Two Poems

Inventor of Metal Weapons

and what

did you think would happen? That Gods 
would behave themselves? I know why good hearts 
plague latter day saints: those aren’t 
real Gods – they’re saints. Gods don’t
speak from caves or send their sons. We don’t 
save, bless and forgive. This shepherd’s farce
ruined everything; for balance came ornate,
magenta hells. Ancients had no use for them: hells 
had nothing to rail against. We snorted their innards, 
uncorked the bile. We gave land and titles 
to the nether. In warmth our sermons gushed 
from fools. We never flinched, and never sought 
to behave ourselves. We learnt to cut 
through man like fruit and honour  

violence, when did we 

stop looking at things and wondering, ‘Could this 
kill a man?’ Or spurn the reddest river? The whitest 
braid of skulls? You sent your prayers to petal sniffing 
dolls and must now be reminded our history is the history 
of violence – why, how and how much; who wields it, 
and to what result. It’s in the space massacres clear 
that art flourishes, spring returns and first, patriotic
generations unwomb; only in the aftermath of forgotten 
slaughter are lovers tempted, maladies cured and pets 
gifted to delighted nieces. We know this because we drained
metal into a mould and let it dry. We made sharp things 
and celebrated by stamping our feet in a quake 
that broke the oceans. Then we descended to ‘save, 

bless and forgive’. There was so much blood, 

the hissing sun wept in steam. We stole the world. We cut 
long receptacles into the whimpering hearts of men 
and lay there – like Gods. Village after village, wise men 
counseled chiefs to sue for peace as our thunderous 
rabble grew. They waited, kneeling at their gates, ready 
with a songbook on our valour. We killed them first, as true 
fear requires something unnecessary – something that 
violates grace; a sport where there’s no telling who could 
become the next, wailing example; where they live within 
someone’s reckless, personal sense of justice. Our rituals 
righted a century of humiliation and struck our dreaded 
gong into a new world. And before dismissing this 
as the savagery of ancients, be informed we are still here,

bird, 

we are here. Ways and means change. Never the gaze. Between 
then and now lies nothing – the hoax of time, the hoax 
of history. We are here, knitting your wires today. We put cement 
on metal and groomed gunpowder. We traveled from muskets 
and cannons, sheaths and trebuchets to tanks and rifles, ballistics 
and sarin. Where once our hordes had rampaged, trampling 
bodies and curdling the piss of our enemies, we now screech
our metal through the air, raining volcanos. Dragons. Torching 
skies. Bursting cities. Corals adorn what meets our warships. Deserts
mistake our shells for sand. But what good is it – to speak of bullets,
when the real article looms. A new nectar. A wild efficiency. The true 
substance of Gods. In its radiance, we killed ideology, owning the left, 
right and centrifuges. The Little Boys and Fat Men. We have finally 
learnt to play properly with fire – learnt to play 

with proper fire: black fields, moonless,

glass eyes. Dead winter, fluorescent snow. Nothing 
moves. Nothing grows. The earth melts down its own 
cut mouth. The flaming jump in boiling seas. Bloodlines 
go blind, whiten and foam – maimed, misshapen, 
soft as paste. Widows bleat. Their faces peel. We kill 
the leaves. We kill their beasts. Our plume rises skyward, 
tattooing the lying throat of heaven. This is new magic. This 

is beautiful. The spear 

once plunged ripely. Your forefather screamed. 
But you live where plutonium sleeps. And so, 
cannot scream. Cannot speak. The whole thing happens 
too fast to speak. You can only grovel to the one lesson 
that all bandaged histories teach – the God of War 

is all the gods and all the gods

come after. And then comes 
you. Our inheritance, our 
bird. We only ask you 
prove yourself – skin 
your saints, clot 
an offering and tribute 

violence, smell 

incense, radium flowers 
in orbs revealing
all things happen
to find forgiveness
in sullen crypts
when Gods tongue
air with iron.

Hupp 

Everyone has
beggar stories 

remember, that one time

when a dwarf 
on a skateboard 
approached one 
side, a eunuch 
the other? We were caught 
between a torso 
and croaking lipstick
in a crossfire of pleading
but we didn’t stiffen 
or avert our gaze  
or squirm fleeting
ordeals away. There is
art here.

Remember when the girl (who 
could’ve been so pretty – no just 
look closely at her features) was 
holding a child who held 
a smaller child? Russian dolls 
could never compete 
with that arresting, 
sequential, three-headed 
art. We mimed a tickle 
at the gurgling snot 
and hoped the kohl 
would ward. We don’t 
discriminate 
when it comes to finding
babies cute.

They ambushed us, 
splashed grey water 
on our windshield, 
ragged it dry, without 
consent. We didn’t mind. Only 
a brute would mind. A bit 
uncultured, how he shoos 
them away, he doesn’t 
offer language, just barks 
a loud sound, something 
like, ‘hupp!’ We did attempt 
to train his sensitivities, to free
doves into his crass heart   
but he just scoffs at riddles 

like how to ably hand 
a coin to an art with 
slippers on both, or what 
manifesto to adopt in order 
to tactfully enjoy a performance 
by the Red Light Superjuniors 
Thirty Second Theatre Club 
of Handstands, Flips 
and Squeezing Through 
Hoops. This man of ours 
has never understood 
packets of Marigold 
under the seat, or what it means 
to discern floor from tar, indoors 
from out – he doesn’t grasp certain 
humilities befitting the luckier 
accidents of birth, but he 

doesn’t have to, he only 
has to drive. This evening, 
there’s a talk
at the habitat centre.