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poem

I first published this 15 years ago on this blog (in 2005)… eerily prescient...

The Shape of Things to Come

Resembles a triumphant trump of doom;
Is like a hollow room; a horn of plenty;
A ballerina’s shoe; a house in Hooville,
Like a devil’s mouse; a bang-
Drum, a pirate drunk on deadman’s

Rum; like a broken broom used to brush
Away the webs from day-dreaming boys
In a math exam; like a rack of lamb;
A donut convention; a depleted pension;
Like the sort of position churchmen don’t

Like to mention; is shaped like a poem,
Mute and dumb; like a big bronze bell
Held by a handlebar-moustachioed strongman
Working for Barnum; like a circus tent;
Like the hole rent in just such an umbrella;

Like a sausage and some French mustard;
Seems to be hoist on its own petard; looks
Like rain; is infinite, so will and won’t come again.
Is shaped like love; is shaped like a question
Mark and also an exclamation mark and also

A period. The shape of the terrible future
Is a sonnet and a no, looks like a Chinese box and
A door without locks, a hairless fox,
A vortex, a matrix, a nexus, a government rope.
Dystopia up around that there bend

Appears to be green soap abandoned
Under an infernal never-ending tap. The future,
According to the latest discovery, is a bit
Like a U-boat captain, or a tortoise neck.
The bad things ahead look like a two-mile wreck.
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