Classics
Members
41/M/Amsterdam
..damnant quod non inteligunt... ..the truth may hurt.., the lies they kill... ..love always... © License under Creative Commons 4.0, BY-NC-ND
_
there is a road which leads to me. .
Poems
Maggie Emmett
Jul 2015
PROLOGUE
Hyde Park weekend of politics and pop,
Geldof’s gang of divas and mad hatters;
Sergeant Pepper only one heart beating,
resurrected by a once dead Beatle.
The ******, Queen and Irish juggernauts;
The Entertainer and dead bands
re-jigged for the sake of humanity.
The almighty single named entities
all out for Africa and people power.
Olympics in the bag, a Waterloo
of celebrations in the street that night
Leaping and whooping in sheer delight
Nelson rocking in Trafalgar Square
The promised computer wonderlands
rising from the poisoned dead heart wasteland;
derelict, deserted, still festering.
The Brave Tomorrow in a world of hate.
The flame will be lit, magic rings aloft
and harmony will be our middle name.
On the seventh day of the seventh month,
Festival of the skilful Weaving girl;
the ‘war on terror’ just a tattered trope
drained and exhausted and put out of sight
in a dark corner of a darker shelf.
A power surge the first lie of the day.
Savagely woken from our pleasant dream
al Qa’ida opens up a new franchise
and a new frontier for terror to prowl.
Howling sirens shatter morning’s progress
Hysterical screech of ambulances
and police cars trying to grip the road.
The oppressive drone of helicopters
gathering like the Furies in the sky;
Blair’s hubris is acknowledged by the gods.
Without warning the deadly game begins.
The Leviathan state machinery,
certain of its strength and authority,
with sheer balletic co-ordination,
steadies itself for a fine performance.
The new citizen army in ‘day glow’
take up their ‘Support Official’ roles,
like air raid wardens in the last big show;
feisty yet firm, delivering every line
deep voiced and clearly to the whole theatre.
On cue, the Police fan out through Bloomsbury
clearing every emergency exit,
arresting and handcuffing surly streets,
locking down this ancient river city.
Fetching in fluorescent green costuming,
the old Bill nimbly Tangos and Foxtrots
the airways, Oscar, Charlie and Yankee
quickly reply with grid reference Echo;
Whiskey, Sierra, Quebec, November,
beam out from New Scotland Yard,
staccato, nearly lost in static space.
LIVERPOOL STREET STATION
8.51 a.m. Circle Line
Shehezad Tanweer was born in England.
A migrant’s child of hope and better life,
dreaming of his future from his birth.
Only twenty two short years on this earth.
In a madrassah, Lahore, Pakistan,
he spent twelve weeks reading and rote learning
verses chosen from the sacred text.
Chanting the syllables, hour after hour,
swaying back and forth with the word rhythm,
like an underground train rocking the rails,
as it weaves its way beneath the world,
in turning tunnels in the dead of night.
Teve Talevski had a meeting
across the river, he knew he’d be late.
**** trains they do it to you every time.
But something odd happened while he waited
A taut-limbed young woman sashayed past him
in a forget-me-not blue dress of silk.
She rustled on the platform as she turned.
She turned to him and smiled, and he smiled back.
Stale tunnel air pushed along in the rush
of the train arriving in the station.
He found a seat and watched her from afar.
Opened his paper for distraction’s sake
Olympic win exciting like the smile.
Train heading southwest under Whitechapel.
Deafening blast, rushing sound blast, bright flash
of golden light, flying glass and debris
Twisted people thrown to ground, darkness;
the dreadful silent second in blackness.
The stench of human flesh and gunpowder,
burning rubber and fiery acrid smoke.
Screaming bone bare pain, blood-drenched tearing pain.
Pitiful weeping, begging for a god
to come, someone to come, and help them out.
Teve pushes off a dead weighted man.
He stands unsteady trying to balance.
Railway staff with torches, moving spotlights
**** and jolt, catching still life scenery,
lighting the exit in gloomy dimness.
They file down the track to Aldgate Station,
Teve passes the sardine can carriage
torn apart by a fierce hungry giant.
Through the dust, four lifeless bodies take shape
and disappear again in drifting smoke.
It’s only later, when safe above ground,
Teve looks around and starts to wonder
where his blue epiphany girl has gone.
KINGS CROSS STATION
8.56 a.m. Piccadilly Line
Many named Lyndsey Germaine, Jamaican,
living with his wife and child in Aylesbury,
laying low, never visited the Mosque.
Buckinghamshire bomber known as Jamal,
clean shaven, wearing normal western clothes,
annoyed his neighbours with loud music.
Samantha-wife converted and renamed,
Sherafiyah and took to wearing black.
Devout in that jet black shalmar kameez.
Loving father cradled close his daughter
Caressed her cheek and held her tiny hand
He wondered what the future held for her.
Station of the lost and homeless people,
where you can buy anything at a price.
A place where a face can be lost forever;
where the future’s as real as faded dreams.
Below the mainline trains, deep underground
Piccadilly lines cross the River Thames
Cram-packed, shoulder to shoulder and standing,
the train heading southward for Russell Square,
barely pulls away from Kings Cross Station,
when Arash Kazerouni hears the bang,
‘Almighty bang’ before everything stopped.
Twenty six hearts stopped beating that moment.
But glass flew apart in a shattering wave,
followed by a huge whoosh of smoky soot.
Panic raced down the line with ice fingers
touching and tagging the living with fear.
Spine chiller blanching faces white with shock.
Gracia Hormigos, a housekeeper,
thought, I am being electrocuted.
Her body was shaking, it seemed her mind
was in free fall, no safety cord to pull,
just disconnected, so she looked around,
saw the man next to her had no right leg,
a shattered shard of bone and gouts of blood,
Where was the rest of his leg and his foot ?
