Can't Downsize The Void
Can’t downsize the
void.
No cost-of living
rises in benefits to cut there.
Can’t cremate it like
Gandhi’s bones.
No ashes to forget
10,000,000 years.
Can’t fight proxy wars
in the void.
Can’t topple kings, explicate political mayhem.
No public letters, no
number 2 official.
No families reunited
in the void.
No workers sent to
pulse limbo.
Can’t compromise over
World Trade.
Revisit old dingy
punishment cell.
Can’t hear the Pope’s
mass from the void.
No marijuana studies.
No ‘Thin’ drugs.
No Lady of the Broom
sweeping up broken glass.
No serial bombers, No
Carnival Air.
Can’t rush paperbacks
into print in the void.
Can’t admit failure to
improve computers.
No help for Inner-City
residents planned.
Can’t ask to review
blood evidence.
No crime labs to fault
in the void.
Demonstrators march
thousands of millennia unseen.
Billions upon billions
in charity never bring aid.
No role for Evil. No
factory doors closed.
Can’t legislate
anonymity & selflessness in the void.
2 February 1997
[Published in The Dance Of Yellow Lightning Over The
Ridge:
Poems 1993-1997. © 1998 by Jim Cohn.]
APPEARS IN
The Dance Of Yellow Lightning Over The Ridge: Poems 1993-1997
(Writers & Books Publications, 1998)