Poem collaborations

I applaud you

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I applaud you
You who toil in the madhouse of the world,
I see your shadows
Exposed to the viral flames
You, who were always invisible
Silently killed by unseen forces
I applaud you
I am not you
I applaud you all the same

It is you, on the margins,
Sustaining this broken time
Refugee, migrant. Your story
Always the same,
So, I applaud you, mothers and daughters
Sons of the earth, who feed us
Even as your suffering continues,
You're starvation but another day

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I applaud you, now
From my balcony of refuge
Yes, we all now seek refuge too
In this locked down asylum, where
Distance is now our shield
But you now see us for what we are
Refugees without moving
Locked down, safe, depending on you

So, I applaud you, with a silent chorus
Carried across the pure infectious air,
Breathe don't breathe
And I know you don't ask
To be celebrated like others,
Simply to be recognized, not a hero in our midst
But you, the disposable, the forgotten,
the wretched of history
What you contribute, remains a mystery
Yet in that mystery, the basic truth of life

I applaud you

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Brad Evans, 2020

Alone

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Alone. Is there a more painful word?

Merchant ships set sail.

Plying bodies as their trade.

Bristol. Liverpool. Ports of no call.

Oceans filled with unmarked graves.

Alone. Is there a more savage word?

A cartography for the masses.

Enlightened lines on empty maps.

Abducting children, the promissory labour

Gordian bonds. A scientific Cross.

Alone. Is there a more violent word?

Soldiers marching forward.

Forever England. Where the paupers lay.

Trenches dug for eternal resting.

Pity the working class slaves.

Alone. Is there a more devastating word?

Monumental battles, still they continue.

Never again. Motoring time.

A solitary death amongst millions.

Myth of Nations. Progress divine.

Alone. Is there a more fearful word?

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Our Enemies now amongst us.

A terrifying refrain.

Planes. Trains. Hope. All weaponised.

Imagination brutally slain.

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Alone. Is there a more tragic world?

Cities of millions. Connected by fate.

Walking past. Invisible armies without coffins. Only the streets.

The boulevards. Continue with names.

Alone. Is there a more desperate word?

Solitary confinement. Domestic.

Abandonment.

Awaiting the next visit.

Punches. Fill the sanctuary air.

Alone. Is there a more sorrowful word?

Kind acts of betrayal.

Broken memories. Wounding now.

Grieving for a future.

Never to pass. Life in torn.

Alone. Is there a more shameful word?

Sanctifying claims of humanity.

The worldless denied.

What promise? What possibility?

Another casualty. Needlessly reminds.

Alone

Brad Evans, 2016

Time

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Time is nothing. Time is everything.

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Time is the horizon of hope, the wound that cuts, the flight that returns, the passing of the storm.

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Time is destiny unfolding, the historical placement, the world revealing, its sadness foretold.

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Time takes no prisoners, the destroyer of all myths, it asks nothing of reason, penetrates the soul.

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Time is the forgetting of language, the forgiving of actions, the world of feelings, feeling alone.

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Time is the luxury of possessors, the richest of riches, yet forever their torment, incarcerated minds.

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Time is the more than being, the event of becoming, poetic imagination, irreducible to words.

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Time is the envy of tyrants, the throne that is empty, the earth that is liberated, the solitude of thought.

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Time is the deadliest silence, the triumphant chorus, the shadow of remembrance, but a fleeting embrace.

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Time is the fateful healer, the bringer of sorrows, the deep river of mercy, the ineffable void.  

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Time demands nothing for nothing, Dante’s reflection, Heidegger’s mourning, Nietzsche’s return. 

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Time is the fall into freedom, the wondrous exception, the impossible promise, keeper of dreams.

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Time is the peaceful violence, the threshold of existence, the graceful performance, passing of worlds.

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Time is thinking in motion, the force of expression, the affirmation of difference, the love for it all.

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Time is the beautiful spirit, refusing the fateful, the endlessly possible, the colors of the earth.

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Time is nothing. Time is everything.  

Brad Evans, 2016

November 11th

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Every mirror has been shattered

Within a kaleidoscope of liberated hate

This world of ours is dying

Of a broken heart and lost friends

Landscapes of intellectual devastation

Covered by shards of sorrowful dreams

Wounded by promises of hope

For a time, the future, never that was

We're dying a pitiful death

Tragedy becomes us all

Casualties of organized forgetting

Mere captives, waiting to fall

New Tyrants with old messages

Occupy palaces in the skies

The seduction of the masses

No longer deceived, born of the lies

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Sold into a solitary condition

Together, we seem alone

Cruel optimism, they called it

Chained to a suffocating embrace

Prophets of greatness now guide us

Leading into the polluted abyss

To witness the slaughter of Virgil

Weaponised ignorance sealing his fate

With hindsight it all seemed inevitable

Scripted by producers of despair

Another road to serfdom

Laughed at in a humorless tone

Collectivized by trauma

Fear consumes us all

Another whitewashing of history

Burning books takes many forms

Still yet we find reasons to dance

Despite the cold darkness of the caves

Shadows, now tender with fury

Cast alight with a poetic flame

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Brad Evans, 2016

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Explosion of Fate

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Red skies burn

Over Zacatecas Skies

Like the dust reaching

For the heavens

A contradiction of times

Giving rise to memories

Of this bitter sweet land

Where hopes and pains collide

Passing through tender hands

But the earth returns silent

And so the poets retreat

To gaze upon Eros

And her landscapes of wine

So the dust falls to earth

And the memory awakes

To the dawn of a new tomorrow

And this explosion of fate

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                     Brad Evans, 2016

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