Level headed ones with serious voices
spoke over the screaming and the sobbing;
Titanic lifeboat voices giving orders;
Iceberg cool voices of reassurance;
We’re stoical British bulldog voices
that organize the mayhem and chaos
into meaty chunks of jobs to be done.
Clear air required - break the windows now;
Lines could be live - so we stay where we are;
Help will be here shortly - try to stay calm.
John, Mark and Emma introduce themselves
They never usually speak underground,
averting your gaze, tube train etiquette.
Disaster has its opportunities;
Try the new mobile, take a photograph;
Ring your Mum and Dad, ****** battery’s flat;
My network’s down; my phone light’s still working
Useful to see the way, step carefully.
Fiona asks, ‘Am I dreaming all this?’
A shrieking man answers her, “I’m dying!”
Hammered glass finally breaks, fresher air;
too late for the man in the front carriage.
London Transport staff in yellow jackets
start an orderly evacuation
The mobile phones held up to light the way.
Only nineteen minutes in a lifetime.
EDGEWARE ROAD STATION
9.17 a.m. Circle Line
Mohammed Sadique Khan, the oldest one.
Perhaps the leader, at least a mentor.
Yorkshire man born, married with a daughter
Gently spoken man, endlessly patient,
worked in the Hamara, Lodge Lane, Leeds,
Council-funded, multi-faith youth Centre;
and the local Primary school, in Beeston.
No-one could believe this of Mr Khan;
well educated, caring and very kind
Where did he hide his secret other life ?
Wise enough to wait for the second train.
Two for the price of one, a real bargain.
Westbound second carriage is blown away,
a commuter blasted from the platform,
hurled under the wheels of the east bound train.
Moon Crater holes, the walls pitted and pocked;
a sparse dark-side landscape with black, black air.
The ripped and shredded metal bursts free
like a surprising party popper;
Steel curlicues corkscrew through wood and glass.
Mass is made atomic in the closed space.
Roasting meat and Auschwitzed cremation stench
saturates the already murky air.
Our human kindling feeds the greedy fire;
Heads alight like medieval torches;
Fiery liquid skin drops from the faceless;
Punk afro hair is cauterised and singed.
Heat intensity, like a wayward iron,
scorches clothes, fuses fibres together.
Seven people escape this inferno;
many die in later days, badly burned,
and everyone there will live a scarred life.
TAVISTOCK ROAD
9.47 a.m. Number 30 Bus
Hasib Hussain migrant son, English born
barely an adult, loved by his mother;
reported him missing later that night.
Police typed his description in the file
and matched his clothes to fragments from the scene.
A hapless victim or vicious bomber ?
Child of the ‘Ummah’ waging deadly war.
Seventy two black eyed virgins waiting
in jihadist paradise just for you.
Red double-decker bus, number thirty,
going from Hackney Wick to Marble Arch;
stuck in traffic, diversions everywhere.
Driver pulls up next to a tree lined square;
the Parking Inspector, Ade Soji,
tells the driver he’s in Tavistock Road,
British Museum nearby and the Square.
A place of peace and quiet reflection;
the sad history of war is remembered;
symbols to make us never forget death;
Cherry Tree from Hiroshima, Japan;
Holocaust Memorial for Jewish dead;
sturdy statue of Mahatma Gandhi.
Peaceful resistance that drove the Lion out.
Freedom for India but death for him.
Sudden sonic boom, bus roof tears apart,
seats erupt with volcanic force upward,
hot larva of blood and tissue rains down.
Bloodied road becomes a charnel-house scene;
disembodied limbs among the wreckage,
headless corpses; sinews, muscles and bone.
Buildings spattered and smeared with human paint
Impressionist daubs, blood red like the bus.
Jasmine Gardiner, running late for work;
all trains were cancelled from Euston Station;
she headed for the square, to catch the bus.
It drove straight past her standing at the stop;
before she could curse aloud - Kaboom !
Instinctively she ran, ran for her life.
Umbrella shield from the shower of gore.
On the lower deck, two Aussies squeezed in;
Catherine Klestov was standing in the aisle,
floored by the bomb, suffered cuts and bruises
She limped to Islington two days later.
Louise Barry was reading the paper,
she was ‘****-scared’ by the explosion;
she crawled out of the remnants of the bus,
broken and burned, she lay flat on the road,
the world of sound had gone, ear drums had burst;
she lay there drowsy, quiet, looking up
and amazingly the sky was still there.
Sam Ly, Vietnamese Australian,
One of the boat people once welcomed here.
A refugee, held in his mother’s arms,
she died of cancer, before he was three.
Hi Ly struggled to raise his son alone;
a tough life, inner city high rise flats.
Education the smart migrant’s revenge,
Monash Uni and an IT degree.
Lucky Sam, perfect job of a lifetime;
in London, with his one love, Mandy Ha,
Life going great until that fateful day;
on the seventh day of the seventh month,
Festival of the skilful Weaving girl.
Three other Aussies on that ****** bus;
no serious physical injuries,
Sam’s luck ran out, in choosing where to sit.
His neck was broken, could not breath alone;
his head smashed and crushed, fractured bones and burns
Wrapped in a cocoon of coma safe
This broken figure lying on white sheets
in an English Intensive Care Unit
did not seem like Hi Ly’s beloved son;
but he sat by Sam’s bed in disbelief,
seven days and seven nights of struggle,
until the final hour, when it was done.
In the pit of our stomach we all knew,
but we kept on deep breathing and hoping
this nauseous reality would pass.
The weary inevitability
of horrific disasters such as these.
Strangely familiar like an old newsreel
Black and white, it happened long ago.
But its happening now right before our eyes
satellite pictures beam and bounce the globe.
