Poetry: Louis Kasatkin

By Louis Kasatkin

Louis is editorial administrator at www.DestinyPoets.co.uk and founder of Destiny Poets and in his spare time is a civic, community, political activist, blogger and general nuisance to the status quo!

Louis Kasatkin

The End of Empire

Magnolia-scented archipelago morning,
camouflaged gun-carriages
slinking along
taut cobblestoned arteries
to the grand Palace de Ville;
half-awake kepi’d corporals
tune battered transistor radios
catching the tresses of
fleeting Francoise Hardy chansons,
their spiritual melange of
love, hope and understanding
struck down by the
bayonet sharp rays of the sun
glinting on pristine marble statues,
quiescent cherubs of moments
dawning and dying,
holding thoughts in thrall
evoking a lassitude that will never
see its own likeness again
in all the mirrors
that blank and fade,
as the first of the artillery
heralds the crucifixion
of Coup d’etat.
***

DUMMY

In the darkened gloom
of a wooden tomb,
you kept me smothered
in a dank ,musty cloth,
my burial shroud wrapped around me,
like nightmares wrap themselves
around my dreams
were I be allowed to dream,
to suffocate on my own dust
passing time watching iron nails rust,
distant noises muffled
my own screams caught in a throat
that cannot issue its own currency of speech,
my counterfeit visage
its motionless mouth,
my fugue turns a darker shade of night;
until,
until,
until you release me
on parole again;
and as I sit obediently on your knee,
the applause reaches its crescendo
and you bow your head
as Charles did upon the chopping block
to which my thoughts stray
and before you put me back
into the wooden tomb,
I know now,
what I must do…

Setu, February 2020