Compulsion and Secrets

In the corridors of power, blindness is a ruse:
a trick to fool the wary while fingering their flesh;
deafness is a disguise, assumed to hide a sham
of probity beneath plausible excuse.

The dumb do not speak, both master and slave
fear how words condemn; in this mutual silence,
the master’s grip on power tightens and the slave
conspires in it to keep his pitiful place.

The powerful, men and women, but mostly men,
or women similarly twisted, reach out from
positions of influence, stretch withered hands
out of the darkness behind ornate columns
to take the pulse of weakness with sleek
caresses in a wicked travesty of love.

As if love was a name for it, as if desire
was at its root; the hand beneath the table,
taxi-cab fumbling, cheap jests from which
true words are later conveniently expunged…

…and gratification, should that be achieved
is merely an indicator of power displayed,
its message conveyed, the hot breath of well fed
superiority breathed on someone else’s face,
the unspoken ‘I own you’, the smirking
‘I do not see you, do not hear you;
just as no-one will see or hear you after this,
our secret… …no-one will believe
someone as insignificant as you…
… you will never speak of it again’

In the corridors of power, secrets are currency,
kept or traded while darkness, like a black vice,
conceals double-dealing tricks turned for seedy profit,
money, prurience and machination…

…in the shadows, the weak have no voice,
innocence skews to victimhood, status and its lack
brings them to kneel, the appetite for power
kindles every other lust, domination, oppression,
leering desire and submission, the fetishes
of knots and bondage, sadism, masochism,
toxic manhood…

…the weight of silence crushes everything,
buries skewed fantasy under coercion…

…dressed-to-kill, cynical old men and women
pimp young flesh into games, whip-handed,
bringing pain to body and soul, because they can …

…underlings submit and subdued, they whimper
and try to speak, but silence! like a ball-gag
tightens in their mouths…

… nothing can be said to make it stop;
and there is no safe word.

© BH, 2017

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I’d been looking for ‘…ocracies’: kakistocracy, kleptocracy, all words for corrupted governance. I was looking for one to describe rule through the abuse of power. I found there isn’t an ‘…ocracy’ for that. So, it’s ‘compulsion and secrets’.

It’s been like this forever. From the casting couch to the thrones of government. It’s been bubbling along in every salacious bit of tittle-tattle since the heyday of the News of the World and long before. ‘Ooh, isn’t it awful’ stories to chill the marrow but we could never look away, could we? As it was intended. Sex sold as it still does.

But it was never really about sex, carnality, eroticism was it? It was and always has been about the power to coerce others, to compel compliance and ultimately silence. Power over another through intimacies of the flesh is, for some, just an indicator of how much power they have and how low they will stoop to use it.

Hence the toxically masculine dimension. In our male-dominated system, men are the most prevalent and through that the most predatory. But power in the hands of anyone, man or woman, can be turned to poisonous gratification. Beware of the powerful, whoever they are. 

In the news, in this nauseous dance of titillation, another veil falls. Behind the smokescreen of gratification, the latest perversions of power are revealed. Pity the poor victims, who are humiliated like rabbits in headlights. In the S&M charades of the world of the powerful, though, they have been prevented from even saying stop. For far too long…

My illustration contains some prominent faces. You will recognise them peering from the smoke. Some are perpetrators, some complicit. You decide…

Oh, and I picked up the ‘no safe word’ line from an episode of ‘Taggart’.

By the way, the suite of poems is Kakistocracy, Compulsion and Secrets, Kleptocracy.