Twelve thousand miles we watch the story
Plot unfolds rapidly, chapters emerge
We know the places names of this narrative.
It is all subterranean, hidden
from the curious, voyeuristic gaze,
Until the icon bus, we are hopeful
This public spectacle is above ground
We can see the force that mangled the bus,
fury that tore people apart limb by limb
Now we can imagine a bomb below,
far below, people trapped, fiery hell;
fighting to breathe each breath in tunnelled tombs.
Herded from the blast they are strangely calm,
obedient, shuffling this way and that.
Blood-streaked, sooty and dishevelled they come.
Out from the choking darkness far below
Dazzled by the brightness of the morning
of a day they feared might be their last.
They have breathed deeply of Kurtz’s horror.
Sights and sounds unimaginable before
will haunt their waking hours for many years;
a lifetime of nightmares in the making.
They trudge like weary soldiers from the Somme
already see the world with older eyes.
On the surface, they find a world where life
simply goes on as before, unmindful.
Cyclist couriers still defy road laws,
sprint racing again in Le Tour de France;
beer-gutted, real men are loading lorries;
lunch time sandwiches are made as usual,
sold and eaten at desks and in the street.
Roadside cafes sell lots of hot sweet tea.
The Umbrella stand soon does brisk business.
Sign writers' hands, still steady, paint the sign.
The summer blooms are watered in the park.
A ***** stretches on the bench and wakes up,
he folds and stows his newspaper blankets;
mouth dry, he sips water at the fountain.
A lady scoops up her black poodle’s ****.
A young couple argues over nothing.
Betting shops are full of people losing
money and dreaming of a trifecta.
Martin’s still smoking despite the patches.
There’s a rush on Brandy in nearby pubs
Retired gardener dead heads his flowers
and picks a lettuce for the evening meal
Fifty six minutes from start to finish.
Perfectly orchestrated performance.
Rush hour co-ordination excellent.
Maximum devastation was ensured.
Cruel, merciless killing so coldly done.
Fine detail in the maiming and damage.
A REVIEW
Well activated practical response.
Rehearsals really paid off on the day.
Brilliant touch with bus transport for victims;
Space blankets well deployed for shock effect;
Dramatic improv by Paramedics;
Nurses, medicos and casualty staff
showed great technical E.R. Skills - Bravo !
Plenty of pizzazz and dash as always
from the nifty, London Ambo drivers;
Old fashioned know-how from the Fire fighters
in hosing down the fireworks underground.
Dangerous rescues were undertaken,
accomplished with buckets of common sense.
And what can one say about those Bobbies,
jolly good show, the lips unquivering
and universally stiff, no mean feat
in this Premiere season tear-jerker.
Nail-bitingly brittle, but a smash-hit
Poignant misery and stoic suffering,
fortitude, forbearance and lots of grit
Altogether was quite tickety boo.
NOTES ON THE POEM
Liverpool Street Station
A Circle Line train from Moorgate with six carriages and a capacity of 1272 passengers [ 192 seated; 1080 standing]. 7 dead on the first day.
Southbound, destination Aldgate. Explosion occurs midway between Liverpool Street and Aldgate.
Shehezad Tanweer was reported to have ‘never been political’ by a friend who played cricket with him 10 days before the bombing
Teve Talevski is a real person and I have elaborated a little on reports in the press. He runs a coffee shop in North London.
At the time of writing the fate of the blue dress lady is not known
Kings Cross Station
A Piccadilly Line train with six carriages and a capacity of 1238 passengers [272 seated; 966 standing]. 21 dead on first day.
Southbound, destination Russell Square. Explosion occurs mi
Hyde Park weekend of politics and pop,
Geldof’s gang of divas and mad hatters;
Sergeant Pepper only one heart beating,
resurrected by a once dead Beatle.
The ******, Queen and Irish juggernauts;
The Entertainer and dead bands
re-jigged for the sake of humanity.
The almighty single named entities
all out for Africa and people power.
Olympics in the bag, a Waterloo
of celebrations in the street that night
Leaping and whooping in sheer delight
Nelson rocking in Trafalgar Square
The promised computer wonderlands
rising from the poisoned dead heart wasteland;
derelict, deserted, still festering.
The Brave Tomorrow in a world of hate.
The flame will be lit, magic rings aloft
and harmony will be our middle name.
On the seventh day of the seventh month,
Festival of the skilful Weaving girl;
the ‘war on terror’ just a tattered trope
drained and exhausted and put out of sight
in a dark corner of a darker shelf.
A power surge the first lie of the day.
Savagely woken from our pleasant dream
al Qa’ida opens up a new franchise
and a new frontier for terror to prowl.
Howling sirens shatter morning’s progress
Hysterical screech of ambulances
and police cars trying to grip the road.
The oppressive drone of helicopters
gathering like the Furies in the sky;
Blair’s hubris is acknowledged by the gods.
Without warning the deadly game begins.
The Leviathan state machinery,
certain of its strength and authority,
with sheer balletic co-ordination,
steadies itself for a fine performance.
The new citizen army in ‘day glow’
take up their ‘Support Official’ roles,
like air raid wardens in the last big show;
feisty yet firm, delivering every line
deep voiced and clearly to the whole theatre.
On cue, the Police fan out through Bloomsbury
clearing every emergency exit,
arresting and handcuffing surly streets,
locking down this ancient river city.
Fetching in fluorescent green costuming,
the old Bill nimbly Tangos and Foxtrots
the airways, Oscar, Charlie and Yankee
quickly reply with grid reference Echo;
Whiskey, Sierra, Quebec, November,
beam out from New Scotland Yard,
staccato, nearly lost in static space.
