(‘Lockdown’ [Radio Edit])
At the anthills of acrimony
form brick-red rivers of magma to curse
the lost. They cannot seem to withstand
the slowly shambling thought that a people
in pain would wail. When the asphalt
becomes a singular novel cry, when the
bank building glass gives way to unlearned language,
they will trap themselves in their homes,
they will have revelatory trysts with their guns,
they will proclaim a broken sky full of gods of
destruction from beyond to eat the world.
And will that not be bizarre?
Fear will make them beseech steel idols, make
them tribute tin emblems of their own force,
make them remake the past itself just to sleep
past the din of incomprehensible prayer
chanting under the nearest streetlight.
And will that not reveal that
they are broken by what they’ve learnt?
They will struggle to forget that
if they seek to trap
a thing they worry will undo all the reality
they’ve worked so hard to steal, or blot out
the sound of truths too deep to fathom before it
ruins their ever-patient minds, then it is because
the neighbours they have refused
are as gods to them.