Author: KA Burke

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Gaza Nakba 2023

vengeance
barbarity
decimation

torture
humiliation
degradation

displacement
dispossession
devastation

catastrophe
starvation
annihilation

collective punishment
ethnic cleansing
crimes against humanity
medieval brutality
siege mentality

systematic violence and destruction
sadistic cruelty and bloodlust
complete and utter carnage

horror upon horror
atrocity upon atrocity
day after day
night after night
hour after hour

unending terror and bombardment
holocaust death zone

genocide
apocalypse
armagedon…

In the name of God
what have you done?

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Peek-a-boo

Peek-a-boo
I’ve found you…

there she is
now she’s gone
disappearing into the ether
and back again
playing hide and seek
floating on the ceiling
hiding under the stairs
living in the cracks
peering back at you
from the inside out
just getting on with life

Hello. Hello…
is anyone there?

I thought I heard your voice
calling from far away

Is that really you?
trying to break through
sending messages of hope
from another dimension
somewhere over the rainbow
or on the dark side of the moon
circling in a black balloon
just getting on with death

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Fire And Fury Like The World Has Never Seen

Donald Trump - pop art

NOTE: I take no credit for the words in this poem. Only for the construction. With a few minor exceptions they are, in their entirety, the words, tweets, phrases, insults, self-descriptions and utterances of Donald J. Trump. The 45th president of the USA

Make America great again
Dishonest. Lying. Dummy
A totally overrated clown who speaks without knowing facts
Fire and fury like the world has never seen

Sad. Crazy. Phoney
The mind of a very dumb and backward child
Dumb as a rock. Incredible covfefe. The Chosen One
Fire and fury like the world has never seen

My IQ is one of the highest – and you all know it!
So great looking and smart
In my great and unmatched wisdom
Fire and fury like the world has never seen

Something very big has just happened!
Bigly, bigly. Piggly wiggly. Big league bigly (1)
I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it
Fire and fury like the world has never seen

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Saint Andrew and the Lesbian Vampires

Carmilla

The Internet is a beautiful thing and a wonderous gift to humanity, even though it is undoubtedly corrupting our politics and destroying the moral fabric of society. This morning I started off reading about Saint Andrew’s Day and ended up on a page about lesbian vampires. How the devil did that happen? What does it say about the perilous state of my mind? Let alone my sexual proclivities. And what would my therapist say? If I even had a therapist. I blame the damn hyperlinks. They are so distracting. I hardly ever get through an entire article without my attention being hijacked by something else potentially more interesting. It’s the same in my offline life too. I’ve always been like this. My first teacher Miss Hilary diagnosed the problem which was obvious even then. It’s right there in black and white in my first school report card. – Keith is easily distracted. He must try harder. – Wow! That still hurts Miss Hilary. I was barely seven years old. And don’t think I forget the time you whacked me with the ruler when you had me alone in the cloakroom. I still don’t know what I was meant to have done wrong, although no doubt most seven year old boys deserve a good thrashing every now and again. Just to keep them in line and to serve as a warning of further punishments to come.

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Escape Fantasy

Abstract Painting
Image by Raheel Shakeel from Pixabay

I am drinking a strong black coffee with two sugars. Sitting in my usual spot on the Paseo. In front of the little park and playground. Absent-minded. Dreaming. Watching the world go by. Mothers and fathers, babies in prams, children and pets, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandparents, teenagers, middle aged men, young lovers, cyclists, dog walkers and their canine companions, street peddlers, delivery men, municipal workers, groups of friends, women bringing home their shopping from the market. A marching band is playing in the distance and small birds hop and flit between the tables in expectation of a free lunch or at least a few spare crumbs. I am wearing my bunnet and my three euro sunglasses which make me invisible to the passers by. I can see them but they cannot see me. That’s how it normally works. Or so I tell myself. And it’s what I choose to believe.

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Where are you my love?

Feather

When you died I did not know where you had gone. I could not comprehend your absence, the reality of your non-being, or the fact that you would never be coming home again.

I stumbled through empty rooms and corridors, clutching at the white-washed walls, crouching in dark corners, crying out for you… “Where are you my love? Where are you?”

It’s a question which still troubles and confuses me. A question which I cannot answer. I look for you everywhere. And sometimes I find you.

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Four-Fourteen

Numbers

It’s 4:14 in the morning
And I cannot sleep
Why is it always 4:14?

Why do we seek a magical significance in numbers?
Searching for an explanation
Looking for a sign
As if the universe is speaking to us
Imparting a higher meaning
Revealing the truth at last

The man behind the curtain has a message he wants to share
It must be important
He is agitated
But he cannot find his tongue
He has no mouth and he’s choking on his words again

Words have no meaning anymore
Everything is lost in translation
And we no longer have the key

Besides, there’s no one else here but you and I
And you are only a memory now
A fading photograph
A vanishing star

A restless ghost in the endless night
Who stays with me till the morning light

And I am the tin man in the bedroom
The drowning sailor washed up on the shore
The test crash dummy in the bed next door

31 May 2019

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Don’t Panic Mr Mainwaring. Brexit Means Brexit!

Brexit

Brexit means Brexit according to the UK Prime Minister. Theresa May. Chief architect of the hostile environment for immigrants at the Go Home Office. The bloody-minded midwife of the Windrush scandal. The dancing queen of disaster who has turned humiliation into an art form on the national and international stage.

It’s a neat slogan. Brexit means Brexit. Easy to remember. Nicely packaged. And designed to appeal to simple minded optimists and deluded idiots alike. Sadly no one bothered to work out in advance what it actually means in practice. And when you get down to brass tacks you are immediately confronted with a brick wall. That’s the problem with meaningless tautologies. They don’t take you very far. And you end up going round and round in circles till you’re so dizzy that you just want to lie down in a dark room and throw up.

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Time is Fixed and Not Fixed

Clock

Time is fixed in the photograph which you remember so clearly as if it was yesterday. The photograph provides a window into the past. Opening a portal between now and then. Taking you back to previous lives and times. Like time travel on the cheap. Before time travel has been invented. Past and present are reunited, like long lost friends, as if there’s no barrier between them. And time collapses, as if it didn’t really exist at all. And yet, when you try to remember what happened immediately before or after the photograph was taken, your mind stutters and draws a blank. The exact details, if not forgotten, are hazy and indistinct. If forced to remember, you will find yourself inventing a storyline. Filling in the gaps. Because not knowing what really happened is shocking and offensive and too terrifying to admit. But the photograph itself leaves such a distinct impression on your mind. The impression of an abiding memory. The reality of the past at a fixed point in time. A life lived and a life remembered.

Where does that leave us? No further forward I’m afraid.

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