"caricatured" poems
We are a global society
When we want oranges in the fruit bowl,
When we want out of our rut
Just long enough
To brown in a patch of Spanish sun.
We are a global society
When the Japanese car breaks down
And we are in need of a cheap fix
To keep food on the table,
Some Latvian mechanic
Who helps us find our way home.
We are our own nation,
An island nation,
When the zeroes run low
And there are spaces,
Foreign faces,
To which we can point
And blame.
We are a global society
With our sweat-shop chic,
American coffee chains
Selling Colombian ground beans,
Frappuccinos in plastic cups-
Made in China
And served by a Romanian barista
In Italian heels.
We are a global society
When the demand is high
And the payment is low.
We are our own nation,
An island nation,
When hands reach out for help
And our pockets are too shallow,
Our time, too brief
To commit to a unity
We feel is dragging us down.
We are a global society
When the football is on,
When the lager is Belgian
And the supermodel, Greek.
When we cradle that bag of Cheetos
After smoking too much ****
We are a global society
When oppression is overt,
Caricatured in bulletin posters,
Threatening to land
Upon our own front door.
We are our own nation,
An island nation,
When poverty seems contagious,
When we have to clean up
Someone else’s mess,
Still we scar the Middle East
Only half-interested in an exit.
We are a global society
When we get sick,
When we borrow another doctor
For our ailing NHS.
When cities of white people burn,
We are a global society,
When Africa is divided,
We are nowhere to be seen.
Prime mover of the commonwealth
Yet we fall beneath the breadline
And living easy is so rare.
We are our own nation,
An island nation,
Under the false flag
Of a golden age
We were conned to believe in.
Our nation, our island nation,
Lost amongst a sea of misinformation.
Jun 25, 2016
Jun 25, 2016 at 6:50 PM UTC
It is simple, and yet sublime;
Incapturable.
You need not go in,
Take away the man, destabilising the economy
That you so love
Letting them die
You need not assassinate and collaborate,
Scheme and puncture
Spheres of influence that stretch and bubble
In Latin America and Southern Asia,
You need not sign secrets away
Safe and deep
In silos and bunkers
Where Armageddon sleeps.
You need not supply, buy and axchange
Implements of violence and rage,
Picking sides in civil war, tribal conlflict
And bigger,
In lands you do not understand
Lands where the mountains resonate with holiness,
Lands of spiritual awakening awaiting for the young;
Concepts you can’t grasp, that don’t sit well
You need leave them be.
Enough has been done,
Not always with bad intention
But rarely for the greater good
Enough has been said and bought and replaced
Captured, shot at, disgraced,
Caricatured into funny cartoons
Taken over, the masters’ role assumed.
For all the radars and sonar
It seems impossible to listen;
Simple, yet sublime.
Incapturable.
Irreplaceable.
May 5, 2014
May 5, 2014 at 12:52 PM UTC
you rise and fall like a symphony
(My silk screen diaphanous breeze)
I swim through your History,
(the coral reef of vivid crazy textured nonsense love)
saturated by the light refracted
into your marine metropolis
I coalesce into your voice
(melted butter creamed currant pastry)
and unfurl evenly.
(your solvent arms
propel my luck to fill every container
of your buoyant sounds)
you dance on my sidewalks like
Charlie Brown’s gang
(bobbing caricatured spreading smiley joke random)
you take my crinkling brow
and soften its creases
like newly pugged clay
Be my crutch,
my original thought,
my epiphany,
(reshaping nuance unforeseen renew reold aspiration),
my false laugh
(when I get hurt and love you too much to show it)
my recorded comfort
weaving precious merriment around my every gesture
Oct 10, 2013
Oct 10, 2013 at 2:22 AM UTC
Masterpieces nailed to the sides of train cars
As they pass it becomes a flipbook
Made of names so grotesquely caricatured
(down to every last tittle and tisten)
They would become beauty through definitions
Written themselves.
It is scrawled onto napkins
Hoisted over the neon city
Crudely lined and curved into cardboard signs
Lofted between vagrant fingers that hadn’t touched a green thing in years.
Safety in the colors
Born from the rust of the river which runs when we walk
And fermented through years of gunfire
Which coincidentally spell out our names between the holes
And deteriorate when obscured by some passing train cars
That I cannot help but to stop and admire.
This flipbook of broken law and clever rebellion
In its own right, a masterpiece in pieces
In its terrible condemnation, erased
And the artist dies again.
Jan 7, 2011
Jan 7, 2011 at 5:22 AM UTC
Following the bloodstains home,
we tread the land with bristled soles,
to cleanse the souls of the wide-eyed youth,
spectacular fireworks to alter the truth,
tar the land, and pepper the streets,
concrete the corner where strangers meet,
the placebo joy of the modern life,
left vacant in the money-man's wake,
a cardboard lot left to decay,
oh, this is my Britain of today.
