Centuries of Sadness - Pete Gioconda

CENTURIES OF SADNESS

Stamp my brain with engine hum
and stack the floor with enigmas
down to the last flowers.

Release the facts
and steer clear of the staircase.

Make sense of snow
through a glass darkly
and let the torpid gravestone go:
it’s my face ache speaking.

I don’t wish to know who the visitors are.
Nothing happens yet.
– Why not?
– Go home.

Is it always negative at heart?
(“It’s not as easy as it darn well should be,”
says the lazy-fingered hand
to the man on the bandstand.)

Movement will occur,
things will get better.
They would stay as they are
if they wanted to get worse.

Branches of yearning
stroke the embers of time.

Centuries of sadness.
Strangers killing strangers.

Crucifixion dawn
on the brink of an eco-grab.

The pastures are not renewed,
they are being paved over.

The roadways to be re-assembled
are the only jigsaws that matter.

It’s obvious we all want to be told what to do.

We need screw-fitting lounge attachments
and parquet floors in the kitchen.

– Up go the milking blocks
towering leakily into oblivion.

– Dance to the time-ticking computer.

– Punch my soul with a roulette wheel.

What a riotous existence,
the one the robots invented.