THREE POEMS by BEN RIDDLE

Oh Boy, Here I Go Killing Again

Drone strikes strafe the suburban

streets of Kandahar,

I don’t know who turned on

friendly fire, but the fires came and rained

down imperial apocalypse,

an urban cleansing,

a street by street

annexing of

kids and mothers.

I forgot the HUD inverts;

left becomes right, right; left,

up is down, that hospital

makes either bombs,

or families.

We are replicating the asphyxiation of Dresden,

asking for the same kind of

forgiveness.

It is for the greater good, I tell myself;

I, a drone, a bureaucrat.


Shelved Ideas

Every night,

I decide to change my entire life.

I’ve wondered if it might be the moonlight

filtering through my window as I

tinker tanker with clocks,

the tiny mechanics of time

pieces strung up like flayed men or

the working class;

I take them apart like

the Australian unions; police the

remains like

my blue-gloved hands will find

evidence of the treachery

of time.

We stay up late

because it’s the only time we have

to ourselves like

it is the only gap we get between

racing speed traps and 9am

to work and back,

like it is the only time we have

to be ourselves and dance

covered in paint

in your studio, or naked beneath

the moon. The laundry is

done or undone,

we procrastinate sleep because

living like this is dreaming;

is all we have when

people are done taking from us.

I am tired taking sick leave

to feel like myself.

If everyone is sick, then it has to be

something in the water, in

the ecosystem;

if everyone in the system is sick,

maybe we are breathing in too many flecks

of rust like

the machine is old and needs to be

replaced, or maybe we are breathing in

too much oil, and

we do not realise we are choking on it;

or maybe the whole system is

on fire and

there is no longer enough oxygen

so maybe we can’t breathe,

maybe this is our last

gasp of consciousness as we fade

hallucinating illusions like the differences

between us, or

that anyone in government gives a fuck

about our homes, our water,

our fucking air.

Late at night,

I think it’s a little easier to breathe

while we lie

with someone we love and pretend

that tomorrow is going to be different, or

better, or

we say things like “it’s going to be okay,”

because we want it to be, or

we want the person,

the people we love to believe

for a little while;

in anything.

Every night,

I decide to change my entire life.

In the morning,

I choose to do nothing.


Streetcorner Sermon

Someone had graffitied Matthew 6:5-8

on the wall across from the church where

they teach you how to hate;

a tired anointment of black ink

on grey wall, somehow

a holier font

than the spring inside the church.

In Rome, they would soak

fabric in piss to

bleach it white and angelic.

Perhaps the priesthood still baptises

itself with human filth.

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites

who pray to be seen on streetcorners.


The most interesting thing about Ben Riddle is that he is building a little library of all the poetry he can get his hands on. The voices of poets go still too soon.

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