades of shit out of him

Then reinstate myself at the bar

Order another pint and drink a toast:

To the power of Positive Thinking!

Breeders.

Concerned for the future of humanity?

Fear not

Babies are so in-season that

Prams jam the footpaths and

Mums-to-be sporting bumps

Push me out of queues

Self righteous, unequivocal

Revved-up going over

Speed humps in their SUVs

Such that I waddle out of the way

Less than human, almost guilty

For my inability to breed

To sow the seed

And thereby justify myself

Somehow, by making art

Getting up at sparrows fart

To tap out rhyming prose

What’s that compared

To bringing life into this

Worthless world?

We’re in a race

And the prize is the

Continuity of humanity

Not through quality

But quantity: it's all about the numbers

A measurement science well knows

May I make a suggestion?

Don’t think too much:

Believe what you see on TV

Regardless of the channel

Because it's all there to funnel

You into the killing-zone of capital

To buy more diapers, flannels and wipes.

With your perambulators like humvies

And your self-satisfied smiles

You will inherit this ball of rock

As the meek should –

It’s your biological destiny

It was yours all along.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

5 Words.

Had I but five words

To describe you they would

Be these: generous

For you give so much more than you receive

Forgiving - for you accept

The good and bad in everyone equally

Understanding - you act without judging

Which only serves to humble me

Passionate - your love of life

Is infectious and enlivening

Trusting - for you believe in

The capacity of humankind to transcend

Our base nature and focus on giving freely

You are a perfect soul

And it is my privilege to love you

Accept the broken man I am

Agree to love me daily

Somebody else's problem.

"Moving forward," he says

And the words slip from his corporate lips

Like pre-greased eels on a profit trip

There is reality and there is numbers

Rarely do the two meet in harmonious fashion

How do I explain to this corporate douche bag

That exponential growth is a mathematical phenomenon

Existing in the realm of spreadsheets

And pie graphs and profit projections

Not this world of people strapped for cash

Europe could go belly up at any moment

And my super will be worth shit

Still he wears the profit goggles

"How do we grow the business?"

How does the business grow us?

How do we feel happier as people

While making money for you?

Are these two things incompatible?

Have you actually thought about this shit?

The daily grind continues as we

Pump out the product and keep the customers happy

All the while hoping some piece of antiquated machinery

Will explode and kill us and it will be