BLUE PILL

I took the blue pill
followed by
another blue pill
to be on the safe side

immediately a
scrumptious soft sofa
almost swallowed me
(marshmallow fallow,
cumulus cloud)

and there and then
the flat screens came, hologrammed
in from nowhere, pure
plasma TV
dangling
from the ceiling

zillions of channels all (thank God)
not quite the same

and so I wondered
(following the Schrodinger cat
in me)
whether it
would be Mars rusty desert
I would find myself traversing
(from rabbit hole
to worm hole) having
swallowed that red pill

and now with Vergil and Dante
on track through the Inferno
to such a
different parallel universe

not a couch left to speak of
or pair of Matrix armchairs
in any of its galaxies

just those with
the power

called upon to be heroic
when they find
themselves sacrificed
in the
vanity of
the presumption that
every battle
with evil is
some non zero sum game

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FIGURED

FIGURED

was watching Arrival
when I figured they would need
police to patrol every
two-slit experiment

untangle every entangled
human and alien soul

who together, unbeknownst
to each other
are writing stars in collusion
on a massive plasma screen

BEAT POET

Tags

poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry

BEAT POET

beat beat beat
the poet

bang her him
like a big drum
for she he is a machine
for turning

real-good life bashings
into sheet music
in every
exquisite note read
you can
see the pain

AND YET WITH SUCH GRACE

A busload of writers
did steam into our town

but no sooner had I
written “steam” than
they lined up to correct me
gave me a
fat thesaurus to digest
so that in future they
would not have to take me
so directly to task
my lexical poverty
getting them so
hot under the collar

and then they re-embarked
having just disembarked
without the requisite
style, animation,
or that thing
called “panache”

whereupon they scattered as if
to take over the town
set to do the Devil’s work
as writers must do
pinning down
foibles,
interrogating dreams

thinking how each commonplace
lies shadowed
in nightmare

sustained by the fodder
of every paltry mistake
done
without thinking
thought
without doing

and in this
secret carnival of words
they have
our souls penned
committed to paper

our portraits
so perfect and
yet
we might not
think so

as transformed we
strut stages, talk with
rare freedom
mouth
ironies and
insights

dissected as
if by
surgery and

yet with
such grace

ANEW

ANEW

quietly
you passed

and now
you cannot tell me
where you are
now
(not even
in hushed tones
as if family secrets)

whether it is all childhood rainbows
remembered fields and
songs not
sung for
such a very long time

or
to take a different tack
(different
path selection)
a returning to the source,
slow swirling with the great spiral arms
of the galaxies

and the giant stars
in whose furnaces things
we cannot imagine

the seeds of
the cosmos
as it
scatters life
anew

IN A NEW LIGHT

IN A NEW LIGHT
(for Monica Gertrude Elizabeth Duckett
24 August 1930 – 30 April 2018)

and so
farewell

we were close once
but not
as close as
I wanted it
to be

and now
the memories come
one by one
as if waiting
for blessing

all your good moments
your best moments

in single file
not in flood
more like pages
in an album
turned slowly
then anything rushing
past cinematographic

too few
for them to proclaim
you the saint
that you may
have wanted to be
in your childhood

as the little
girl I have seen in
those old photographs

but each of them a jewel
glittering in the light, seen

in a
new light

IN A NEW LIGHT

IN A NEW LIGHT
(for Monica Gertrude Elizabeth Duckett
24 August 1930 – 30 April 2018)

and so
farewell

we were close once
but not
as close as
I wanted it
to be

and now
the memories come
one by one
as if waiting
for blessing

all your good moments
your best moments

in single file
not in flood
more like pages
in an album
turned slowly
then anything rushing
past cinematographic

too few
for you to proclaim
you the saint
that you may
have wanted to be
in your childhood

but each of them a jewel
glittering in the light, seen

in a
new light

OF PALE

OF PALE
“And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly
Turned a whiter shade of pale”

read your obituary

white lie
after white lie

suddenly the very
white lie I was
agonizing over
got crowded out by
a host of forms: beautiful
angels with
stunted wings, three-
legged centaurs who,
having no
learning, could
not teach to
save their lives

and a gigantic Cyclops with
his second eye restored
struggling to deal
with binocular vision

and then I laughed at these
checkered fancies, thought
of a whopper
to outdo them all
which I recited poker-
faced having slipped
it into a poem

people at this level
treating poetry either
as sacred truth, or
a complete joke

NOTHING PROSAIC

NOTHING
PROSAIC

despite what Mr
Mourinho has said
about football
and poetry

and despite
the boys from
across the road
making him
eat his words

when we
footsie let
not a prosaic moment
intrude, nothing
sideways or
cautious at
all through
the midfield
no
parking of
the bus

only wing play and
hot fizzing crosses
across the
delicious goalmouth

all night
gegenpress;
gegenpress
all night

NOTHING PROSAIC

NOTHING
PROSAIC

despite what Mr
Mourinho has said
about football
and poetry

and despite
the boys from
across the road
making him
eat his words

when we
footsie let
not a prosaic moment
intrude, nothing
sideways or
cautious at
all through
the midfield
no
parking of
the bus

only wing play and
hot fizzing crosses
across the
delicious goalmouth

all night
gegenpress;
gegenpress
all night