'A Free Spirit'

is a phrase wistfully used by those
who are trapped and passive
to the point of resisting accounting
for how their traps happened,
to describe those who are more free
than themselves and obviously have courage
enough to show contempt at how much
modern consumerism thinks it matters.  

Two Poems By Christy Brown (3)

Abel

My brother Cain the afflicted likes to sit
brushing softly my shoulders by the water
at nights edge, or in a cinema dimlit
where scenes of peace turn to scenes of slaughter.

Sometimes he will tlk to me; his voice
murmurs the commotion in his mind
and begs me to delay my final choice
and I obey, for he is wise an kind.

He shall choose the last long pain for me;
he knows the thing that must be done, my brother;
it is not treachery - our love was free,
it is no will of his or mine, but rather

the timeless tyranny of things ordained
makes life seem death and love refflected hate;
and full my heart, my sacrifice unsustained:
"I wait for you, my brother, at the gate.".

Now and Not Then

Shall the dire day break when life
finds us merely husband and wife
with passion not so much denied
as neatly laundered and put aside
and the old joyous insistence
trimmed to placid coexistence?

Shall we sometime arise from bed
with not a carnal thought in our head
look at each other without surprise
out of wide awake uncandid eyes
touch and know no immediate urge
where all mysteries urge?

Speak for the sake of something to say
and now and then put on a display
of elaborate mimicry of the past to prove
that ritual reigns where once ruled love
and calmly observe those bleak rites
that once made splendour of our nights?

Dear, when we stop being outrageous
and no longer find contageous
the innumerable ecsatcies we find
in rise of hand or leap of mind -
not now or then, love, need we fear thus;
those two sad people will not be us.    

Twenty Years Missed,

and now forever missing from my life,
but always recalled with tenderness
for the brief time I had care of him;
 Oscar D. Tail was a rare soul,
with a unique ability to impart joy
and hope into those around him.

As one of the many recipients of his joy,
to all of those who received it after me,
unknown to me, I wish those he blessed
in the life he had after me well, as they too
reckon on his positive effect on their lives.

Please left click here for an alternative view
of this long missed prince among dogs...   
 

 
 

Welcome To Your Polonium President

Everyone in the world knows
the story of King Midas, the king
who rated gold that highly that the gods
cursed him so that everything outside himself
that he touched, including his family, turned to gold,
thus devaluing utterly what once pleased his eye so.

President Trump brags how his touch turns money
into more money, including increased debt
when he is careless - which he is often.
Until he was impelled to embrace being known
as the wealthiest serial bankrupt in the world.
But hey! Money is only money; it is not life.

Now with Trump being in Putin's favourite pocket fascist,
who Putin needs for him to stay in power, and keep at a distance,
so that Putin can organise his country's media hall of mirrors,
in the assuredness of mutual loathing. So welcome Trump
the Polonium President who in choosing his cabinet will poison
and wither every branch of government he is allowed near,
without him being blamed for his choice of 'Yes' men and women
all of whom will be elected to be the biggest 'No' to usefulness
and competence in government in the history of The Republic.

When it arrives, how many hundred million Americans,
along with the migrants, will say 'We didn't see this coming'? 

 

Relative Land - Where Decline Disguises Everything

Beyond the land of the living dead
lies America, which has lied to itself,
and the worlds it has been part of,
for so long, that no subject under the sun
can be understood in absolute terms any longer.

When America crowns it's 47th president
the ceremony will have all the gravity
of a rigged Miss World beauty contest
for the elderly, where vanity bids the gerontocracy
to think they are young and what counts most
is how good the ritual looks on television.
Never mind the government crumbling behind it. 

A Poem By Christy Brown (2)

 Wishful

I would be free of pavements
newspapers with no news
clocks that bully my existence
cars that whisk me away like God
descending unannounced upon me
buses that move like lugubrious elephants
horse fettered to the stupid hands of men.

I am tired to tears of the mental life
of my room full of the ghosts
of never known things
this spluttering monster machine
creaking into rusty senility
its hammerstrokes deciphering for innocent posterity
my heart's sudden audaciousness

I would gather about me soft-sandalled things
shadows on a burning lake
trees bending to the earth in love.
Where oh where are the beautiful people?
-the quick of wit
the clowns who spit
on life's sanctimonious countenance
the insolent
the indolent
the fey and gay
with sunlight dripping from their limbs?

I would pawn my hypothetical soul
to wake sudden in the dawn
and find a girls foot print in dew outside my door. 

Mother Was My Virtual Private Network

As part of my daily digital hygiene regime
I use the anti-virus/cleaning programmes
downloaded to my laptop, and every time,
which ever one of the three programmes I use,
it always tells me to sign up to their VPN
right away, as if my survival depended on it.

I never do, but find different ways to make sure
that what I do is safe, sane, and secure
by what I refuse to let Google remember.

Google does not need to keep the numbers
on my credit cards, only I need to keep them.

I decline to use VPN because their urging me to use it
reminded me of my mother, who placed great store
by saying she was the acme of my personal security
whilst never letting me know what was really going on,
outside of her or with regard to all the choices I might make,
emotionally, socially, and financially/with employment.

And because she was my example of evasive protection,
that unawares of me was most engaged with protecting itself.

I only learned much too late why so many events in my life
'went wrong', why paths that seemed right at the time
closed down long before I could reach the most rewarding part of them. 

VPN is a source of profit and consumer control
for many of the biggest internet protection providers
that it is in their commercial interest to keep secret,
the better for them to scare the nervous and gullible.

My parents operated an information apartheid,
where, like VPN, they told me well disguised lies
that kept me passive, compared with what they knew about each other.

The longer mother strove to 'sound so nice', the harder it got
for my parents to admit the depth of their lies about me,
or unpick the falsely founded relationship they had set up as my future.