Friday 22 February 2019

Let's All Be Smugglers Of Beautiful Ideas.

      Being a lover of poetry I thought today I would post a poem from our Spirit of Revolt Archive. This is taken from the Alan Burnett Collection, a Glasgow anarchist who as a young man spent time in prison for proclaiming is right to be a conscientious objector. He later settled in New Zealand where he became a long standing member of a writers group. After his death his partner sent us some of his material, which formed the first collection in our archive.

WATER BARRELS

Smugglers
               connote
                           camel trains
                                              from the East
Ponies laden with silk or tea
               Muffled hooves down dark lanes
               light flashing on remote hilltops
Kegs of brandy
                   stacked in caves
                                     revenue cutters lurking
                                                            in moonlit coves
Frontiers
          border guards
                          diamonds
                                      drugs
                                           gold
                                               illegal immigrants
Gloating sheiks
                       sinuous harem girls
                                                    hedonistic orgies
White slavers
                    white-collared crime
                                                 laundered currency
               Corporate raiders
               Credit card fraudsters
               Flies/fleas/cockroaches
               Insider traders
SRA's            slow release asprins
               sadistic ritual abusers
But comrades
                 let us smuggle
                                    our emotions
                                                     into society
Let us continue
                     staggering with
                                         our illicit water-barrels of poems
Across the arid desert
                            of our materialistic community---------------  
                                                                                   Alan Burnett.  
Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasgow.me.uk
                
             

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