Polem

"They can swallow totalitarianism because they have no experience of anything other than liberalism."
-- George Orwell, Inside the Whale, 1940

Folded thin, the moon
as
sheets of straw
Through a pale blue shelter.
It is five in(to) the morning, end of June.
Two unfinished paperbacks and a lager,
So little is there to tell of this, or summer.
And while the narrator may,
Given the hot history of your address bar,
Seem unenviable,
I know of no gloom in candor.

This is my making it onto the page.

A gull coughs, hardly worth reporting.
And clouds bring rain.
What other than third-rate minutiae goes on here?

Instead should I rhyme consistently,
Or pun with fingers in my ears?
Don't think I'll battle a trope
Then smile if you begin privately -
Words as snowballs
(Critical distance, dialectic, avant garde)
- What I want no part in.

I cannot pretend I am speaking to another,
Listened to,
Unless I leave the house.

The arms of critical theory are glued, folded:
These strange gods, who command strangeness,
Who cannot say Bonjour without blushing,
Are half-musing, unrepulsed,
The hue of acid through the unveiled lips of women,
The mass in the mass grave. How strange!,
You chin-scratch.

If the race (to the straw moon) survives this leg,
Another outstretched hand, a new nonsense,
Will write a fist and run the show.