LIVERPOOL STREET STATION
8.51 a.m. Circle Line
Shehezad Tanweer was born in England.
A migrant’s child of hope and better life,
dreaming of his future from his birth.
Only twenty two short years on this earth.
In a madrassah, Lahore, Pakistan,
he spent twelve weeks reading and rote learning
verses chosen from the sacred text.
Chanting the syllables, hour after hour,
swaying back and forth with the word rhythm,
like an underground train rocking the rails,
as it weaves its way beneath the world,
in turning tunnels in the dead of night.
Teve Talevski had a meeting
across the river, he knew he’d be late.
**** trains they do it to you every time.
But something odd happened while he waited
A taut-limbed young woman sashayed past him
in a forget-me-not blue dress of silk.
She rustled on the platform as she turned.
She turned to him and smiled, and he smiled back.
Stale tunnel air pushed along in the rush
of the train arriving in the station.
He found a seat and watched her from afar.
Opened his paper for distraction’s sake
Olympic win exciting like the smile.
Train heading southwest under Whitechapel.
Deafening blast, rushing sound blast, bright flash
of golden light, flying glass and debris
Twisted people thrown to ground, darkness;
the dreadful silent second in blackness.
The stench of human flesh and gunpowder,
burning rubber and fiery acrid smoke.
Screaming bone bare pain, blood-drenched tearing pain.
Pitiful weeping, begging for a god
to come, someone to come, and help them out.
Teve pushes off a dead weighted man.
He stands unsteady trying to balance.
Railway staff with torches, moving spotlights
**** and jolt, catching still life scenery,
lighting the exit in gloomy dimness.
They file down the track to Aldgate Station,
Teve passes the sardine can carriage
torn apart by a fierce hungry giant.
Through the dust, four lifeless bodies take shape
and disappear again in drifting smoke.
It’s only later, when safe above ground,
Teve looks around and starts to wonder
where his blue epiphany girl has gone.
KINGS CROSS STATION
8.56 a.m. Piccadilly Line
Many named Lyndsey Germaine, Jamaican,
living with his wife and child in Aylesbury,
laying low, never visited the Mosque.
Buckinghamshire bomber known as Jamal,
clean shaven, wearing normal western clothes,
annoyed his neighbours with loud music.
Samantha-wife converted and renamed,
Sherafiyah and took to wearing black.
Devout in that jet black shalmar kameez.
Loving father cradled close his daughter
Caressed her cheek and held her tiny hand
He wondered what the future held for her.
Station of the lost and homeless people,
where you can buy anything at a price.
A place where a face can be lost forever;
where the future’s as real as faded dreams.
Below the mainline trains, deep underground
Piccadilly lines cross the River Thames
Cram-packed, shoulder to shoulder and standing,
the train heading southward for Russell Square,
barely pulls away from Kings Cross Station,
when Arash Kazerouni hears the bang,
‘Almighty bang’ before everything stopped.
Twenty six hearts stopped beating that moment.
But glass flew apart in a shattering wave,
followed by a huge whoosh of smoky soot.
Panic raced down the line with ice fingers
touching and tagging the living with fear.
Spine chiller blanching faces white with shock.
Gracia Hormigos, a housekeeper,
thought, I am being electrocuted.
Her body was shaking, it seemed her mind
was in free fall, no safety cord to pull,
just disconnected, so she looked around,
saw the man next to her had no right leg,
a shattered shard of bone and gouts of blood,
Where was the rest of his leg and his foot ?
Level headed ones with serious voices
spoke over the screaming and the sobbing;
Titanic lifeboat voices giving orders;
Iceberg cool voices of reassurance;
We’re stoical British bulldog voices
that organize the mayhem and chaos
into meaty chunks of jobs to be done.
Clear air required - break the windows now;
Lines could be live - so we stay where we are;
Help will be here shortly - try to stay calm.
John, Mark and Emma introduce themselves
They never usually speak underground,
averting your gaze, tube train etiquette.
Disaster has its opportunities;
Try the new mobile, take a photograph;
Ring your Mum and Dad, ****** battery’s flat;
My network’s down; my phone light’s still working
Useful to see the way, step carefully.
Fiona asks, ‘Am I dreaming all this?’
A shrieking man answers her, “I’m dying!”
Hammered glass finally breaks, fresher air;
too late for the man in the front carriage.
London Transport staff in yellow jackets
start an orderly evacuation
The mobile phones held up to light the way.
Only nineteen minutes in a lifetime.
EDGEWARE ROAD STATION
9.17 a.m. Circle Line
Mohammed Sadique Khan, the oldest one.
Perhaps the leader, at least a mentor.
Yorkshire man born, married with a daughter
Gently spoken man, endlessly patient,
worked in the Hamara, Lodge Lane, Leeds,
Council-funded, multi-faith youth Centre;
and the local Primary school, in Beeston.
No-one could believe this of Mr Khan;
well educated, caring and very kind
Where did he hide his secret other life ?
Wise enough to wait for the second train.
Two for the price of one, a real bargain.
Westbound second carriage is blown away,
a commuter blasted from the platform,
hurled under the wheels of the east bound train.
Moon Crater holes, the walls pitted and pocked;
a sparse dark-side landscape with black, black air.
The ripped and shredded metal bursts free
like a surprising party popper;
Steel curlicues corkscrew through wood and glass.
Mass is made atomic in the closed space.
Roasting meat and Auschwitzed cremation stench
saturates the already murky air.
Our human kindling feeds the greedy fire;
Heads alight like medieval torches;
Fiery liquid skin drops from the faceless;
Punk afro hair is cauterised and singed.
Heat intensity, like a wayward iron,
scorches clothes, fuses fibres together.
Seven people escape this inferno;
many die in later days, badly burned,
and everyone there will live a scarred life.
