london in my mind
it’s london in my mind again
fog and mist, stale smell of chips
and vinegar
disenchanted with the former glory
of being in control
it wants to make Brexit with my body
cast out unwanted foreign thoughts
get into a drunken fist-fight with itself
then sop up the bruises with shitty bitter tea
&
bangers and mash and mushy pleas
for an end to its tired ancient self-history
and then takes a long drag from the mirror
and just like that again it loves
the carriage dragged by dumb plumed beasts
beautiful in their harnesses,
how grand the weak man inside
who waves back
No Answer
Puzzled, the man looks out his window
down at a strange tableau below,
a phantasmagorical allegory
or perverse passion play:
a birdman eating a man shitting birds;
a giant face vomiting forth streams of faces
before sucking them back in again,
(repeating this ad nauseam);
a flayed man displayed across his laptop;
fuming detached heads floating over the carnage
of ants overwhelming marble halls, denying all;
golf coarse preening with dismembering sheiks
and dissembling police handshakes;
blank-faced souls wandering in hordes shambolic,
and haggard bands chased by windmills quixotic;
raging monsters breaking spines of books
and spawn, and children learning to hate
the hands that seek to help their dawn;
televised saints and pundit apostles
greasily dispensing grace
with digitized collection plates;
all of them on a parched and broken land
that cracks and fissures, threatening
to consume them in a thousand maws.
‘What in God’s name is happening?’ he wonders,
his eyes scanning the nighttime sky
for some purpose or relief.
But the stars do not answer.
They only wink.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
M. Benjamin Thorne is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wingate University. Possessed of a lifelong love of history and poetry, he is interested in exploring the synergy between the two. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Rogue Agent, Feral, Gyroscope Review, Molecule, Red Eft Review, and Thimble Lit Mag. He lives and sometimes sleeps in Charlotte, NC.
Image generated on Magic Studio
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