LET’S TAKE

Tags

poem, poetry

LET’S TAKE

let’s take some
real poetic licence
fast forward
this poem to
the moment
of the poet’s death

forgetting Barthes’ dictum
that the poet was always
dead already, was
in that
deconstruction zone
between virus
and zombie

let us assume we will be getting
real rosebud lulu of a revelation
as last word
the whole snow globe of
the poem Potemkinning
down the stairs and
smashing like
a metaphor of fragility

or exploding as final
seppuku hand grenade

no stuck for
something to say

black cat of enigma, feline
goddess of open-endings
got his tongue

ALBION

Tags

poem, poetry, power

ALBION

after the war
the wolves returned

scouring the
broken land

at the heart of the last battle
a tree still stood
alive with
slithering adders
as many
as leaves

and now this history
cannot be written, for who
can remember the
causes that
divided, the lines
that were drawn

no left, right, centre
no
houses of
assembly, tennis
court or
football pitch for
supposing parties
to muster, factions to
gather

just one binary, two
irreconcilable groups
cleaved down the
middle: camp
of the scarred, shattered, wounded
and that of the dead.

DRAG HOGARTH

Tags

poem, poetry

DRAG HOGARTH

drag Hogarth
out of that Enlightenment dungeon
into the frame

and with him, bring some
of those very Bedlam poets
he immortalized scribbling
up and down their walls

we need such artists
to record our best Brexit
write how
it is what it is (in our blend of
Cartesian and Artesian
cretin philosophies)

chart its
progress from
first error to
sublime disaster
sequence

where nothing ever
satirized came out
so dead duck

MINDFUL

Tags

poem, poetry

MINDFUL

Let me
be

mindful
let me

be folded into
myself

today
you wanted machine
you wanted
automation

did not
covet words
longed for

desire
roaring like
a beast
of prey

like the
sea

like the
pack alpha

wished devoutly
to be
devoured

swept away

not to burn slowly, steadily
like a perfumed candle.

GAUNT GARDEN

Tags

poem, poetry, satire

GAUNT GARDEN

no place for the
word “beloved”
in this world

weed it out
weed it out

we have to
preserve the garden
in all its
indigenous glory

whatever it is
of alien origin
come plant or
flower or
sensuous creeper

weed it out
weed it out

the dictionary of the heart
thick as
a pamphlet

thick as
a broadsheet

how many words
do we, does it
need
weed them out
weed them out

LIBRARY

LIBRARY

the prison has
a wonderful library

the library
is a beautiful prison

I tried to
swim but
the books got
water-logged
and I drowned

try to fold pages together
to make wings
a flock of
origami birds to
pull my
sky chariot

but the ruse failed, as with Icarus
the Sun stepped in, pulled
his sieg heil wax
melding number

and so
I fell
into the ocean
drowned again
(music in my ears as
I sank:
must have been
Nemo
blasting away on
the Nautilus’ church organ)

HIGHWAY

Tags

female, poem, Universe, Water power astrological

HIGHWAY

the spell
is broken

no magic left
in the words

I crossed a river
once

to find you

but now
the road is
too busy,
teeming with
traffic

I never was much
for that kind of highway

RED PILL GIRL

Tags

poem, poetry, The Matrix

RED PILL GIRL

Talking to you
is taking the blue pill

wake up in
the morning feeling
blue sky of
another day
can be everything

but she — the one I dream of —
she is raw, red tablet only

swallow her ruby and
see how deeply she
infests herself in the blood
bringing it all
to the beautiful boil

Molotov cocktails me
mixing all my lethal
liquids (shaking and
stirring)

lighting the rag-in-
the-bottle flaming fuse.

WITHIN

Tags

poem, poetry

WITHIN

I have a box of mirrors.
It is full
to the brim
with nothing
but images

the stuff
that Shakespeare’s
Hamlet would
have called
shadows and
ghosts

each one a
reflection of
a reflection
of something
that could not be
has never been.

And yet the
out of the box
thinking cliche

still haunts
the shapes within.

FREEDOM

Tags

Nazi, poem, poetry, power

FREEDOM

they scream Freedom
but want walls
prisons

they cry Liberty
but want
the death penalty

I only believe them
why they talk blood

hard not
to see that word
dripping, pouring
seas, oceans of it

when they let that truth
glide into view
hardly slipping
off the tongue