20th January 2017 Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

Too old to cruise in bars
Or wait for a booty-call,
I am past clever hopes
That flirting in dives
Is other than dishonesty
Or that obsessing
In poetic pretense
About the darkening
Of our public discourse
Will serve a sound purpose:
I only note the half truths.

If scholarship can explain
The myths and trauma
That undermine sanity
And drive a polity to cruelty
Linking ‘being your own priest'
To the sham and shame
Of Theriesenstadt,
I have to ask: Who is to blame
That America, so much used
As it is to success and luxury,
Is so blind to separation?

Thucydides warned
Against democracy
Being subverted
By poets and orators
But he was unexposed
To the trite rubbish
Of twittering and trolling
And the formation of tribes
That promote discrimination
Spreading hatred and division
Making light of others' suffering.

At the centre of things
Where money talks
There are silences
As the price of dissent
Is factored in to stocks:
If taxes are lowered
And regulations laid aside
There will be profits,
So that integrity
Becomes an option
For mendacious henchmen.

Estranged from quiet conviviality
Out for a good time, up for it,
Getting the rush, posing the self,
Posting a squeak of presence,
Oblivious to the thinning crowd
In a garish, decaying fairground,
This is how things fall apart -
The pussy-footing at the dismantling
Of the reciprocities that kept us safe -
Vermin foraging the crumbs of decency
That could lead the lost home.

But it is true that love is dangerous
And that we all crave adoration
Aspiring to centre-stage folies de deux:
It seems that Nijnsky wrote
About Diaghilev:
"I loved him sincerely and,
When he told me that
The love of women was a terrible thing,
I believed him'.
This is then the task, to hope for love
But set aside distinction and perfection.

In the darkness that is gathering
Ethics have become footnotes
And those who care for the future
Intone "I will be true to myself,
But let me rest before the test"
And those in authority ignore
The welfare of the weak:
"Cursed are the meek
For they shall inherit a deficit
Of understanding and respect
And retain not even the little they have".

And Auden later repudiated
The voice in which he folded
The romantic lie that
We must all love one another or die
Because he sensed the reality
That we do exist alone, filed away
In suburbs and skyscrapers
Trying to find our voice
But unable to push away the gag
Stuffed down our throats
By a calculating culture.

For sure, there is stupor enough:
We don't love each other
Well or even at all for the most part,
And raising a glass of rye
In irony and a nod to empathy
Is a poor substitute for
Seeing others as we would
Want to be seen, or shaking
Off the dust of negation
And the confusions of lust
To extend a helping hand.