Arbelos

Is your sanity in question
as you face the leaden winter
with your inert flaccid body
and your sickly stagnant humour?
Does your laughter smack of torture,
the world of Armageddon,
the future of excuses,
on the skyline of your land?

Your rainbows are neglected
like the children of the losers
and the streets are full of loners
who stay lonely all together.
Your society is dying
from diseases purely mental.
Your liberty is threatened
by a distant ringing bell.

Prepare yourself for nightmares
and for searching in the forest.
Then realise the dominance,
the leader is the strongest.
All the debris of the people
is scattered through the hillsides.
Humanity is petrified
but finds nowhere to hide.

And from the final battle
limp twisted naked children
and you wonder which proud victor
could wish this on another,
but future is for progress,
no religion hinders their minds,
and they send out probing ripples
to the tissue of your brains

As the cold leaves of the oak trees
fall like snowflakes by your footprints,
you remember how the junkies
destroyed the white-laced virgins,
and the politics of power
engraved a sad memento
upon the minds of people
who knew not where to go.

And then you think of freedom,
the corruption of the leaders,
the richness of the bourgeois,
the squalor of the pauper.
No longer do you feel that
your chances were denied,
for, when you cast your mind back,
there’s no wonder that it died.

1979, Paul Holmes