They’re Watching

Original version of a poem recently published with Free Verse Revolution Publishing…

 

They are watching you on the bus

“Don’t be paranoid.”

No literally they are watching you, look.

Where does the footage go?

There I am

Women and kids

Old man

Students

That guy that always wears the Star Wars top

Did we give our consent?

We’re living in a post, post, post truth world of GDPR

How bizarre

One rule for one

And whatever goes for the other

Bragging on tape that you think nothing of rape

Coffees full of Russian bullion

But it’s all fake I suppose

When a president’s nose is longer than a fairy tale

Possessions, democracies, all fake

My mind is on the take

The idea of free will just a construct (sold on the back of a cereal packet) to justify unskilled demagoguery

Transparent skulduggery

The failing New York Times wipes away its tears of laughter

The joke really doesn’t stop, it really doesn’t

The wheels on the bus go round and round and round and round and round

“Are you OK?”

Awakening from my heat wave I gaze into the void and say

Some people are happy watching re-runs of the time they scored a home run

riffin on a Springsteen glory day

and that time we were in the forest it was as still and as quiet as it had ever been,

there was no one there, just me and you, I could hear your breath and feel your warmth up against me,                       desperate for    visceral human interaction, we looked up and saw the moon so full, the lake lapped against the shore.

You looked into my eyes and told me you were frightened,

your friend’s Dad had gone mad, he’d chased you through the house,

you hid in the cupboard but his search was furious,

Furious, he was hungry like a wolf

he grabbed you, like a scene from a horror film…

You then stopped, no breath, no air, we were the only ones in the world.

You

and I held you.

 

Silver translucence surrounded you,

Wasn’t sure what it was that I was supposed to do.

 

I did love you

 

but what has love got to do with this naked moment of pure confession?

I only just remembered this story as I went searching for denouement

to make sense of my inane bus ramblings, my frustrated journalistic sub-Snowden pre-amblings

I went wandering into that most dangerous of places, the mind with its mazes and untrustworthy corridors of treachery.

Never found out what happened in the end.

 

©John de Gruyther 2018