The steely eyed glaze of righteous wrath

passed over me and stopped,

biding its time, patiently building up

dark eye shadow glory

and then like a meteor

over slow ice fields and the mindful of their own

business trees of Tunguska …

she let loose with venom and destruction

telling me I had to live in the real world.

 

A resident of such a world I am

but if I choose for a while to revel

in a place where smiles are seen,

where the friendly knife doesn’t cut you

open like a snuffling pig in an abattoir,

where people think first and then

don’t shoot at all, I would rather hang

there than in a world

where the ill are forgotten,

the mentally ill shunned, where greed

is not just seen as good but where

all the money in the world is not enough

to satisfy the cravings of excess,

where the homeless are faced with the cold shoulder

every night,

where money can be found to slaughter innocents abroad

and yet the old and the desperate are left

to choose between warming themselves

or dying, the final act of Government retribution

for daring to grow dusty and beyond

the realms of useful to society…

 

I would rather live in my world

not hers I said with patient love

and the dynamic stare of the obscene

cursed me forever more

for not playing the game.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015