Twenty, twenty one

Who cried those tears?
Who are you, with your first world problems?
There’s a pandemic on you know
and they have to make us more secure
than we have ever been before…

It’s a nasty little virus, from la Chine profonde,
sprung from venal filthy exploitation,
unsuccessfully suppressed by lies
they’d prefer we didn’t blame them for,
compounded by our populist complacency

Who cried those tears?

This is just the dress rehearsal.
Did you really want to live forever?

• There are too many people, gorging
  ourselves on the riches of epochs:
  burning through 1.6 sustainable planets
  when we have just one to live on –
  and that’s before the poor grow rich…

Can we afford some empathy?
(Though it’s no kind of life with none)
Why did you want to have it all?

Mercury’s Mirror

I admired
her slender build, her haughty eyes,
her cheekbones hinting at Olympian descent;
electrified by subtle words and open phrases
that spoke frankly of alternative attractions

I traced
through thoughts of boundaries and sharing
a path to what she wants and what she offers 
from those shadows, side-lit by illuminations
stretched out along her inky, silky limbs

I touched 
beneath her bushes, dense and bold:
fire altars, honeyed lures or viscous wells,
redolent oases or quick-sands;
her deeper secrets brazenly concealed…

I inhaled
a fetish ~ icon of our visceral conception ~ 
changing nature, changing tone, as it engages;
which in engagement changes the engager,
mirroring our flickered, sublimated lusts 

And wondered
what tribute you would bring,
humble explorer,
what mysteries you may evoke –
should you be allowed??