Freedom of a Certain Kind

by Graham Cunningham (November 2018)
 

Yekaterinburg, Ingrid Barber, 2018

 

Was it a golden age

of freedom of a certain kind

and were we then the lucky ones

the unchained, in my terms?

The next utopia may be rich and sweet

a virtual paradise perhaps

and honeycombed with images but

from which there is no escape

no vantage point

or cold light of day.

 

From restless souls are we come

from buccaneers with fast boats

their oak planks formed by those

press-ganged, more rooted souls

content to bend to greater wills.

From obsessive engineers,

gentlemen with wide eyes

freed now but driven still

in pursuit of superhuman strengths.

 

Children of Renaissance Man

it is perhaps a wondrous thing

that we—beyond the buzzing hive

where myriad small desires

are swallowed into black holes

beyond the four-cornered, transfixed

medieval firmament—

that we survived for so long.

The desire for freedom such a scarce

mutation of the tribal norm.

 

My golden ark of freedom

is twisting in the wind

My finely schooled opinions now

mere relative to Thine.

twitching tabloid mind.

Captain Ahab and his whale

seemingly both hunted down

just preening and penned

celebrities now. And Ahab’s men

embraced by nanny’s sweaty palms.

 

From moody loners are we come?

Contrary souls on horse back

disappearing hungry out of sight 

exiles from the feeding pack.

Returning Heathcliffs saying I am

no mere link in survival’s chain.

Lone stars defying fate

the dance of death that used to wait

on mutant children of the tribe

and may be on its way back?
 

 

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Graham Cunningham is a retired British architect. He is also a writer of occasional essays—and even more occasional poems—on aspects of political correctness and mass media group think. His work has been published in a number of online journals in Britain and the USA. This poem was originally published in 2014 in The Imaginative Conservative.

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