Thelwall making a speech about democracy.
James Gillray, Copenhagen House, 1795, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
Poems
from a Bastard Child of Chaos
Board Pounder bored,
Pounding upon boards,
Bob Dylan and saw blades.
Mismanaging meanings
In craftsman Carl Sandburg,
Show me glory in hard labour?
Weary-thin, like a bald truck tire
Check on the Check Engine Light,
Tappity, Boom! -Ah mi, Ah my…
Culling potential in a dusty room,
Outdated, and now offensively plain.
Compost & tillage, Times They're A
Changin'
Beaded opal runs of glue and staples,
Smooth knots in the walnut and maple,
On aching knees and a back that kill
This carpenter. Nail and lashed to a
cross,
Power air-spear in his side. Varnish and
gloss
Assault on redolent utopia. Dying only
because–
Board Pounder, bored,
Pounding upon boards…
Standing before your tomb in a Parisian
cemetery,
Beholding the result of your mad kamikaze
ride,
Your spirited break through to the other
side,
Where I can see your enablers still
bleeding you.
The blasé, gray barriers hold me 2 meters
at bay,
While tour guides bring broods of Japanese
tourists
To snatch their digital voyeuristic
reminders.
African shamans tell that photo captures
do steal the soul.
-So, cover your face, hide your
insecurities, faltering shame,
Sopped in alcohol, -they will manage
without your pàin,
Sad flower in the sand, shedding lizard
skin by the Seine,
Seeking solace in the pathways of Wilde,
Crane and Verlaine.
While your golden vocal cords are coughing
up blood,
Heroin runs rampant in the Parisian
streets, where your beloved
Makes clandestine rendezvous, drugged and
misjudged,
Bent on another backdoor man's White China
buzz.
Your wheezing worsens in the shadows of
legal troubles,
Fuck Los Angeles, it's palm trees and your
Floridean struggles.
Listening to Piaf with a single malt
whiskey, As chaos crumbles
And decays. La Vie en Rose, petals fall
'neath a waning sex symbol.
"Shall I call for a doctor?"
Pam's tired voice responds from the black.
"No," you return, curbing and
restraining the coils of a panic attack.
'No one here gets out alive' you think, as
fingers trace her lovely back,
"It's alright," you at last
slur, "Go to sleep…
-I think I'll run the bath…"
William Pitt portrayed as death on a pale horse, trampling democrats.
James Gillray, Presages of the Millenium, 1795, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
Thelwall's Lament
(If The Lions Are Drinking…)
The rending gilted tone
Of a dire, knell-chime's call.
The eleventh hour hands speak
Before fate's axe should fall.
Tell, who will call for you now?
Radical passing beneath the
Threshold of Traitors Gate.
Drop the Portculi of Newgate
And the yard of London Tower…
Tell, what good are Romantics?
Waving raw blood ink of word steak
Before the dogs of PM, William Pitt.
How long could your lot hold out before
Muzzled hounds of the Bloody Code bit?
And watermen of the Thames
Sing their warnings out:
"If the Lions are drinking
London is sinking
If the Lions are dunked,
London- is Flooded."
Warily look over your shouldèr
As you finger your belted cudgel.
Fear adrenalized corpse flower
‘Most dangerous man of Britain!’
Rats and Ravens in a tiger-Pitt
Dying democracy knows no difference.
Hung, Drawn and Quartered.
Democrat! French Sympathizer!
Importing Great Terror to a ruling class.
Demolish the opposition by law and tax.
Carry Paine's flag, let your ego orate
Polemic
voicings to the beta inarticulate;
Inspiring
masses with your booming lisp
Quaking
powers move to behead you asps,
Calling for
the hides of Tooke, Hardy and you: John Thelwall!
Where are
the powers of your Corresponding Society behind these walls?
Penny-Stankers!
Groundlings, All!!
Coleridge's
comforts topple and fall
Flat in the
shadowed need to forestall
And save
one's own skin…
Like the
stench of humanity
In a
sweltering tube,
The stench
of torture clings
To these
stone walls.
5 meters of
dense brutal labour.
Now you see
the piss-poor values
Born of men
of poetry upon Earth?
In this
place, what good are
scratchings
of Blake or Wordsworth!?
And the
beefeaters of power
Sing their
warnings out:
"If the Lions are drinking
London is sinking
If the Lions are dunked
London- is Flooded."
Pen your lines to the Politic editor,
Pen defense to charges as traitor,
Seditious speech, that Britons are
Capable of self-directing the law's arm.
To what end is Parliament needed!?
In a System of Spies and Informers…
Where is the morality of these Tories!?
And when your sideshow speeches,
Mocked the government to the citizen's
delight,
How wary did your esquire become?
Your head on the King's block.
