Morbid expectation shivers
through the fusty air
as every bottom shifts and shuffles
on its creaking chair.
The medium, his eyes wide shut,
is fumbling for a lead
and plugs himself at last into
the supernatural grid.
“Does anybody know a Brian
who rewired toasters,
who drank rice wine and holidayed
down on the Cornish coast as
often as he could,
who had a parrot with a lisp,
whose hands were swollen from
an altercation with a wasp?”
A white-haired woman with two needles,
purling, stitching ably,
stops and strokes her wispy chin,
then tosses forth a “maybe”.
All eyeballs swivel round. “Ah, no.
It wasn’t toasters. Egg-whisks.
I still can see them clear as day,
all cluttering up his work-desks.”
And thus I learn this lady’s gate
was painted by a Frenchman
from Brian, as he beams and bounces
round the fifth dimension.
My dream is punctured by
the pointed finger of a showman
who belts out, “You there, sir!
I see you have some link to Poland!
I’ve got a Polish soldier here,
who fell in World War Two.
This – Piosowski? – tells me that
he took a shine to you,
and now he’s watching over you.
His name is Piosowski
or something similar. My hearing
might be slightly off-key.”
Those words march through my mind
as I sit brooding in the clouds
and drag my battered suitcase
through the passport-clasping crowds,
as I meander through the knobbly,
squirrel-rustled elms
and past Cyrillic black-starred warnings
cloaked in silky films.
Roman Piotrowski.
There he basks among his comrades,
indifferent to invasions
and impervious to bomb raids.
Born twenty-two. Died forty-five,
just three short months from peace,
from Stalin’s different-coloured jackboot
stamping on his face.
“Hello there, Roman. How are you,
here in this hall of death?
Perhaps you’ve seen me dashing past
or grasping out for breath.
Not even twenty-three, you were.
Still on the porch of life.
Perhaps you’d never tasted
the devotion of a wife.
Now, that we’d have in common.
Is that why you took to me?
Two aeroplanes devoid of wings,
two locks without a key.
So, concrete-backboned patriot,
how’s life beyond the grave,
beyond our trivial little world
that no-one wants to save?
You tried your best for sure, old chap,
so thanks for all your effort,
but all those joys you garnered from
the old world have been severed
from us here in our microchipped
and shifty chapter of history,
our age of raving, dogma-buzzing,
liberty-loathing wizardry.
It’s such a theft, a foppish sophist-
stuffed fascistic hoax.
A bourgeoisie gorged with inversions
blathers moral vogues,
young visionaries jammed
with zeal and vigour trade their blood
for ketchup, for acceptance,
in a culture-slashing cut.
Patriots can’t be patriots now,
since that’s the pit of evil,
or men be men or women women,
people just be people.
When looking righteous trumps free thought,
there is no thought at all.
When fitting in trumps questioning,
society will fall.
Now vanity trumps self-protection.
Thus, my country’s fallen.
The whole of Western Europe’s
disappearing up its colon.
They cannot see that those
in golden gloves, who crush the workers,
are those who cram their skulls with sludge
and flood their streets with burqas.
This race towards conformity
will squash men’s minds in jars,
so those who will not think in line
must wither behind bars.
The school of history is standing
rat-invaded, derelict.
The brainwash-boomerang, once more,
decapitates the heretic.
They think they’re on the brink
of some rebellious rainbow age,
these robots cheering, marching off
into their rabbit cage.
Your people, meanwhile, most of them,
are snoozing, so it seems,
cocooned in missile-cushioned, twelve-starred,
dollar-splashing dreams.
Sobieski’s men, who spanked the sultan’s arse
and saved the continent,
are pouring tea and skiing while
barbarians choke the Occident.
Does any of this matter, Roman?
Is it worth the fight?
Tell me please, old soldier bathing
in eternal light.”
