How odd to still be watching
car crash house fire terrorist attack
and be we are the unsure we unsure the are we are unsure
if the cosmos and the polis will ever really agree,
if it is Augustine good god garden and falling so
into the abandonment of a Lisbon-like earthquake
with the whore houses standing, the temples of low men fallen
or free will alienation god benevolent impotent god?
Guilt and punishment linked only randomly,
the freak accident of sin slithering to suffering.
There is no causal god.
Not even the algorithm of the dictionary
will explain the gap between could and should,
the rise of reason-calculating individuals.
We by-pass 1984 and contextualise evil by saying:
How sweet to drown the human computer
in fine data,
violating only a few tenets,
not imagining this or that tsunami to be significant.
Adorno always misquoted
and everyone still writing poetry.
Eleanor Jackson is a poet and arts producer. Her poetry is published in Overland Journal, Arc Poetry Magazine, Going Down Swinging, Peril Magazine, Scum Magazine and the Cordite Poetry Review. Her first chapbook, A Leaving, is published by Vagabond Press.