The newsrooms are clinical,
policies in place to reduce moral outrage,
to reduce it to a hysterical mess,
a cartoon-disaster of life's distress,
so the public in fear, exist but not live,
to fight the recession; you must give, give, give,
give, your life to your freedom
to live without choice,
you can sign a slip,
to mimic a voice
and to ensure the vow of regular pay,
oh, this is my Britain of today.
A history of salvation,
we lend heroes to established truth,
we parade on corners in our concrete joy,
rejoice in the miracle of the new royal boy,
who shall live in fat, and live in health,
sacred tender to the country's wealth,
of empire and power of totalities,
of stone-walled cities,
and Northern breeze,
the Jack tattooed on imperial flags,
oh, this is my Britain of today.
A stream of entertainment,
how it pounds the floor in seamless sound,
how it drizzles the walls in a trophy glitz,
a hypnotic and false, synthetic blitz,
of caffeine veins, and digital sea,
of attention-span in atrophy.
Wait not on thoughts, instead mind-chatter,
you say “don't talk on dark topic,
and keep depth away!”
oh, this is my Britain of today.
Following the apathy home,
I tread the land in heavy-worn soles,
to cleanse my soul of restricted air,
to dream of travel, to fortunes fair,
but in this bliss of a greener grass;
it is for Britain I hold communal mass.
For each Blair, I know, is a Rupert Brooke,
each levelled city, there's Wilfred's book,
or some Dickensian dream of caricatured past,
where only tyranny is built to last,
for each liberty taken, is Huxley's piece,
is Lessing's thoughts and Shelley's release,
and the meander of Avon through grey rain,
adds desperate poetry for the lives still slain,
so we can live in peace, and in sugared tea,
with red wine lips on the periphery;
in those day's hard living,
in those days' worth spent,
with only a book
and blood descent,
the community dances in the advent of May,
oh, this is my Britain of yesterday.
Jan 25, 2014
Jan 25, 2014 at 12:44 PM UTC
darwinism killed music off:
i moved to scotland for three
years, to the soundtrack
of for the love of a princess,
instead i got a foreign
exchange student from grenoble
studying the death defying
practice of psychology
who said i spoke no organics
in terms of tongue, ****** her
while she crawled into my bed
and lost my virginity like a fox,
on the sly, to the motto i caricatured
saying to fifty thousand pound debt:
only idiots educate themselves these
days -
this atheism non-congregating will
not succeed, it will fail, it will fail, it,
will, fail!
a postcard from a Lebanese girl i asked
for a date to see some moving pictures
didn't help (when i was at high school)...
she read the book the hours
a year later (a virginia woolf adaptation)...
spare the boy! spare the boy for fuck's sake!
old stiff collar ***** **** bureaucrat
just said: verzweiflung verzagen eine gedanke -
für beweis ex pluralismus
(despair despaired a thought - for proof out of
pluralism).
Feb 22, 2016
Feb 22, 2016 at 8:42 PM UTC
To draw a comical square, simply refrain from closing one side, leaving the line open at a wide angle. Caption your drawing with the words "The Square as Comedian."
Mar 27, 2016
Mar 27, 2016 at 11:47 PM UTC
Chaos is a ladder to a more conducive unknown,
A daredevil chance at advancement and progress.
Maybe it’s defeatist to react to it with scorn.
Being in the belly of the beast’s sickening to the bone,
Discomfiting and a tad demeaning, fraught with distress
Chaos is a ladder to a more conducive unknown.
One might wonder how much one can condone.
Being caught in the crosshairs is the best moment to assess.
Maybe it’s defeatist to react to it with scorn.
A stiff upper lip to mask a frown
Will keep the peace so as not to appear under duress
Chaos is a ladder to a more conducive unknown.
It’s fairly hard to be attuned to adversity, everyone’s a greenhorn
Nevertheless, it should spur us to be hot on the heels of success
Maybe it’s defeatist to react to it with scorn.
Superstition takes one’s eyes off the prize, hence likely to bemoan
Fallibility rather than take the bull by its horns; a caricatured mess
Chaos is a ladder to a more conducive unknown,
Maybe it’s defeatist to react to it with scorn.
Mar 13, 2021
Mar 13, 2021 at 1:13 AM UTC
Seems for the time being,
I no longer feel real anymore
It feels evermore as if someone, nefarious or not,
Has traced an outline of my silhouette
Affixed a pair of soulless brown eyes
And caricatured a smile across my face
So for the time being,
I will no longer act real anymore
Because the only things I draw, well or otherwise,
Are Type A blood and messy conclusions
Where spatter and decisions
Are indistinguishable on the canvas of my life
Jan 12, 2024
Jan 12, 2024 at 9:40 AM UTC