Poetry: Echosightings, Vol III, A GRID ON THE RIVER

Lord
Founder and Sole Owner
So serpentine Leopold
styled himself
laying claim to
an ancient heritage never laid up for him and his ilk
Heart of stone made
glad by the abundance of rubber sap
tongue sharper than ivory tusk
rammed by Force Publique
through innumerable guts
Man woman child
none spared in his quest to put fence
in the jungle and grid
on the river
Thinking he could stay the flow
of mighty Congo
the blood of 10 million
courses through
and will not wash out
blotting oceans
and staining northern shores
where evil
spineless men
heard of the distant horrors
and played deafdumbblind
and yet
they called us
Monkeys
Dunces
spineless men  

Poetry; Echosightings, Vol 1, BALLAD OF THE BEHEADED BOTTLE

Shiny
pliant
Plastic meets unforgiving
hard-driven
Rubber
On a
decadent
Downtown carriageway
With expectable
Disaster
Devastation
Decapitation
Ruthlessly ending
Despair
Disillusionment and
Doubting
Leaving only a useless
Drifter
Desolate
Desperately
awaiting
Salvage

©Michael A D Edwards December 2015

Poetry: THE NOTHING FACTORY

Nothing
But gun-metal plumes ascending
Some unseen stairway to
Heaven perhaps but certain
Hell for those caught in its
Smoky tendrils leaving
Nothing an no one
Unscathed
Residents bathed in
Rubber residue
As the endlessly resourceful
Touts seek their daily due
Who cares about clean
Air where
An extra buck can be scrounged
From the ever-malleable
Mounds of societal
Leavings
A government enjoying inaction tells
People to move out the man-made
Kitchen if the heat
Smoke
Dust
Overwhelm them
But its just not telling
Them where
They should go
Indeed they already know
What change life at the
Bottom of the totem pole
Brings
Their future swirl away in
Rings of smoke
Their spirits laid waste
To join the clutter
At Riverton