<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Guided Tour<\/strong><\/p>\n They are nothing but casual tourists, ambling, charred flesh and fractured bones, Cracks in the floor assume absurd significance. Here ended the lives of rebels and martyrs, in rough narrow passages threading waves Pressured by the karmic force of unpurged debt, Oh how do people dare to live? <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Clive Donovan<\/b> devotes himself full-time to poetry and has published in a wide variety of magazines including The Journal, Agenda, Acumen, Poetry Salzburg Review, Prole, Stand and Ink Sweat <\/em>and Tears<\/em>. He lives in the creative atmosphere of Totnes in Devon, U.K. often walking along the River Dart for inspiration. His friends say he is overdue a debut collection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Guided Tour They are nothing but casual tourists, ambling, with their ice-creams and stapled pamphlets, happily careless of the wretched history attached to these ancient barracks; charred flesh and fractured bones, the lingering stink of something worse, as the guide drones on with his unamusing jokes and torture anecdotes. Cracks in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19380"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19517,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19380\/revisions\/19517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nwith their ice-creams and stapled pamphlets,
\nhappily careless of the wretched history
\nattached to these ancient barracks;<\/p>\n
\nthe lingering stink of something worse,
\nas the guide drones on
\nwith his unamusing jokes and torture anecdotes.<\/p>\n
\nCorridors hump and writhe with importance.
\nThe hungry walls close in keenly
\nas if to testify their witnessing.<\/p>\n
\nbruised and scorched, crushed in screws and stretched:
\nMediaeval apparatus blood-washed with pain
\nand an angry bell outside clangs loud<\/p>\n
\nthrough the stony maze
\nof this crude instrument of power.
\nFingering mortar, I scrape it cruelly with my nail.<\/p>\n
\nI struggle to keep up
\nwith the solid pack of customers ahead,
\nabout to enter the cake shop.<\/p>\n
\nHow dare to sing?
\nLooking up for guidance I see
\nlounging pikemen pretending to be clouds.<\/p>\n