FOOTPRINT
By James Bradley
Artificial Intelligence
Of riot police—their padded limbs
Tangled tightly in a black veil
Of plastic & synthetic fire
Breastplates of jacinth, brimstone
And triangulating ‘chips
Capable of locating each
Secret, inevitable thread
Of subliminal contrition
Within a heterodox tract hid,
Their rods of absolution
Humming a simple melody
For scores of black boots to dance to
In steady lockstep, in rhythm,
Thus is the countryside trampled
From Charleville to gay Paris
The dirty-faced farmers are all
Self-erected memorials
Before a hand-painted backdrop
Of non-existence & wheat stalks
Barefoot, the poet walks along
The provincial lanes by day,
And by night sleeps curled within
One such black boot’s footprint
In the series left in the wake
Of the boys with plastic faces,
The rhythm of […]