(no subject)

kind of like a civil war

this is a takeover,
the troops are stomping across the hills,
firing at random down from the sky,
boom boom boom, like feeling before it's like hearing.

someone is taking a photo of the entire city.
react with shock and awe.

now they're beating a tattoo on the roof,
inescapable, they're coming to find you,
hundreds and thousands of soldiers bang bang banging.

marshal your resistance! heating is martial.
mortal things need it.

we're sending defiance everywhere, hissing through the windows,
shrieking down the streets, whoosh, slap.

they are launching their reserves,
there are great conflicts, waves form and fall in gutters and guttering.

our cutting rebellion
is chasing them away, no more photos,
no more publicity, boom. but they
occupy our city, it's too late,
they have a grip on our land.




the Lloyd Harwood painting "Dream of Young Icarus" hangs in my lounge and catches the eye of my guests.

what dreams he must be having, that boy!
endlessly framed in four dark walls
with his father, who must have been quite mad,
and the birds, and the feathers, and the wax, and the feathers,
and always the wings, obsessively.

no wonder, then, when he sleeps it is blue
all around him, the sky is edged with sea
and the sun is hanging from a string
scarce visible, but he knew it was there,
threaded through the corona.

and there is he - or is that him?
the weird ungainly thing in the centre,
most like a bird that's long ago dead,
head much bigger than the body,
like even the bird has dreams.

its wings are so small they can barely be seen,
and the lips are a woman's lips, a son's lips,
the sun slips behind the bird,
everything is limned in black and blue,
Icarus dreams.

( visual aid:  )

which one of these should I submit tomorrow???? Make me decisions for me!