Ben Adams
Australia
Ben Adams is a writer, retail clerk, festival worker and research assistant whose poems have appeared in Australian Love Poems, The Grapple Annual, Indaily and Tulpa Magazine. His first complete collection of poetry, A Synonym for Sobriety, won the Friendly Street Single Poet series competition and was published in 2019.
something for the climate sceptics, conspiracy theorists, news corp hacks and you
with apologies to Charles Bukowski,
after his 'something for the touts, the nuns, the grocery clerks and you'
crimson sky, blood
bronze—the moon a talisman
of death
this is the world we have
not the one
we’d wished for
and your calls
for considering
alternative explanations
from those provided
everywhere
by experts consumed
with desperate knowing
about how this slouching beast
was birthed—
—strike me as nothing more
than a choking hazard
worse
than each
and every
wave of smoke
crashing
over bunkered cities
and burnt towns in this
new world order
you—and yours
have wrought
Scotty from marketing
—wants us shimmering
in the horizon haze
dumb beasts
cannibalizing
a fire-butchered
carcass
and burning divine
for the worst
of what Luther meant
never charity
without a cost
never seeking forgiveness
for the sins of our past
without a sideways glance
and whispers that—
despite the facts of history
it’s really them who should be forgiven
by us
for talking back
and daring to ask
not just for love, but recompense
because love
of all things
should not be
an incantation of the elect
—of some imagined unity
but a working-for
self-critique
and truth
and equity
the best of what Luther meant
was that people should work
for and in the light of their own lord
which, I guess
means something like
justice
and positive freedom
—a radical empathy
that doesn't ask the lamb
to get along with lions
love
is not a baptism of fire
but slow smouldering
solidarity
and difficult thought
not dumb beasts slouched
burning divine for the worst
of what he means by God
who kills the world?
Hitler was—
a tortured artist who loved animals
a vegetarian
and Charles Manson
was a hippy, a small-time muso
who called white American youth the young love
and sought to ensure the Age of Aquarius kicked off
with a helter-skelter race war that would end
conveniently
in his sole dominion over the remnants of a dead earth
don't always accept what people say
they believe in, vaguely—ask for specifics
don’t assume that words can’t be misunderstood
or misused
to hide their true meaning in a given context
take love, for instance
as Dr Hibbert once said
when Mr Burns returned from a walk in the woods
glowing radioactive hallucinations
of an uncharacteristic kindness toward his fellow citizens
in the guise of an alien benefactor—
does that mean the kind of love
between a man and a woman, or the love a man feels
for a fine Cuban cigar?
does it mean love for self, or others?
narrow love for land and nation
and worse—or solidarity with the masses
and those who may not look
or live, or love
like you do
don’t believe in gurus
no matter how convincing their performance
of understanding is
and know that all this
is a more complex game than just determining
good from bad, heroes from villains—
John Lennon asked us to imagine
all the people, sharing all the world as one
—but his gender politics were pretty shit
ask for specifics
because the thing is, I’m not saying
you can’t like John Lennon’s music
I’m not saying that art can always be equated with
or defined by the flaws or crimes
of its creators, but—
people like to say that real heroes don’t wear capes
but real monsters, too—dangerous people
don’t have to be anything other than ordinary bureaucrats
or nice guys
who stay angry on the inside
that boy you met by a campfire
who cares more about some godlike vision
of mother earth and the natural order
than he does about any human being
except himself
so—who kills the world?