Tony Beyer
Collateral
8 March 1941
                              the Luftwaffe
legitimately targeting
                              my future mother-in-law
who was dancing
                              the night away
with all the other
                              bright young things
at the Café de Paris
                              in Piccadilly
incidentally took the life
                              of band-leader
Ken ‘Snakehips’ Johnson
                              whose head was blasted
from his shoulders
                              during the first set
of the unluckiest
                              gig of his career
seven decades later
                              the clang
of German-made shrapnel
                              in a kidney bowl
after the nonagenarian ingénue
                              had complained about
discomfort in the neck
                              a survivor still
she remembers best
                              her best friend Lou
in a pale ball gown
                              screaming her head off
though there was nothing
                              the matter with her
photographs of the site
                              resemble Algiers in 1960
Beirut since 1972
                              Grozny or Sarajevo
through the 90s
                              Aleppo or Gaza City
Baghdad or Donetsk now
                              the same collapsed
walls and ceilings
                              displaced garments and limbs
rescuers standing around
                              under the lazy drizzle
of fractured mains
                              smoke ghosts in waiting
all the years gone
                              and the years ahead
while we persist in doing
                              these things to each other
Alice in Stalingrad
Horace in his
               Ars Poetica
                              tells us to beware
the incongruous
               assemblage of
                              diverse images
yet here
               in the waking day
                              a horse’s frozen leg
stands as a signpost
               a man’s severed hand
                              hangs aloft
from power lines
               above the factory
                              for automatic pistols
there’s also
               a factory
                              for handcuffs
another for
               police truncheons
                              eminently defensible
while in the
               lifespan since
                              security culture
has globalised
               adding tasers
                              water cannon
water boarding
               for people
                              not to be trusted
but controlled
               like white rabbits
                              sprawled in snow
mimicking the stiff
               capitulation
                              of the invader
now and again
               you get fed up
                              with landscape
too green up close
               too distantly blue
                              too easily replicated
shades of Chernobyl
               wavering at the edge
                              of eyesight
the different
               coloured moon
                              after Fukushima
(once you wore blue
               now you are blue
                              and glow in the dark)
the dryish Czech pilsner
               my older brother
                              swears by
claiming the radioactive
               particles
                              preserve him
Tony Beyer is writing and teaching again in Taranaki, NZ.
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Collateral
8 March 1941
                              the Luftwaffe
legitimately targeting
                              my future mother-in-law
who was dancing
                              the night away
with all the other
                              bright young things
at the Café de Paris
                              in Piccadilly
incidentally took the life
                              of band-leader
Ken ‘Snakehips’ Johnson
                              whose head was blasted
from his shoulders
                              during the first set
of the unluckiest
                              gig of his career
seven decades later
                              the clang
of German-made shrapnel
                              in a kidney bowl
after the nonagenarian ingénue
                              had complained about
discomfort in the neck
                              a survivor still
she remembers best
                              her best friend Lou
in a pale ball gown
                              screaming her head off
though there was nothing
                              the matter with her
photographs of the site
                              resemble Algiers in 1960
Beirut since 1972
                              Grozny or Sarajevo
through the 90s
                              Aleppo or Gaza City
Baghdad or Donetsk now
                              the same collapsed
walls and ceilings
                              displaced garments and limbs
rescuers standing around
                              under the lazy drizzle
of fractured mains
                              smoke ghosts in waiting
all the years gone
                              and the years ahead
while we persist in doing
                              these things to each other
Alice in Stalingrad
Horace in his
               Ars Poetica
                              tells us to beware
the incongruous
               assemblage of
                              diverse images
yet here
               in the waking day
                              a horse’s frozen leg
stands as a signpost
               a man’s severed hand
                              hangs aloft
from power lines
               above the factory
                              for automatic pistols
there’s also
               a factory
                              for handcuffs
another for
               police truncheons
                              eminently defensible
while in the
               lifespan since
                              security culture
has globalised
               adding tasers
                              water cannon
water boarding
               for people
                              not to be trusted
but controlled
               like white rabbits
                              sprawled in snow
mimicking the stiff
               capitulation
                              of the invader
now and again
               you get fed up
                              with landscape
too green up close
               too distantly blue
                              too easily replicated
shades of Chernobyl
               wavering at the edge
                              of eyesight
the different
               coloured moon
                              after Fukushima
(once you wore blue
               now you are blue
                              and glow in the dark)
the dryish Czech pilsner
               my older brother
                              swears by
claiming the radioactive
               particles
                              preserve him
Tony Beyer is writing and teaching again in Taranaki, NZ.
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