TAVISTOCK ROAD
9.47 a.m. Number 30 Bus
Hasib Hussain migrant son, English born
barely an adult, loved by his mother;
reported him missing later that night.
Police typed his description in the file
and matched his clothes to fragments from the scene.
A hapless victim or vicious bomber ?
Child of the ‘Ummah’ waging deadly war.
Seventy two black eyed virgins waiting
in jihadist paradise just for you.
Red double-decker bus, number thirty,
going from Hackney Wick to Marble Arch;
stuck in traffic, diversions everywhere.
Driver pulls up next to a tree lined square;
the Parking Inspector, Ade Soji,
tells the driver he’s in Tavistock Road,
British Museum nearby and the Square.
A place of peace and quiet reflection;
the sad history of war is remembered;
symbols to make us never forget death;
Cherry Tree from Hiroshima, Japan;
Holocaust Memorial for Jewish dead;
sturdy statue of Mahatma Gandhi.
Peaceful resistance that drove the Lion out.
Freedom for India but death for him.
Sudden sonic boom, bus roof tears apart,
seats erupt with volcanic force upward,
hot larva of blood and tissue rains down.
Bloodied road becomes a charnel-house scene;
disembodied limbs among the wreckage,
headless corpses; sinews, muscles and bone.
Buildings spattered and smeared with human paint
Impressionist daubs, blood red like the bus.
Jasmine Gardiner, running late for work;
all trains were cancelled from Euston Station;
she headed for the square, to catch the bus.
It drove straight past her standing at the stop;
before she could curse aloud - Kaboom !
Instinctively she ran, ran for her life.
Umbrella shield from the shower of gore.
On the lower deck, two Aussies squeezed in;
Catherine Klestov was standing in the aisle,
floored by the bomb, suffered cuts and bruises
She limped to Islington two days later.
Louise Barry was reading the paper,
she was ‘****-scared’ by the explosion;
she crawled out of the remnants of the bus,
broken and burned, she lay flat on the road,
the world of sound had gone, ear drums had burst;
she lay there drowsy, quiet, looking up
and amazingly the sky was still there.
Sam Ly, Vietnamese Australian,
One of the boat people once welcomed here.
A refugee, held in his mother’s arms,
she died of cancer, before he was three.
Hi Ly struggled to raise his son alone;
a tough life, inner city high rise flats.
Education the smart migrant’s revenge,
Monash Uni and an IT degree.
Lucky Sam, perfect job of a lifetime;
in London, with his one love, Mandy Ha,
Life going great until that fateful day;
on the seventh day of the seventh month,
Festival of the skilful Weaving girl.
Three other Aussies on that ****** bus;
no serious physical injuries,
Sam’s luck ran out, in choosing where to sit.
His neck was broken, could not breath alone;
his head smashed and crushed, fractured bones and burns
Wrapped in a cocoon of coma safe
This broken figure lying on white sheets
in an English Intensive Care Unit
did not seem like Hi Ly’s beloved son;
but he sat by Sam’s bed in disbelief,
seven days and seven nights of struggle,
until the final hour, when it was done.
In the pit of our stomach we all knew,
but we kept on deep breathing and hoping
this nauseous reality would pass.
The weary inevitability
of horrific disasters such as these.
Strangely familiar like an old newsreel
Black and white, it happened long ago.
But its happening now right before our eyes
satellite pictures beam and bounce the globe.
Twelve thousand miles we watch the story
Plot unfolds rapidly, chapters emerge
We know the places names of this narrative.
It is all subterranean, hidden
from the curious, voyeuristic gaze,
Until the icon bus, we are hopeful
This public spectacle is above ground
We can see the force that mangled the bus,
fury that tore people apart limb by limb
Now we can imagine a bomb below,
far below, people trapped, fiery hell;
fighting to breathe each breath in tunnelled tombs.
Herded from the blast they are strangely calm,
obedient, shuffling this way and that.
Blood-streaked, sooty and dishevelled they come.
Out from the choking darkness far below
Dazzled by the brightness of the morning
of a day they feared might be their last.
They have breathed deeply of Kurtz’s horror.
Sights and sounds unimaginable before
will haunt their waking hours for many years;
a lifetime of nightmares in the making.
They trudge like weary soldiers from the Somme
already see the world with older eyes.
On the surface, they find a world where life
simply goes on as before, unmindful.
Cyclist couriers still defy road laws,
sprint racing again in Le Tour de France;
beer-gutted, real men are loading lorries;
lunch time sandwiches are made as usual,
sold and eaten at desks and in the street.
Roadside cafes sell lots of hot sweet tea.
The Umbrella stand soon does brisk business.
Sign writers' hands, still steady, paint the sign.
The summer blooms are watered in the park.
A ***** stretches on the bench and wakes up,
he folds and stows his newspaper blankets;
mouth dry, he sips water at the fountain.
A lady scoops up her black poodle’s ****.
A young couple argues over nothing.
Betting shops are full of people losing
money and dreaming of a trifecta.
Martin’s still smoking despite the patches.
There’s a rush on Brandy in nearby pubs
Retired gardener dead heads his flowers
and picks a lettuce for the evening meal
Fifty six minutes from start to finish.
Perfectly orchestrated performance.
Rush hour co-ordination excellent.
Maximum devastation was ensured.
Cruel, merciless killing so coldly done.
Fine detail in the maiming and damage.
A REVIEW
Well activated practical response.
Rehearsals really paid off on the day.
Brilliant touch with bus transport for victims;
Space blankets well deployed for shock effect;
Dramatic improv by Paramedics;
Nurses, medicos and casualty staff
showed great technical E.R. Skills - Bravo !
Plenty of pizzazz and dash as always
from the nifty, London Ambo drivers;
Old fashioned know-how from the Fire fighters
in hosing down the fireworks underground.
