Reign of the Quisling-Rodents

IN A WRETCH’S EYES

13 Of many-sided poverty severs off the groins Of the virile So won’t you be So obliging – O surfeited brother, most affluent sir – As to rush me to hospital this very minute, Or must you be Unfailingly On your way to your adopted home of a hexagon? Take me for a drivelling Mendicant of a compatriot, for all I care, But along the logical cracks in this parched wilderness Tears of ink must flow Scouring this vast dearth of rationale, Unearthing bond fragments long buried And gilded things, misplaced IN A WRETCH’S EYES This privation Is armed with a gun from the arsenal of woe Pointing at me And a gravitational pull; Frozen, all must drift perforce To the iron-magnet, sizzling With infernal hardship; Anyone who dares to budge, Bringing a hand to his pockets for a dime, Is shot to misery The beast’s koboko tail 14 Flails me gnarled on the scrotum Imagine sir! Karmic despot decrees That an entire day Be dispensed with nought but a cocoyam to roast In the noon sun Better off deprived Of the right, than be emptied thus Of the verve – to vote Night and day I fast Not for piety’s sake But in subordination like suction To the will-whirls of penury, done On my earth As it is In the land beyond the beyond Of nightmares BEAUTIFUL SHIP Wherefore are you bound, beautiful ship! Sailing So many knots away Against the tides Of stormy, smelly seas like these? Won’t you be lost, O beautiful ship! In stormy, smelly seas like these Taking the western way; That perilous course ...