Watchman

In the history of everything, there
Is always room for compromised vistas, sunsets
Dulled by carbon fug, or the expressions 
Of mannish boys referencing each moment 
To the Cloud

And room for biplanes buried in fields 
A hundred years since 
They slammed into the mud, the bones of pilots
Wadded in mouldering khaki, mugged 
By slogans for hero volunteers
For the expanse of misery branded 
God and Country

In the wrong place 
To be black or female or last-stand human, in
The wrong place against live-vein AI interdiction, there
Is always room

Indigenous rites in Malaysia, Iraq 
Or McDonald’s, tattoos punched through
Hierarchy tropes of forest animals, animals 
In deserts or fetid celebrity monikers
In the corner booth by the Exit, in the history of everything 
Where appearances matter
…

Children killed 
By mines ten years 
After armistice

Hit squads indemnified 
Against genocide 
By gangster governments

The journalist reporting
Corruption at the polls
Now missing 

Asylum seekers 
Sardined in sieves 
Sunk by freak waves

Bird cages bright
With songs breeding plague
In village markets 
	
The donor organ 
For the last chance op
No match

A quantum clock
Stirring ghosts
Beyond time

Has-been athletes 
Confusing 
Fast with faster

A stem cell
Bred for vacuum
Now interstellar Adam

The universe revealed
In formulas the girl said
Came to her in dreams 
...

What you said, what they said, what
Lawyers for the shadow people said, what
Children bathed in diarrhoea said 
To warlords in limos

The crook who was king, the love bite 
On Liberty’s statue, sealing new 
Allegiances, new materials conducting 
New currents, the sangfroid pronouncements 
Of the old Republic swept unconscious 
Into the history of everything 

And room 
For drip-feed cryptos masquerading 
As law, the sweepstake 
For juntas promising only a little killing now

What you said, what I said, each
Syllable deconstructed into subatomic atonement 
For gang rape legislation dismissing ghosts
Of glaciers and the burning hills
…

Metadata proof
The child porn files
The Senator’s

In the cave litter
Human bones, hacked
By flint blades, gnawed 

Soldiers beneath
Spring wheat
Reburied with honours

Parasites a hundred 
Million years asleep, killers 
Coy as ingénues 

Big Bang declension 
Of comet tails
Seeding planets

T-Rex, weak joints 
And walking pace, slow
Train coming 

Pseudonym
She used phoning 
Her husband’s lover

Medieval pomp
Of monarchies ripe
For hackers 

The trial halted 
When the juror 
Saw the birthmark 

Bushmeat virus
Traced to simmer pots
Of bats 
...

War planes over the house, tandem
Afterburners scattering rooks for miles, then vertical 
On hard Gs
Against Russians probing air space east

Armouries and oil reserves, land 
Mined by giant machines for metals sifted
Into abacus memory stoking RAM, water
Stripped of hydrogen for fuel
To the stars 
…

The dead wife 
Through mediums
Revealed the codes

Nerve agents
On the traitor’s door knob 
Killed the town

Her pretty feet
With a Page of their own 
And more Followers

Superyachts, berthed
To the same tide
As dhows

Cryptocurrency 
Weight for weight 
With air

On private jets 
Old men stroking
Child brides

Her beauty
Overwhelming, he
Resolved to kill her last

Microbes boosted
To military grade, secured
In padded rooms 

Unnoticed among
Dusty parchments, a play
Initialled, WS

Divers recovered
Evidence the detectives 
Traced to this
…

People boiling paper for porridge, CEOs
Slam-dunking dividends, State TV naming 
Suspects already dead in ditches, elections 
Poised between apathy and White Power militias, asteroids 
Approaching Earth in endgame arcs

In the history of everything, there
Is always room, for the watchman in the shadows
Near the sea port, the star port, people
With IDs cleansed of blood

And memories and the ceremonies of chance
For Jazz guys riffing Shakespeare, for poets
Riffing Jazz guys riffing Shakespeare
In one voice, saying
Tell me who you are, who 
Are you now

Who are you now

Estill Pollock | Contents
Mudlark No. 80 (2024)