WATCH THIS INNER SPACE by David Erdos - Poem 28 from THE PEOPLES PRISON
Poem 28 from THE PEOPLES PRISON
WATCH THIS INNER SPACE
As we might
have expected or guessed the tiers fell
In fear of the
familiar word at war with us; now,
The lockdown
digs deeper, and this time, comrades,
Its enforced.
I heard a fine of £10,000. Is that right?
Money you can
only earn through computers,
As schools and
offices become silent, and what feels
Like a
Dystopian guard is endorsed. Are Nurses falling
Sick by Ward
Doors, with the weight of the worse
And the worry,
or does each competing jab save them
As we wait in
line to be junkies for a life gracing fix
To get high,
or rather low and subdued in our homes
As the DT’s of
destiny and truth left by drinking
Forcefully
compete with the shudder that comes
From the full
ignorance of the why. Why has this
Happened to
us? And how is it mastered? When
Will full
freedom feature and how do we live
Altered so?
The space is unfilled and now
Successive
Governments glove us. By turning us
Inside out the
new landscape becomes a country
Of Lounges,
bedrooms and Kitchens with literally
Nowhere else
you can go. And so I escape into music
Films, books,
and to some extent my own writing,
Where I batter
out protestation while remaining unable
Within to
decide about what to do with my life, or even
The things I’m
creating. It’s a style of Woody Allen angst
At a moment
where everything we knew before crests
Time’s river
and we remain stunned and sitting
On the
increasingly stilled waterside. I make a cup
Of tea and
then think of the cups I shared with you,
I see Hotel
Rooms the world over where a similar
Sounding cup
was once made. The boiling point
Has been
reached and all we can do now is simmer,
Ready to
scorch hands set for holding and make even
A daytime tea
drinking resemble a mouthful of clearly
Deadly
nightshade. Certainly mouths have been marred
Not to mention
principles and most people, as many
Believe that
biotics may contain a bionic strain after all.
Of course just
as many refute this. But who is the less
Deceived, to
cite Larkin where at an unversed time
Rhythm stalls.
I can’t even read for too long. My mind
Remains too
unsettled. So writing takes my hands
As I use them
as if they were touching themselves.
Through the
page and through the screen too, onto which
I project this
brief feature. It has over fifty years in it
And whatever
amount of time I haves left. Watch this space.
It may fade.
Or it may yet fill with colour. Yesterday,
Five lovely
things happened; caught off guard
I was shaken
and didn’t know how not to feel so bereft.
I had been
conditioned, Comrades in a new Gulag
Of their
making. Or was it mine? The bars burn me.
Never mind the
tea. I fear sun. Or I am more wary let’s say
Of where it
eventually shines: what place is that?
One of abandon
or one that has search lights at each corner
With a
uniformed man, dog and gun. And so the innerspace,
The trapped
dream still defies the glimpsed nightmare.
It adapts to
fresh absence while its outer shield is soon
Breached by
jab and by joist as we all become medieval
And Politics
make us peasants that a further history
Will soon
teach. Our Innerspace becomes worlds in slow
Retreat from
each other. I orbit you. Saturn spurns us
And cold
shouldering, turns away. As does, Jupiter, Mars
And all of
those we would look to. If we lose the outer,
Then
eventually, what on earth can we say?
The statistics
mount, even soar. The cosmos charts
Cover carpets.
Only the dying trace our means
But can’t tell
us while the homeless become meteors.
What of them?
Who can help? Or reel them in?
The world
winters. I hide away like Neil Armstrong.
But then Neil
Armstrong is dead. Nothing thaws.
Or won’t for a
while. Watch out world. Things got
Lethal. As
outerspace achieves echo, ET’s a blocked
Caller and the
Avenue Astronauts lose their sense
Of gravity in
closed gardens and seal their atmosphere
In behind doors.
David Erdos, January
5th 2021
 |
David Erdos |
Comments
Post a Comment