OF US AND DISMANTLED JUSTICE
Equality smashed!
Slammed down by the new,
Unjust sledgehammering laws:
Scales of justice ripped away
And thrown in the junkyard:-
Time to reconstruct:
It’s human nature’s springtime;
Let’s rebuild justice:-
Yes, it’s reconstruction time,
Let’s get to rebuilding:-
With divine guidance,
Let us tear down injustice
With tools of repair:
True justice reconstructed;
Thus, making this country great:-
She took a stroll one moonlit night
in search of lumps of anthracite.
She knew that coal could soothe her soul:
one moonlit night, she took a stroll.
Insomniac, anaplasty
coal soothed her soul: but she knew she
would need, to get her nostrils back,
anaplasty. Insomniac,
obsessed with smoking magic weed,
to get her nostrils back, she’d need
a plastic surgeon – but the best!
With smoking magic weed obsessed,
she’d need a reconstructed nose.
The rhinoplastor whom she chose
loved coal, and gave her, quick as thought,
the reconstructed nose she sought.
Leaden clouds sweep swiftly in from the north,
Blanketing the sapphire skies in melancholy.
Deafening, rolling thunder cracks
As a mysterious chill sends a shudder up my spine.
A faint knock rasps at my front door;
Whispers circulate, ringing through my walls,
Echoing my name ever so sinisterly.
For twenty and twenty years, I have been happily discontent,
Freezing my sins in lovely seclusion.
Now, a dank darkness drapes this dilapidated sanctuary.
Peering out the curtains, I see death's arrival—
Ruby red roses in my formerly lush garden
Crumbling to ash, fading into the earth.
Elongated fingers peek through the dubious haze.
A cackling booms.
To my right stands an ornate Victorian mirror.
Turning my head, I can see the flames of Hell rage.
What was once just a plane of glass
Has now become a beckoning portal.
Without hesitation, I rip it off the wall,
Smashing the omen, trying to escape an unfathomable fate.
Within seconds, it's fully reconstructed,
Signaling there is no reprieve.
History books rewritten,
pages turned, truths overturned.
Past reconstructed.
Memories are planted like seeds,
carefully cultivated.
Reality harvested.
Leaders cast long shadows,
dark spots conveniently erased.
Selective illumination.
Monuments rise and fall,
stone faces weather time.
Legacies carved in flux.
Archives are sealed tight,
skeletons locked in national closets.
Dust settles on truth.
Oral traditions whisper
voices echo through generations.
Unwritten resistance.
Media spins its web,
catching minds in sticky narratives.
Information trapped.
Textbooks sanitised,
rough edges smoothed away.
Comfortable fictions.
Anniversaries observed,
some celebrated, others buried.
Time's biased march.
Nostalgia is a rose-tinted lens,
focusing on the golden ages.
Present found wanting.
Trauma is passed down,
And cellular memory encoded.
Inherited burdens.
Collective amnesia spreads,
Convenient forgetfulness is contagious.
Society's blind spots.
Memory becomes a battlefield,
mind's eye the spoils of war.
Consciousness colonised.
Yet, truth persists,
stubborn seeds in concrete cracks.
Remembrance rebels.
Night after night war darkens our screens
Women and children’s cries and screams
Truth enters our living rooms, or so it seems
~ History projects a wider beam
Changes, for the sake of nation!
Better take it as a child
Takes new toy, in pure elation
Happy with its childish mind
What was settled, gone forever
Reconstructed for a change
All that looked a bit too clever
Challenging the present age
No more compromise with these
No more aids for the backwarded
Stuff more wars, and talk of peace
Changing times, we’re all rewarded
Yer olde habits will die easy
Stimulated by the law
Cig in hand, we looked so cheesy
Stamp it out, and puff no more
Changes come from outer space
Like a virus, most contagious
They derange us all to waste
Changes, for the sake of changes…
Once I joined that club for fun
Changed my mind, and changed my plan
No one noticed things I’ve done
So I changed them back again.
As it starts to move,count your blessings
May you feel it
It's amazingly modified
As it starts to rotate, count your father's wishes
May you navigate it
It's perfectly fitted
Answers are to be questioned,
These are the days whereby culture
Is to be reconciliated
Imperative as it is
These are the days whereby loyalty
Is to be reconstructed
Hardly as it is
Accountability is to be questioned,
As it starts to factorize, count the time
May you embrace it
It's honourablely unique
As it starts to wipe,wipe those tears
May you be free
It's suitability fitted
Answers are to be questioned.
