The feathered eagle
To the skies
No more uprises
Instead a palm of dust grows
You know that earthly tree now bears no bread
A hand outstretched is trembling
The flagstaff has an ensign
Only madmen see
With famine starting at the head
Some judy delivers a punchline
In the breadbasket today
No fond embraces
Are afoot
Death puts a boot
Where the bounce was once
In among the listening lilies a silent tread
Bite the fruit to taste the stone
Throughout the Gobi seed awaits
The rain to stalk
Famine starting at the head
He only has to say one word
Roses grow from an empty bowl
In our shuttered streets
The cars roam
Don’t need a home
Or volume control
Wandering sizeless with the unaimed dead
We hear his voice cry ‘Paradise!’
On the Golden Coast the cymbals
Start to sound
Salvation starting at the head
Tortures
There’s no answer from the old exchange
I want to push inside you
The sensations you find in yourself
May just be within my range
Grimly sitting round a table
Fifteen men with life at stake
They may torture themselves but those tortures
Will not make them awake
The cards were somehow different
The board I had not seen before
Their iron maiden gleamed dimly cherry-red with sex
Down in the basement I reached Low Point X
Last year they stopped their playing
Phone just ceased to buzz
But if you find them there tomorrow
Better start in there praying
Reincarnation where the cobwebs
Are comes daily from your keep