Subverse

The revolution awaits the man in the guerrilla suit
The ink slowly dries on the pamphlets in his car-boot
And the trunks on the troop of room-filling elephants
Trumpet to the tune of philosophical irrelevance

The dealer checks his cell-phone for the international markets
Crosses the killing floor shoe-leather whispering on carpet
Smiles in the knowledge he will get what he’s due
Guns the engine to chrome on his bee-em-double-yew

In the shrubbery disguised as a man in a black suit
Crouching sunglass, earpiece and stylish jackboot
Lurks the agent of change with an eye on the prize
Who parades in a bikini made for a woman half her size

The agent employs tech-tricks to read the invoices
Of the ill-clad sun-bather who’s considering her choices
Between deckchair debauchy and slick sun-lounger
While concrete in half-life decays all around her

Condensation collects behind guerrilla suit eyes
Cell phone erupts between pin-striped thighs

The agent responds to his earpiece whispering imponderous
Licks the tip of his pistol with lizard tongue lugubrious
And with rounds made of darkness by an empire in decline
Blows the chrome-lustre off some of that Teutonic shine

And I watch, a furtive sparrow, from these waiting-waste wings
Wondering if it’s worth bothering to pull down the curtain strings


July 2009