Two Poems by Allan Lake

 

Gone Viral

Talk about your desert dry dream or drug-

induced vision loud enough and some fool,

overhearing through ear wax, while minding

everyone else’s beeswax, will retell it

as History or even his own story.

Foxy news. Fills time on the way to there

from here when there’s a lack of smelly

gossip to embellish. Call it X, call it Y

or Yknot but, nonetheless, salesman lame,

sales pitch same.



Batshit crazy Abraham and his three

stoogettes advertently gave birth to various

prophet plagues on all our houses.

Chinese whispers, circular firing squad

vespers, hissing vipers with messages

that mutate from false to falser, crossing

oceans of spiteful spit on a barque, with

scrounger albatross infecting feverish

world’s breath to hasten Nature’s death.



Besides 1 country’s starry flag and 96 bags

of human faeces, some crusading astronut

with spiritual diarrhoea left a Bible way up

there on our only moon. Jesus Josephson!

Giordano Bruno. Salman Rushdie, almost.

Truth be told, I’m in no rush to die but

viruses vie to take one’s breath away,

to have the poisonous final say.

Your Legacy 

Are you happy, with the empire you built

out of common words. You clawed your way

over corpses of Presidents, Prime Ministers,

prime real estate, marriages and truth.

Courting, closing, disposing –

you foxy, elderly devil, you!

And are the lands of Oz, Uk or Usa

better for your clarion call to self-interest,

for your merde grafitti where power docks?

Is anything better, more united, Mister

Super-influencer, you bringer-together

of those under your invasive-pervasive?

You accomplished so much, too much.

Happy now?

 

For this self-appointed god so loved

manipulating the world to enrich him-

self that he gave his ill-begotten

shares – Abrahamesque –

to his pick of the litter.

Take that, planet!

Allan Lake, originally from Saskatoon, Canada, has lived in Vancouver, Cape Breton Island, Ibiza, Tasmania, Western Australia and Melbourne. Lake has won Lost Tower Publications (UK) Comp, Melbourne Spoken Word Poetry Festival & publication in NewPhilosopher. Latest poetry chapbook (Ginninderra Press) ‘My Photos of Sicily’. Literary journals in 17 countries have now published his poems. Such journals as The Hong Kong Review, Island Magazine, Cordite Poetry Review, StylusLit, Meniscus, Quadrant, Verandah,  American Writers Review and  The Antigonish Review have accepted his work for publication.