escher poetry — [X]

“God is a word for human experience”
  — Rev. Klaas Hendrickse


(i)

the disagreement
thinking alone about
the ninety foot square of grass
white lines and goals
charging and retreating
crowds and shouts

it isn’t square
you shout
i shout back
yet you pretend it’s perfect

you have your family’s choice
and you
you have your family’s choice
through lifelong loyalty
pain and the occasional cheer
and careful avoidance of the questions
you demand everyone else answers
you and you both stick to the green
of your pitch your tribe
your admitted but can’t be confessed
discussed and thoroughly known
foolish family loyalty

but there’s more to Anytown than grass
there’s pubs and trams and people’s lives
gentle rain
tragedy and laughter
between those squares of green
their rituals
their dogmatic crap


(ii)

God is supernatural
so supernatural things exist
you might say

but you might say
there’re no such things as pixies
so there’s no such thing as God

each on your painted green
seething at goals and pitches
ignoring human experience

it can be God it can be any belief
ideology dogma robotic rules and formulae
the poison of prancing politicians

telling whatever crap will get them power
keeping at the crap for keeping at the power
& if the lies mean they have to go to war

kill a few hundred thousand
strange young people
or admit their lies

they go to war
and we all die
in blood or in heart


(iii)

the other you the one reading
you know all your lying politicians
and the first you
you know them all
and the second
you know them all too
they who trap you and you and you
and themselves
in these lies
and you will die
and you will die
you all will die

congratulations on choosing them
so they love to pretend
i hope you like your graves
each of you
i hope you like your graves
not that they’ll be kept

and your pitches
will burn

all for foolish loyalty