An Ode to John Milton

Milton, I lay mute before your feet.
Who could hope to best your sway
over this vast imperial domain
that stretches from hell hiding
beneath the feet of your rhyme
to heaven crowning its highest thoughts?
There from your seat in this middle
earth on that precious Isle
anchored in the silver sea, you
remain behind your moats and walls.
The vasty deep cannot consume your
bones spread round the earth by empire.
Nor, these bones rejected, the ether
which joins the bones together:
the human love of liberty and freedom.
Where is your better, equal even?
Return, I pray, my voice in double portion,
show me best the way to teach this love
to unlettered generations living dead.

Moments of Silence

What is a moment of silence?

Is it a response to our “disbelief, terrible sadness and quiet unyielding anger”

Does it demand our introspection,

Or do we know exactly what we feel in that moment?

In that moment of political, social silence,

undefined by the simple parameters of time,

are we fully aware of the empires we make?

Should we accept the silence?

Who does silence honor?

What does it say of a nation that it is

Speechless. Unprepared. Non-responsive. Irresolute.

In that moment we redefine ourselves recklessly.

That moment is stolen time, never to be returned.

It is a child that cannot care for those who occasioned its feeble and uncanny existence.

Its irony is deafening to a race distinguished by speech.

It is a moment of surrender,

To something new and foreign

Not the force of terror but fear.

In that moment, while terror played the fool

Justice removed her blind

To gape at the spectacle

And despair with a tiny prick

Stole her virtue in the street.

So what have we to say of moments of silence

They are imperial bridges across the Rubicon

Assembled by the people working in silence

The Blind Man

What name shall I call you?
Scornful son of Absalom
Who wrecks the sacred grove.

For success you would part
With even the most holy
Beliefs which were your own.

Oath breaker to father
A shame to your mother
Vile traitor to your own

Thou blind man of the morn
On whom Dawn scatters vainly
Her rays on your bleached eyes.

You amongst the cattle
Led the charge when Hermes came
To find your new cavern.

May your tired clichéd ass
Hang you by your empty head
From the limbs of your conceit.