The first volume in a projected series called The Return to Reason has been released by the British publisher Bite-Sized Books Ltd. The stated aim of the volume, titled The Poem is Part of the Eye, is “to draw new readers towards poetry they may not be familiar with or have not previously engaged with at all.” There are nearly 150 poems by 30 poets featured in the volume. Here are two: “The Drunk in Charge,” a poem in prose by Jay Jeff Jones, and “Short Fuckland Manifesto!” a poem ripped straight from the news by Saira Viola.
THE DRUNK IN CHARGE The drunk in charge is not in charge of anything but does whatever no one else has done, then does again everything he had done before but forgotten. He lets in the dog that isn't there, locks the door that he just unlocked, sweeps up the rest of the broken glass, washes the wound again, wonders what the shouting was about, pours a last drink for everyone, pours really the last drink for himself. Dawn is already making the curtains look dirty and he says listen, no, listen, it's not that we love to drink, it's that we simply hate to stop. Then, when he is sure there is no one listening, when his eyes don't work that well and someone is sighing again, tells himself, if there's no arguing with life, you have to take it out on anyone you can. SHORT FUCKLAND MANIFESTO! Our world is bastardized by billion dollar killers. Phone-tapping regimes, and audio response Life-insurance policies, Panamanian tax breakers And coco cola pimp daddies; Amazon algorithms And a string of Pakistani virgin smiles slaughtered By cockless drones . . . Click click kill! Crooked old judges masturbate in public Offering a library of sodomised legality. We exist in a plastic sunshine pop parade of botoxed, Big-assed big-mouthed nothing. We are a living museum of segregation; A dis-information network. A graveyard of debtors' skulls. A church of Costco disciples. A hearse of crying mothers. A colostomy bag of wounded soldiers. A codification of injustice. A confederacy of bankers. An abattoir of children's dreams: Always a war zone; A wheezy wet-mouthed Tabloid tragedy.
