Like the Great Fires

Tinder me well
Ready to burn
But I want
Conflagration
Like the Great Fires
Let me burn London
Leaping
Hovel to hut
To the gates
Melt iron
Cavort
To palace door
Selling histories

Buy or burn?
Marie Kondo
Let flames free –
Tax havens?
Don’t bring joy!
Worker exploitation?
Don’t bring joy!
Colonial hangover?
Don’t bring joy!

Let them go
Together burn
Till we see ancient path
Wood
To stone
To belong

NanaBjörn Aug 2023

Without me

Without me*
Knowing
I might be more Moses
Than Captain
Leading a charge
Taking us over border
Into tommorrows
I accepted
Might be yesterday’s man.

“Unblooded”**
Sketch battle plans
In tangled arteries
Bones bent
By institutional indifference
Can’t find ink?
Draw down ichor
Scrawl message
“fairest in the land?”

Carnival mirror
Distorts
Abundance
Scatters to chaos
Hope
Decomposes to promises
Community
Unworks
To fiber
To skin
To sheep

Maybe
It is undone time
Fallow fields
Reclaim bodies
To nurture possibilities

NanaBjörn Aug 2023

*Inspired by “Well you Can Do it Without Me” by Father John Misty on “Fear Fun” 2012

**WW1 soldiers showing up at hospitals without physical wounds were sometimes called the “unblooded”

Half my life place

Last place
Half my life place
Score first place?
So racist
It made the news
Again

Used to own us
Used to steal us
Used to kill us
They never forgot
The thrill of control
Over brown bodies

Mentored
By men
Succored on stories
Of magnificent conquest
Rescuing “SAVAGES”
To fit in boxes of economy

Still haten
The messy reality
History
Culture
Family

We know our ghosts
Absorb their stories
Watch through borrowed eyes

Last place
Half my life place
Secret Circle
Sisters and brothers
Leaders and Seers

One
Short
Sentence
“some progress”

That is you dear friend
A seed of hope
In lost places.

NanaBjörn Aug 2023

Raised a spider

Almost had it
Sick bastard
Don’t want it?
It changed?
I changed

They play a game
So controlled
Mother approved
No move unconsidered
Yeses transmuted
Nos softened
Salvation guaranteed

My harm
You weigh
My sorrow
You measure
My real
You doubt

But mother
While cruel
Raised spider
Seer of threads
Desperately taut/taught
Tongue torn truths
Bloods
Show us futures

NanaBjörn Aug 2023

Do you?

Do you rage
Watching dishes
Sweeping floors
Keeping quiet
While you see it?

Do you rage
Pussy grabbers
Bitch callers
Mother bares
While you live it?

Do you rage
Eating your body
Tasting your mind
Feasting your pains
While you hurt?

DO YOU?

"Where are you

Match?"

Your time has come

Tinder real dry

“Strike –
Your army awaits”

NanaBjörn Aug 2023

Sulfer shame

Strike the match
Sulfur shame
Parasite
Or policy?

I read your poem
You see it too

The terrible passions
We leash
Beneath dark suiting.

Was I bought
So cheaply?
Illusions of hope
Cruel optimisms
That flay

Each night
Inspecting
Skin turned hard
Cell by cell
Transformed
To monster

Service standards
Productivity
Petty powers
Tattered garments
Tinder lite/light

NanaBjörn Aug 2023