Dangerous rescues were undertaken,
accomplished with buckets of common sense.
And what can one say about those Bobbies,
jolly good show, the lips unquivering
and universally stiff, no mean feat
in this Premiere season tear-jerker.
Nail-bitingly brittle, but a smash-hit
Poignant misery and stoic suffering,
fortitude, forbearance and lots of grit
Altogether was quite tickety boo.
NOTES ON THE POEM
Liverpool Street Station
A Circle Line train from Moorgate with six carriages and a capacity of 1272 passengers [ 192 seated; 1080 standing]. 7 dead on the first day.
Southbound, destination Aldgate. Explosion occurs midway between Liverpool Street and Aldgate.
Shehezad Tanweer was reported to have ‘never been political’ by a friend who played cricket with him 10 days before the bombing
Teve Talevski is a real person and I have elaborated a little on reports in the press. He runs a coffee shop in North London.
At the time of writing the fate of the blue dress lady is not known
Kings Cross Station
A Piccadilly Line train with six carriages and a capacity of 1238 passengers [272 seated; 966 standing]. 21 dead on first day.
Southbound, destination Russell Square. Explosion occurs mi
This poem is part of a longer poem called Seasons of Terror. This poem was performed at the University of Adelaide, Bonython Hall as a community event. The poem was read by local poets, broadcasters, personalities and politicians from the South Australia Parliament and a Federal MP & Senator. The State Premier was represented by the Hon. Michael Atkinson, who spoke about the role of the Emergency services in our society. The Chiefs of Police, Fire and Ambulence; all religious and community organisations' senior reprasentatives; the First Secretary of the British High Commission and the general public were present. It was recorded by Radio Adelaide and broadcast live as well as coverage from Channel 7 TV News. The Queen,Tony Blair, Australian Governor General and many other public dignitaries sent messages of support for the work being read. A string quartet and a solo flautist also played at this event.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2020
crab-bucket intellectualism
Mateuš Conrad
Jan 2020
how over pretentious of me...
islamophobia and russophobia...
odd bedfellows...
Mатвей Дракон: profile name...
but it's in russian and no one is willing
to stretch a darkening of humour...
to the extent of monty python...
because there's no canned laughter...
and there will never be...
not since i realised...
those four bottles of cider get me
more drunk than half a liter of
ms. amber... because the drinking
is measured and can reveal itself
in the process - rather than wait,
concentrated... and only expand
into more hours of sleep than
i could ever wish for...
but at least the russians speak of
russophobia as a reality -
the evil genius mantra...
which they are...
but there's no sense of: via irrational
arguments we will counter this
irrational fear...
so... the scuttling spiders announce!
and we will have ourselves
an orchestra!
even i thought this was too much,
too pretentious...
it's not a study... it's teasing...
a study in greek, hebrew, cyrillic and possibly sanskrit... because i'm not a monolingual hyper-inflation that will solve a crossword puzzle... when めば (eye-spot) is already... available? In a name there's a name in oh so many other languages... should i rely on relapsing into "gender-neutral" pronouns i'll cite... the noun-status extensions of letters, akin to a' into alpha... o' into omega... etc.
めば (eye-spot): that much is true...
sudoku...
i have made the following circumstance
plain...
there is no chance of me rising above
this already apparent crab-bucket intellectualism...
perhaps...
burden of rhyme...
it's only a "poem" if it rhymes...
rhyme is somehow identifiable with poo'etics...
ask an anne sexton... or perhaps:
no, don't bother...
she to burdens herself with rhymes -
and maybe she doesn't...
but this endless expectation to rhymes...
yes: plural was indicative of
the irony...
sometimes it's not even available...
to look back at this tool we have been given,
perhaps perfected better -
or not - since most of the time i find
myself: without an inch of belief
in catching some oratory / rhetorical
tsunami to... be the crow that croaks
the most and the loudest in this wake...
at least the russians acknowledge russophobia...
oh they're pay privy diligence to it...
they know they're the evil geniuses of this world...
they allow this irrational fear to sink in...
and then they rationalise it...
too bad for islamophobia...
it's not an irrational fear to begin with...
it's... more or less... a rational fear...
i think russophobia is an irrational fear...
after all: Kiev was founded by Vikings...
and apart from crown russia that's still
pretty much in Europe...
the asiatic branch of russia is too far away
to matter for either st. petersburg
of paris...
it's not convincing to be "reassured" while
the "enemy" persists to look bewildered
as if: no event is ever to happen
in the world - or also include him...
muslims? oh no... oh no at almost every turn
it seems...
sacred cows walk the streets of new delhi
while the people starve...
no dire warning: tiresome from the perspective
of a wormhole -
the count and the next count
the measures and what's to be left
dwindling... which is never a spectacle worth
reserving...
like putting on a vinyl and watching
the vinyl on a gramaphone...
or lighting a candle with a sulphur-sparked
match and sitting and "waiting"
watching while the candle burns...
and feeds a schtick of "anorexia"
absorbs all the shadows and stands at
midnight noon: with no wax to burn...
that feeling of having just ****** off
and then... prostate cancer pains
of having to make it absolutely necessary
to take a ****... to clean the ducts...
i still don't know why this "event"
is so precious for the quasi-cenobites...
it's no big deal...
just another genocide done into
the tissue later flushed...
perhaps if i were... shooting eggs
without the yoke it would somehow
matter...
perhaps i am...
but there's no zeitgeist to be had
concerning something that i make synonym
with wiping my *** asking
for nutella... and a skippy crunchy...
because: that's going to be the decade
defining EVENT!
funny... you ******* for no real reason...
nothing procreative...
gym-bro bollocking and that's not even
as much fun as going to a turkish barber
for a shave...
