An Algerian lightbulb knew a lot.
A naked bulb in a cell, a shaded
one in an apartment. It got hot
from electricity misused, it faded
with the bloody dawn’s aubade, it sated
itself on rapes like that of the concubine
at Gilbea. It swung round on its braid
flex from blows. Outside the compound’s confines,
it threw light on the bone-gathering porcupine.
At Oran, July 1962
the boot was on the other foot’s chest.
Frantz Fanon, Paul Ricoeur, Albert Camus
had already commented on this best.
Fanon ran on warfare, clinical tests,
Ricoeur called for the settlers to leave,
Camus had it both ways with La Peste,
so Sisyphus had a land to grieve for,
even if Mersault took his time to feel bereaved.
In Gaza, people pile up for food,
with tubs and buckets. The Flight to Egypt
is a stampede to nowhere, donkey-hooved,
horse-hooved, tyre-hooved, panic caused by digits,
coded by fingers as long as egrets,
that would far rather play a sonata;
but use Gospel to hunt, and egregious
Lavender, for tracking down the martyrs.
The baby with angler fish eyes, not yet data.
Woodford Halse - 5 June 2025
Read Judges 19.20 for the night-long gang rape of the Levite’s concubine, by the Benjaminites.
Gospel and Lavender are AI products, the former using data-sets, the latter a database.
I would rather not go through Ricoeur, Camus and Fanon’s works right now. I am about to join my family for dinner.