Don't go pinching your nose

Born to a world of noughts and ones
and thrown to the dogs of woeful repair,
where care is a swear-word
and duty is dead.

Sloshed about from discord to disgust
and taught to be ruled by fear,
these are the unwanted gifts
wrapped in Guardians
and presented at the gates of hell;
black-eyed subjects of the authorities.

Green corns,
pert and firm and while not yet ripe,
their hairs are there for all to see
and they are palatable to the tasteless,
to those who have normalised the intolerable.

Prized by the suited and beautied
as their favoured untaxable charity,
why should they question what really goes on?
Look how green corns thrive!
They’re actually very good for the system, you know.

The young bud lives
in a house all her own,
and as her maladie escapes
from fields of excellence,
she is seen as a vegetable,
to grow and enjoy
as something to eat.

Their time is valuable
and book-cooking numbers is important,
like exacting words so they don’t make sense
even to experts.

And they know how she was treated
in the barren cloud of her past
but she may come and go
as she pleases
and return bruised and broken.
As long as they have time for a cigarette,
they’ll suffer her torment.

Intensive and individual,
the dripping glossary reports,
backed by gorgons and the three eyes
of a minor-torturer;
a private schemer;
a high-class pimp;
there for their own
to be enjoyed and sucked dry
under a veil of carefully hidden moon-shadows.

‘I won’t be long,’ she says,
but they’re busy texting for pizzas
and Jackpot Joy,
and as the driver slams shut her door
And tyres scream her pain,
they’re blind to the careless slaps
as he tells her, ‘It’s been a long day,’
tearing down her panties to reveal his reward.

Green corns have sprouted everywhere,
plump but slowly poisoned,
their boxes ticked
baked and boiled
to reduce themselves to nothing,
mauled by men who dote on their own
as Gods at home,
passed around like so many sacks of potatoes
laid down and kept in damp sculleries
to be peeled and slashed,
ripped and torn,
loved and despised.

The fleshing-out process
remains undetected,
and her comings and goings are to be expected,
considering her past,
so let them at her,
think the carers.

She’s much more than their job’s worth
and perhaps she deserves it,
so clean yourselves off on her stomach
and in her face why not.
So long as she’s on the pill,
who’s to know?

And while you read this sad little tale,
supping on your coffee
with chocolate on top,
arrest your thoughts
from your busy, difficult life
for those girls in care
passed from man to man
before you and your conscience
under a flag of love
into which they puke and wipe off dirt.

As you sup on your frothy coffee,
imagine that you’re drinking
from the clitoris of a state-funded girl
after twenty-five men have filled her
with their sin.

Don’t go pinching your nose.
It might hurt.