by then: everything concerning your
being - that is not going to be a moral
tool to raise children...
limbo in ego or the ego in limbo -
and that's never self or i...
but after an *******...
the most desperate need to take a ****...
to flush and make the ducts pristine... wiped
with ***** disinfectant...
about as odd as the bass guitar rising above
the drums - the oddity bass "rhyme"
and please... no guitar solos...
no metallica death to the bass
all that i hear is solo and rhythm guitar
and the drums...
they never got over the death of cliff burton...
or: how the rock band killed
the jazz band... focused on the rhythm guitar
and drums... but no trumpets just the vocals...
but still... no better use for bass?
it's always either: all that's music and...
it was always going to be not enough ***...
enough *** or just ***...
i went down the route of playing the brothel
roulette to catch up with the girls...
who i expect will later play bingo...
and we will probably try to age...
and be all romance...
and the man idiotic will still preserve
himself as unable to lie...
and she will... m'eh ah and all that litany
of sighs find the purse and the penguin
dancing the foxtrot from out
of the antarctica of his own ***...
russophobia: yes, an irrational fear -
even the evil geniuses of moscow acknowledge
this burden...
islamophobia... and... what?
milk and honey and yeast
and comatose black gold of ms. saudi of
the dinosaur arabia plucked...
a leaf... a laurel... from the pages of history
of: who's the good dog willing
to aport on call of command?!
into iraq and iran?
i can't hear a counter...
when it comes to it being anything rationalised
equal to the russian monologue...
claustrophobia and... it's irrational to me...
esp. when long winding...
when the cube talked to a field about...
abstract thinking -
at least claustrophobia is a metaphor
for abstract thinking - the lesser -
islamophobia is a ***** word...
esp. the -phobia suffix...
it's a perfectly rational fear...
given the mouse-and-leans have the gears
the fuel and the poker and backgammon "rules"...
as someone who might appreciate
a well sung adhan more than
an operatic aria...
well...
what's not to love?
at least for some it's known:
a drowning man will attempt to grip
a razor's edge without hope that it might be
an edge of a floating raft...
and they will always purse their mouth...
and waggle their tongue for
the pennies like sand shrapnel from
the payers for the goods...
an emirat sheikh and... the bore of the world...
if only the lottery of oil...
somehow... landed... in mongolia...
this world is a tiresome place...
given that arabs have the money...
and the chinese have: g.i. joe factories...
it's such a drab place...
such a clone furnace of the numbers
of mandarins...
and oh that niqab cinema...
even if you sell me something swedish
in black & white drab...
or some proto-turkic propaganda movie
to convert the "al-qaq" kurds (qa-eee-d'ah?)
welcome to europe... ghetto west of berlin...
back east there are needles...
walking about on the mountains
of camel humps...
notably in west warsaw coach station...
but the ukranians are always rather:
rowing the boat and the boat is always
heading into the furnace...
crab-bucket intellectualism...
these words are words that should be printed
and left on the northern line tube carriages...
like some free journalism paper wipe-my-***-with-i-wish,
why of course!
the highest i.q. renovations bottom-up to the top
always spreschen rhapsodies in wrap...
wrapping akin to:
i imagine the rappers chasing those...
john moschitta jr. is not a wrapper... rapper...
he's the add guy... and no rap on radio
adverts... when the T&S clauses are stressed...
and the muzak is dead and the lift is... falling...
like a ice-pick on the one dancing foot
of a burning burning with epitome given
the name... malchik trotting trotsky...
otherwise: blah - and endeavours into the bland...
some call it a guillotine...
i call it manglonia in england -
tiresome safe -
i almost pray to feel dangerous having
to acquire a straitjacket -
straitjacket bungee jump into conversation
like a rabid hive of the persona non grata:
of the commentary left-overs a priori
to the: walking onto the stage -
and talking with a gag in the mouth...
to speak a language for moths.
islamophobia and russophobia...
odd bedfellows...
Mатвей Дракон: profile name...
but it's in russian and no one is willing
to stretch a darkening of humour...
to the extent of monty python...
because there's no canned laughter...
and there will never be...
not since i realised...
those four bottles of cider get me
more drunk than half a liter of
ms. amber... because the drinking
is measured and can reveal itself
in the process - rather than wait,
concentrated... and only expand
into more hours of sleep than
i could ever wish for...
but at least the russians speak of
russophobia as a reality -
the evil genius mantra...
which they are...
but there's no sense of: via irrational
arguments we will counter this
irrational fear...
so... the scuttling spiders announce!
and we will have ourselves
an orchestra!
even i thought this was too much,
too pretentious...
it's not a study... it's teasing...
a study in greek, hebrew, cyrillic and possibly sanskrit... because i'm not a monolingual hyper-inflation that will solve a crossword puzzle... when めば (eye-spot) is already... available? In a name there's a name in oh so many other languages... should i rely on relapsing into "gender-neutral" pronouns i'll cite... the noun-status extensions of letters, akin to a' into alpha... o' into omega... etc.