So the English rose, demanding your
release,
When so badly the State hungered to cut
your tongue.
"If
discussion be shackled, how are discordant opinions to be adjusted,
but by
tumult and violence? "
Be assured, -these wars are never done…
Measure of wit before measure of sword-
Pèrhaps your exhausted spirit then broke?
Perhaps this was always the ancillary
Stratagem in removing your fetters?
And the
ravens of the Tower
Caw their
warnings out:
"If the Lions are drinking
London is sinking
If the Lions are dunked
London- is Flooded."
Dreams of a
westward walking tour,
Promises of
Salisbury Plains assuring
Some port
free from London's storms.
40 days and
nights of rain.
Trudge
toward your utopian retirement
Thinking on
pastorales in Nether Stowey
Fissures in
the enamel of a provincial brain?
Where
strains of wit may at long last rest,
In the
rolling lavender fields of Sussex,
In the
quiet and green blades of promise-
Where
morning meadow thrush
Trill their
warnings out:
"If the Lions are drinking
London is sinking
If the Lions are dunked
London- is Flooded."
Memory-misery, the Ode of Convict Mike-
Before we bestowed your well earned title,
Poring over blood stains of the bar fight
That took your old man's life. Knifed
while
His young bride nursed your then newborn,
Sister and your pattern psychic mirroring.
Do you still cut yourself these days to
mourn
That ancient loss? Tell us, does the
liquor
Bring you closer to a father figure's
image?
All moments conjoin to what came before.
Lineage is no defense before a court
judge,
Repeat offense reaps warnings you ignored.
Freshly released with your rap-sheet
reviews
You sit in the dark of a dive. Theory of
mind
Catalogs the injustices that have inked
you,
Soiled in solitude & begrimed in your
crimes.
The beatings borne by your mother's arm
Drove you to the neighborhood's embrace,
Blood and alcohol and ambulance alarms
Screaming in the night to rinse the tastes
Of Tarpey Village from your Valley palate,
Where all the cops know you by namè.
The silences of your daughter are
habitual,
No response is a response just the same,
An averted blaze of faces fill the
dumpster fire,
Of your life. You toss back Jack, light a
smoke.
Thickening clouds around your parole
requirements,
That keep you from orange institutional
clothes.
Discard and draw, all dirty numbers in a
losing hand.
Life is hard, and then you die. And
everything's gamed!
Drown it all away, your noyade, and then God
Be Damned!
You call to the bartender; he approaches
the inflammation
Of your mind, "Pour Me Another,"
you command!
"Sorry, Mate," the bitch
returns, "You'll settle and leave.."
"Like Hell!" You puff as your
fist then slams
On the bar.
"Pour Me Another," you sozzle,
"Now! Before I Leave-"
"Pay Up And Get Out, Or I'll Call The
Law," stands the barkeep-
Arguments and fury gain no respect or
traction.
Crumpled dollars in a puddle of suds, as
you sweep
Toward the door in curses and demands of
satisfaction.
Maudlin for keys, somehow now lost in your
pockets,
Then set behind the wheel in hardline and
evil thoughts:
The Pissant! A Dog Dares To Make A Man His
Target!!
You reach to the latch stowing your gun in
the glovebox.
You return, and set the loaded statement
atop the bar,
"Another Beer," you demand, as
the man notes the weapon,
And craze of your eyes.
"Alright.." He concedes to the pour.
Appraise the prize, lip to foam to the
sound of a ringing telephone.
Tension alert the barman answers the
chime, mumbles in receiver,
Then announces, "I have to take this
call in the back!"
He moves to the other room, leaving you to
await his return…
Stupid cur- you slug liquid replacement of
your prozac-
Strength earns respect, and respect makes
the man-
Lessons of the yard and cell block branded
into your core.
Manhood reclaimed- you empty the glass and
retrieve your weapon,
Sheathed in your beltline as you make
toward the door.
In the vast open space of a parking-lot
black, a bullhorn
Voice cracks aloud: "Hands In The
Air, Down On The Ground!!"
Crosshairs and badges, and a repeat of a
deadly warning-
These Pigs Lie In Wait. Entrapment! To
Bind And Surround
In Numbers, to Drag a Man Back to an Ugly
Enslavement!!
Mike's fingers itch, boldness overrides a
capsize-flummox
Of a criminal mind, -Reach For The Gun! Quick
At The Waist,
As shots pop off and the bullets rip through Mike's stomach.
Mark Novak - Poet holds an M.A. in Creative Writing and Poetry from San Francisco State University. In 2017, he was a finalist in the Writer’s Digest National Poetry Awards. Mark is both a regular contributing writer and vocal talent for readings on the poetry site, www.Voetica.com. He is a resident of Marin County, where he lives and writes aboard his 1967 Hatteras charter yacht.
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