Correspondence

1

I write and write,
but you never answer.
I give you all your names and titles
- try hard to fit them in one line - and say,
'Your Royal Highness, I respectfully
but strongly urge you...' and, 'A brief
reply would be most welcome'.

But truthfully,
it's rather galling
to write these courtesies. Given one small jab
of a truth drug, I would write: To call
you gangster is unfair to gangsters. You cheat
and murder in the name of justice. In your country
women are chattels, and children die in infancy. Instead
of bringing your corrupt police to court (as you
will never do) it is Your Royal Odiousness who ought
to be arrested (but respectfully allowed
a team of lawyers
and a comfortable cell).

Maybe that's why
you never answer.

Maybe you can read
between the lines.

2

Excelentisimo: your police
have lists of names and numbers
and they ring these people telling them
they are going to die.
(Some do.)

Excelentisimo: I can't
abide your justice, but equally I object
to this title you assume.

Some things are truly excellent:
the voice of Billie Holiday,
Blake’s Songs of Innocence,
Picasso's pop-eyed stripey owl,
the life of Primo Levi - all these
are very, very excellent.

I urge you therefore to renounce
the use of this and other spurious
appellations. Do not carry
words into slavery,

Señor.

3

What are you, mister?

What is your place
in the taxonomy of life?

You are bestial, brutal, some would say.
Rattus norvegicus, then, Crotalus horridus,
Carcharadon carcharias? No, it's wrong
to bandy animal names like this.
Nether the rat, nor timber rattlesnake,
nor great white shark (unlike Your Excellency)
can help being what they are. Well:

maybe then a thing of fantasy,
a comic-horror fish, assembled
by some ichthyological Frankenstein:
Piscis noxius grandiosus,
ugly, bloated, giving off a stink,
a bolt through your anal fin,
manoeuvering in your element, power.

Too fanciful: you're still
of the genus Homo.

But you assert the lie, deny the truth,
as naturally as an oriole sings; you don't
resemble anyone I know; and therefore,
lacking better evidence, and to avoid
confusion, you are entered in the book:
Homo mendax violator: found
in every continent, prolific, hungry.