Advice Concerning Politicians
Police your politicians
police them
with the eyes of a hawk, (no less)
with your heart on fire and mind
enraged.
Police their lies and their promises
(those broken and soon to be broken),
observe their expense accounts and their pensions
their privileges, pettiness
and loud rhetoric.
Keep vigil
with an unarmed militia
from the world of truth
(a world no one dares believe in)
this world not-yet-born,
…always struggling to be born,
to be, to breathe…
Guard them with angels
with their righteous and furious wings,
police them with books and old bibles and poems
and the loving words of dead comrades.
Watch carefully,
these shameless salesmen of sleaze
and pornography,
watch them
– before it is too late.
Police your politicians.
Listen deeply to our sinking world
dying in their two-faced words,
their business-as-usual, cut-price, deals,
their forked-tongues twisted
always smiling like celebrities
their mild and melodious deceit.
Shelter us, from their delusions,
these gravediggers of the dark!
Listen to them howl
in the emptiest part of the universe,
listen to them cry
like wild cats in the dead of night,
listen to their shrill voices
like words strangled on a gallows,
these preachers of lies and Armageddon
these psychiatrists of so-called sanity,
both friend and foe in their crafted facelessness,
paid prophets of power and
death.
Watch now
in this graveyard of language,
in this toilet of money and politics,
watch now a world
where words drown daily
like refugees from a boat
sinking in a sea of our silence,
murdered each day
by the noise of microphones
and news and sirens.
Keep a sharp eye on your politicians.
Take note of their expensive suits
and their hidden friends in high places.
Be wary of their rotten deals and their deceit,
their secret meetings in expensive hotels,
make no mistake about their power
and the rise and fall of
their arrogance.
Make no mistake,
before it is too late.
Police them,
in a world with dark clouds now on the horizon
in their subterfuge for our sad sick world.
Police their lies and their greed and their illusions,
take note of their bank accounts
and the rumours they spread
safeguard against the harm they do your children,
face the fact some of them never did a hard day’s work
in their lives,
never got their hands dirty
never washed their hands clean of dirty deals
never shook hands with the righteous
never refused a down payment for the future
police them and police them well,
…before is too late.
Be watchful
the length of this long night.
And when you have done all that
You can tell them to just go home.
Tell them their time has come.
Tell them justice has learnt how to speak on its own.
That the truth was never for sale.
Now words no longer need whisper
but can sing and dance
out loud.
We who were nobody
are waking from our long sleep…
Then tell them
in their delusions of grandeur
in this darkest of their dark ages
(“…because maybe hate is what we need…” Donald Trump)
the day is coming
– like a light at the end of the tunnel
– like a light at the sharp edge of a lost horizon
– like a promise that could not be betrayed
tell them
their
unbearable
outrageous
and immeasurable
catastrophe
is coming to an end.
séamas carraher
2 july 2020 – 31 july 2020
Notes
Image of well-connected and wealthy ‘tyrants’ courtesy of (“fair-use”) the film Active Measures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Measures_(film)#Critical_reception
Donald Trump quote from 1989, in reference to the Central Park 5 (https://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/07/politics/trump-larry-king-central-park-five/index.html) quoted in Michael Moore’s film, Fahrenheit 11/9
Séamas Carraher was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1956. He lives on the Ballyogan estate, in south County Dublin, Ireland, at present. Recent publications include poems in Bone Orchard Poetry, Istanbul Literary Review and Pemmican. Previously his work has been published in Left Curve (No. 13, 14 & 20), Compages, Poetry Ireland Review, and the Anthology of Irish Poetry.