Come back and I'll offer you my
destroyed castle...
reconstructed...
Come back you'll have one
unmade bed...
A table that little
feed... but you will have
hungry love,
of a lover,
survivor... !
They were swilling blood from the road
into the gutter,
policemen with buckets
of cold water.
And all I could think of was you
and how you had left me.
It was not your blood but someone else's
that the curious had crowded to see.
You were walking, talking, laughing
elsewhere in this city
and I know I might see you someday,
which would be a pity.
I found myself wishing and hoping
this blood had been part of you.
Your going would shock me, of course,
but such shock would soon pass through.
They were swilling blood from the road
into the gutter
and had it been your blood and you dead
such thoughts would not matter.
(25 April 2023)
(written 1970s, then lost, then recalled and reconstructed)
I am perplexed and overwhelmed
I glanced at the barren scarlet horizon
While sinking my toes into the ground
Oasis luscious green grass
I can hear them in my brain and feel their arrival
This can now be reconstructed using DNA
We then stored the secret code
What should we rebuild?
Written: November 22, 2022
A scrap of ore breaks surface.
The metallic pebble is already colonized
by moss and fungi factories,
in a millennia rocks will churn
a green spawn into small rural towns.
Fields of new growth
must be planted in microscopic slime.
The Shawnee come and go,
as fireflies on a summer night they pass,
raw boned settlers,
add their calcium to the earth.
Small time-seeded towns sprout.
Hands work wood, stone, then brick.
More foundational pebbles are unearthed
Tornadoes clear the land, reconstructed
malls ride the roads.
Antique stores blossom in the dust.
Art galleries and cake shops
vie for customers, donuts triumph.
Arts and crafts stores signal the end
of old railway lines.
Cities of iron and coal bud and blight.
The moss returns and flourishes.
Down the dumps
Fog everywhere, walking on a mass of corpses
sludge of rotting flesh, sinks deeper into arms and legs
embracing me like I should be one of them.
Swam ashore in the lake of loss, soup of death
banks of bones.
A woman in white helped me up; she too
a haze and disappeared.
Totter in a desert of nothingness, heard footsteps
death wanted me to return to the lagoon of
reconstructed dreams.
Heart pounding, but there, the horizon’s dawn
the sun of life warmed my face if only briefly.
The sky rained the blood of the evicted.
Drops of rubies, in each one, the nucleus of me
lies and delusion engraved.
SORRY
(ETCETERA ETCETERA)
In my world a word of genuine emotion,
today in this battlefield for far right,
far left and all those in between,
a word reconstructed,
for those wrong doers caught,
and only when they are,
a buzz word for a last chance grovel,
for a population conditioned to except the insincerity
and false tears that evaporate as quickly,
as one’s memory of their misdemeanour.
© Harry J Horsman 2022
I’ve mastered the art of the double knot
forgotten most of what I’ve been taught
my cuffs are frayed by elbows worn
my favorite jacket sewed where torn
the holes in my jeans – work put them there.
I didn’t pay extra for a fashionista tear
The words that I speak are simple and true
yet those that will listen are distant and few
now sadly it seems that in moments pensive
“someone” finds what I said “somehow” offensive
to someone who lives in a past “reconstructed”
or worse in a world that’s been “self” destructed.
I’ve worked for the planet – forever recycled
and before it was “fashionable” – yes! I bi-cycled
through traffic and pot holes in sunshine and rains
over crisscrossing tracks of ever late trains
through the streets of the city, the suburbs – for fun
cuz my knees hurt so much I could no longer run.
I drove tiny cars that strained on hills steep
no activist here – I was just cheap
So after you rant and rave and shout
Gather your sneakers and throw them all out
John G. Lawless
©12/15/2021
Emotionally abstract;
A rush of beautiful tears
leave behind discolored eyes;
All the passion fading
into the painting of her smile;
Chipping with every slow drop
puddles form chaotic shapes
casually described as art;
They see a masterpiece
in the splatter of geometry,
overlooking her face so
emotionally distraught;
Worshipping the body of work
she left behind;
Reconstructed over time
whispers of the past like art so abstract;
Painting the star crossed eyes of future artists
who embellish the magic of folklore.
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