Hi Paul,
I'm way behind with responding to things - you've probably put this poem
well behind by now...
I like it! The way it leads me through and builds up a mood…
The title intrigues me too! I keep wondering how I might read it differently
if, say, the title mentioned a city on the mainland UK… I mean I lived close
to Manchester when it was bombed by the IRA, I lived in Warrington and it
was bombed too. I also can associate Munich with German politics in the 30s
and so I get to wondering what it’s like now…
The poem makes me leap about in time as I read it: Greek places and myths,
Irish places and terrorists from "the troubles," internet cafes...
These are interesting thoughts… the poem’s poetry isn’t just confined to
itself.
The line: "extending attenuated faces with no looks mumbling inanities" is
one I'd underline to think if it needs working at (it feels less
precise/more vague/etc than the rest I read).
Bob
>From: paul murphy <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Submission - Cyclopian Poem Written in Munich
>Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 12:56:26 +0000
>
>Cyclopian Poem Written in Munich
>
>"in the country of the blind the one eyed man is king." - HG Welles
>
>
>silence is a kind of extortion, a black propaganda
>the racket of some ultimate cosa nostra
>extending attenuated faces with no looks mumbling inanities
>politenessses, weather reports, crap on the T.V., crap on the radio.
>although they aren't silent, they want you to be.
>guerillas camped out on the backlots plastering lampposts with signs
>in their ultimacy, 'no surrender' and 'fuck you', FTP, UVF, UDA.
>rotating mechanical neon Jesus' illuminate the night, this is Belfast.
>
>One night in the plush velveteen sewer called home,
>I wish for the better days, bombs, bricks, bats.
>super-ideological pamphlets in Smithfield bookshops
>the air laced with grimness and blood
>shot through with crackling armalites
>distant across the city, power cuts and more and more bombs.
>Life had some urgency, even just the urgency that comes
>from knowing which group to run away from.
>Paedophiles, pulpits, preachers, pricks.
>
>Various areas - Tullaycarnet, Ballybeen, Dundonald, Ballyhackamore -
>are they not, in the mind's eye just the same as Troy, Ithaca, Sparta,
>Athens?
>even Agamemmnon had worms and Achilles gonohrrea
>Helen was riddled with the syph and Priam's prick drooped.
>the whole idealised past smacks into our internet cafe gutted
>on fire, a 'burger bar too, the local cafe held up by a gunman.
>these are the many white elephants shoved brushed under those shining
>carpets
>all waiting to be incendiaried, immolated, semtexed, galvanised, irradiated
>their blind Cyclopic eye maintains that certainty.
>
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