Labi Siffre - Into The Light

Similes bred from contempt

Everything described in these critically acclaimed poems
Is LIKE something else

Mashed potatoes tumble from the fork LIKE
Unbedded thoughts - rain bounces on pavements LIKE
Wagtails on a newly mown lawn – time waits LIKE
A mugger in an uptown alley
Etcetera etcetera etcetera

It seems the poet can’t be bothered to attempt more
Than this mass-produced figurine of speech the lazy
And irritating cliché of simile
And the critics and fans don’t notice they’re being
Taken for granted by  someone who’s job it is
To do better but doesn’t give a damn

LIKE
An elite dignitary at a gala line-up who picks his nose
(With his right index finger) before shaking
Each hand
___

early morning debate for one

We demand they say what we want to hear. We demand they give us easy to understand, brief, cheap and comforting answers to complex questions and issues because we’re too lazy to wrestle with the questions and issues in depth. Then we blame them for not believing in what they say and for not solving the problems.

It’s an interesting system and no, i don’t have the answer and though i wrestle with the problem i’m too dim to solve it. Do i get points for acknowledging that the problem exists and if so, do the points help? No. Now get on with it.
___

An African story

For food my favourite uncle, my father’s identical twin brother Olu, was attacked by a shark; a tiger shark

I was watching with my father and my cousin Tunde, one of several of my cousins with that name, when the biting, the struggling, the screaming occurred

I helped them pull Uncle Olu from the sea to the bed of soft sand; horrific the way his eyes pleaded the way his mouth could not shout the way he was so cold and shivered the way the blood ran out

Later by years of failing to win back the love of his children and wife again and again he walked with one leg and a crutch into debt

That day when he cried and begged me to lend him still more, still my favorite i told him to leave, showed him the door

The following day by the river we found the crutch. Rufina his wife cursed me for refusing the loan. She cursed my father for reminding her every day that she was alone; but she never mentioned the shark. The shark got away.
___

at one hundred and forty thousand

we used to live in a boiled egg
we have since improved our lot

we now reside in a boiled sweet
with more luxury
with less nourishment

we have attained superior status
we are far from replete
___

easy phrases milk no aubergines

“the man who persecutes is
as brutalized
as the man he acts against”

the murdered woman
is superior
to the man who killed her?

perhaps, in a wishful thinking way,
but in each case, the former
state is, by most, preferred
to the latter’s futile plea

in easy truth, easy lies the lie.
uneasy truth be better; though
with ease few agree
preferring the lie to uncertainty
___