The Apocalyptic Anarchist
To break the cursed loom
Of Fate and Boss alike –
In the night, we Luddites of the Firmament.
Yet should our doom arrive
(Despite/in spite/because of) our own best efforts –
From Twm Gwynne
The fight remains alive, in sight of foes
To ever strive and struggle -
Cast back the rock that rests upon us!
That crushing weight
Lands fast on shoulders
Undeserving of the mouldering fate.
Such a boulder is a slight that noble hands
By determined might may overturn
So once-bent backs
Should no longer lack
The space required to unfurl.
Thus black-clad and grim of countenance,
In battle-trance beneath the moon,
We own the hands damned
To break the cursed loom
Of Fate and Boss alike –
In the night, we Luddites of the Firmament.
Yet should our doom arrive
(Despite/in spite/because of) our own best efforts –
The bloated bloody sun arise
Among the sundered acid skies;
The coming crimson nuclear dawn
Long prophesied! that humbler gains might be denied –
“Damned ingrates! Unpatriotic!”
So have the fear-mongers ever sung
Since this way of life was young.
Yet now I see that every wretched one of us
Will wring and reap a wracking tithe
To dry the chant from cracking tongues
In the heartless glowing desert
Of their immolation’s kingdom come.
Such a figure might present the apocalyptic anarchist:
Weary, wandering, warrior of the waste,
The lonesome, irradiated ponderer
Of a world so utterly debased.
Through the haze of those harrowed, nameless days
Emerges the resolute remnant;
As dust-bowl deserters
Of rebuilder’s chain-forging efforts,
As self-possessed survivors
Gleefully slinging detritus,
A romantic commune of nomadic nihilists
Amid eternal animistic hinterlands,
The sharp-axed hunters
Of the surviving bleeders in their bunkers;
Those who failed to share, beware.
Twm Gwynne
Eater of wild things, denier of stricture, communiser, poet, gardener, casual rambler - in essence, an anarchist in pursuit of the freest life he can grip. More of his writing can be found at his blog, Among Thorns, and at the radical poetry project he contributes to, Night Forest Cell of Radical Poets.