めば (eye-spot): that much is true...
sudoku...
i have made the following circumstance
plain...
there is no chance of me rising above
this already apparent crab-bucket intellectualism...
perhaps...
burden of rhyme...
it's only a "poem" if it rhymes...
rhyme is somehow identifiable with poo'etics...
ask an anne sexton... or perhaps:
no, don't bother...
she to burdens herself with rhymes -
and maybe she doesn't...
but this endless expectation to rhymes...
yes: plural was indicative of
the irony...
sometimes it's not even available...
to look back at this tool we have been given,
perhaps perfected better -
or not - since most of the time i find
myself: without an inch of belief
in catching some oratory / rhetorical
tsunami to... be the crow that croaks
the most and the loudest in this wake...
at least the russians acknowledge russophobia...
oh they're pay privy diligence to it...
they know they're the evil geniuses of this world...
they allow this irrational fear to sink in...
and then they rationalise it...
too bad for islamophobia...
it's not an irrational fear to begin with...
it's... more or less... a rational fear...
i think russophobia is an irrational fear...
after all: Kiev was founded by Vikings...
and apart from crown russia that's still
pretty much in Europe...
the asiatic branch of russia is too far away
to matter for either st. petersburg
of paris...
it's not convincing to be "reassured" while
the "enemy" persists to look bewildered
as if: no event is ever to happen
in the world - or also include him...
muslims? oh no... oh no at almost every turn
it seems...
sacred cows walk the streets of new delhi
while the people starve...
no dire warning: tiresome from the perspective
of a wormhole -
the count and the next count
the measures and what's to be left
dwindling... which is never a spectacle worth
reserving...
like putting on a vinyl and watching
the vinyl on a gramaphone...
or lighting a candle with a sulphur-sparked
match and sitting and "waiting"
watching while the candle burns...
and feeds a schtick of "anorexia"
absorbs all the shadows and stands at
midnight noon: with no wax to burn...
that feeling of having just ****** off
and then... prostate cancer pains
of having to make it absolutely necessary
to take a ****... to clean the ducts...
i still don't know why this "event"
is so precious for the quasi-cenobites...
it's no big deal...
just another genocide done into
the tissue later flushed...
perhaps if i were... shooting eggs
without the yoke it would somehow
matter...
perhaps i am...
but there's no zeitgeist to be had
concerning something that i make synonym
with wiping my *** asking
for nutella... and a skippy crunchy...
because: that's going to be the decade
defining EVENT!
funny... you ******* for no real reason...
nothing procreative...
gym-bro bollocking and that's not even
as much fun as going to a turkish barber
for a shave...
by then: everything concerning your
being - that is not going to be a moral
tool to raise children...
limbo in ego or the ego in limbo -
and that's never self or i...
but after an *******...
the most desperate need to take a ****...
to flush and make the ducts pristine... wiped
with ***** disinfectant...
about as odd as the bass guitar rising above
the drums - the oddity bass "rhyme"
and please... no guitar solos...
no metallica death to the bass
all that i hear is solo and rhythm guitar
and the drums...
they never got over the death of cliff burton...
or: how the rock band killed
the jazz band... focused on the rhythm guitar
and drums... but no trumpets just the vocals...
but still... no better use for bass?
it's always either: all that's music and...
it was always going to be not enough ***...
enough *** or just ***...
i went down the route of playing the brothel
roulette to catch up with the girls...
who i expect will later play bingo...
and we will probably try to age...
and be all romance...
and the man idiotic will still preserve
himself as unable to lie...
and she will... m'eh ah and all that litany
of sighs find the purse and the penguin
dancing the foxtrot from out
of the antarctica of his own ***...
russophobia: yes, an irrational fear -
even the evil geniuses of moscow acknowledge
this burden...
islamophobia... and... what?
milk and honey and yeast
and comatose black gold of ms. saudi of
the dinosaur arabia plucked...
a leaf... a laurel... from the pages of history
of: who's the good dog willing
to aport on call of command?!
into iraq and iran?
i can't hear a counter...
when it comes to it being anything rationalised
equal to the russian monologue...
claustrophobia and... it's irrational to me...
esp. when long winding...
when the cube talked to a field about...
abstract thinking -
at least claustrophobia is a metaphor
for abstract thinking - the lesser -
islamophobia is a ***** word...
esp. the -phobia suffix...
it's a perfectly rational fear...
given the mouse-and-leans have the gears
the fuel and the poker and backgammon "rules"...
as someone who might appreciate
a well sung adhan more than
an operatic aria...
well...
what's not to love?
at least for some it's known:
a drowning man will attempt to grip
a razor's edge without hope that it might be
an edge of a floating raft...
and they will always purse their mouth...
and waggle their tongue for
the pennies like sand shrapnel from
the payers for the goods...
an emirat sheikh and... the bore of the world...
if only the lottery of oil...
somehow... landed... in mongolia...
this world is a tiresome place...
given that arabs have the money...
and the chinese have: g.i. joe factories...
it's such a drab place...
such a clone furnace of the numbers
of mandarins...
and oh that niqab cinema...
even if you sell me something swedish
in black & white drab...
or some proto-turkic propaganda movie
to convert the "al-qaq" kurds (qa-eee-d'ah?)
welcome to europe... ghetto west of berlin...
back east there are needles...
walking about on the mountains
of camel humps...
notably in west warsaw coach station...
but the ukranians are always rather:
rowing the boat and the boat is always
heading into the furnace...
crab-bucket intellectualism...
these words are words that should be printed
and left on the northern line tube carriages...
like some free journalism paper wipe-my-***-with-i-wish,
why of course!
the highest i.q. renovations bottom-up to the top
always spreschen rhapsodies in wrap...
wrapping akin to:
i imagine the rappers chasing those...
john moschitta jr. is not a wrapper... rapper...
he's the add guy... and no rap on radio
adverts... when the T&S clauses are stressed...
and the muzak is dead and the lift is... falling...
like a ice-pick on the one dancing foot
of a burning burning with epitome given
the name... malchik trotting trotsky...
otherwise: blah - and endeavours into the bland...
some call it a guillotine...
i call it manglonia in england -
tiresome safe -
i almost pray to feel dangerous having
to acquire a straitjacket -
straitjacket bungee jump into conversation
like a rabid hive of the persona non grata:
of the commentary left-overs a priori
to the: walking onto the stage -
and talking with a gag in the mouth...
to speak a language for moths.