PREPARE THE WAY by David Erdos

 

PREPARE THE WAY

Prepare the way, so they say, for your own

Small destruction. It will not be kind, but with

Wisdom, we may in turn, soften wounds

Even as they're incurred by the Vultures flights

Sent to scar us and by the long delayed actions

That will see and saw us damned all too soon.

The people rightly protest at the misinformation

Infection. The Governments true contagion

As they sit stirring the blood they have bought

And simply splattered around in a rise and roar

That stoked panic, as around Trafalgar Square

This lost Sunday old Nelson looked down on

A cemented landscape of war. Alan Moore's

Principle of Solve has come, in which things

Are ripped apart and examined, before the Coagula

Happens and restores us all into place. And so

Covid consumes what Brexit shat out in blonde

Splutters while the bald and Brunette bite like

Updike through the celebritised mask, and stunned

Face. Certainly, the Home Secretary has no care

For the homes her failing firm would make prisons.

A friend of mine in her constituency of Colchester

Will have her actual house cleared away, for the building

Of roads they'll soon close along which Cumnmings'

Next jaunt won't be noticed. As they seek once more

To seal us and to weld us inside with no say.

Cummings plots. Johnson clots and blots the copybook

He 's been granted. Indeed, just like Tom Sharpe's

Leech on the landscape this condom full of gas

May soon burst, to give way to Sunak, or Gove,

Or another sunk Devil who will mask with smoke

And not cotton the standard for change we'll fail

First. With numbers massaged, the pricks are on the rise

With pudendas. Who, while their agendas seem misty

Are sending out a stark signal flare. This beacon blares

And blames through the fog as Unpriti Patel attempts

To deport the next thousand, with one horror replaced

By another, until the steam and stream of death's

Whirlpool mixes every swimmer up and into despair.       

Prepare the way and prepare the cage grown around you.

They seek a new lockdown and have been trying it out,

Town by town. Just as with Stephen King's force field

Domes, or some misunderstood Asimov vision,

This Science Fiction twists the White of hope

Within science into their blue veined suicide

That blurs brown. Sunday's protest was for truth,

But see how it was smeared across papers. Conspiracy

Theorists are now not the traders of tales; they're clear eyed.

Nurses. Lecturers. And all of the true independents,

From electricians to artists who gather to damn and defy.

But is it too late? The laws are in place now to stop us.

Arrests and fines. Soon, intrusions, especially if that rule

Of six multiplies.  As we rubbed half a year’s tears from

Our eyes this may now be calleda new season to wake in.

The American word Fall has more purchase, while winter

Of course, always works. Winter, in turn, duly blocks

The chance for growth and expansion. Even while breeding

Spring it dispenses with the rhythms and rhymes of failed earth.

So prepare the way. There's a hole In which they may want us

All buried. A forced hibernation that sees the people we were

Become moles. Rarely seen in the light, and when we are,

Fucked and furtive. And yet at the base of such holes we find

Alice and the waters that heal and rise and console. Fight, worms.

Turn through earth. Some form of revolution stands written.

But have we the strength to enact it and to truly know what to do?

We must dispense with the lies and value truth's dollar.

Only Euro and  you know and I know too what awaits.

It cannot be what they want. The cost of that is too heavy.

Where then is the value of the golden mean that heals hate?

Start again and see through. And watch how the naive

Start to glisten. There is a new song split. Find the fragments.

And then prepare the string.

Tension breaks.

                                                David Erdos September 21st 2020

For more poems from David Erdos visit The Corona Diaries collection 

David Erdos is an actor, writer, director with over 300 professional credits. He is a published poet, playwright, essayist and illustrator. He has lectured on all disciplines in theatre and film for leading performing arts colleges, schools and universities around the world. His books include EASY VERSES FOR DIFFICULT TIMES, THE SCAR ON THE CLOUD, OIL ON SILVER, NEWS FROM MARS, CHANGING PLACES WITH LIGHT (penniless press) and BYZANTIUM with the photographer Max Reeves. He is a contributing editor for The International Times and maker of documentaries all over the world. David’s work has been acclaimed by many leading figures including Harold Pinter, Heathcote Williams, Alan Moore, Andrew Kotting, Chris Petit and Iain Sinclair in whose recent book THE LAST LONDON, David features. He can be reached at David.erdos@sky.com.

David Erdos

©    David Erdos has asserted his moral rights as author of his work and has full copyright.