SPARE THE ROD

Tags

macho, poem, poetry, pride

SPARE THE ROD

spare the rod
and spoil
the little
Dictator, Empire Builder,
Corporate capitalist

playing on his
abacus

balancing power, privilege, pound
profit
against each the

need to
inflict quite
necessary pain

Advertisements

ORPHEUS (IN TOTAL)

Tags

poem, Universe

ORPHEUS (IN TOTAL)

eventually I let go
allowed that river to
draw me along

deep underground, to
the edge of the Underworld

and there
in that place of ghosts
and demons of the spirit
under cruelest of tutelage
I learnt to
play my song (my fingers
healing after terrible exertion)
sing
that which lies at
the heart

of everything

and nothing there was
that would not listen, could
not be moved

and why
should it
not be so?

this the pain I had
to pay
the life
to exchange

the Sirens so quiet
they know
here they
have no power, here
the loss
of beauty by
comparison
total

DITHYRAMBS

Tags

poem, poetry

DITHYRAMBS

I said a prayer to
Dionysus,

god of ecstasy
and of wine

asking that he
find me
a woman
of ecstasy

but he sent me
a wife
of wine.

THE CAVE

Tags

poem, poetry

THE CAVE

Plato’s antecedents are in the Cave

his cave is choc a bloc full of philosophical antecedents

including Heraclitus, philosopher of fire,
who says all is change
so much change that
they could not
have stepped into
the cave in the first place

but in that cave no river
but a fire
and Plato talking as if
the soul is mathematical
figure of
perfect harmony

with this Pythagoras concurring
being the returning spirit of
the hero Sarpedon

but his right angle theory proving
number is a strangeness

which the
Plato antecedents latching onto
talking the crisis
of the mind in
a cosmos where
religion is
fiction

where all is
dark psychology and
existential choices

and Greek ideals
destined to disappear
as Odysseus (pure nobody)
becomes creature forgotten

and Homer’s words
will
sing

no
more

whilst the Cave survives, courtesy of
the glory of our media technologies

projecting
our shadow
truth on

that wall
(wall of
sacred drawings)

and
out
into deep space.

SISYPHUS

SISYPHUS

the rock awaits

please do not
tell him there
is a rock

just let him
(as Camus said)
get on with it
always thinking: this
is the
last time, the
last life

I am not a parable of
consciousness condemned

the Universe
will change

the gods
will change their minds

BONE TO PICK

Tags

poem, poetry, Universe

BONE TO PICK

I have a bone
to pick with my species

let’s make it
that Kubrick bone
that the Ape Man throws
right into the landing bay
of the Moon-orbiting space station

that bone
dissolved and refigured
as the heart of the HAL computer’s DNA

red eye watching to
see what bad stuff in the cave
Odysseus will get up to

that bone I came to
pick with you all (so
billion plural)
having so
much to answer for.

CAESAR SALAD

Tags

arrogance, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, pride

CAESAR SALAD

Caesar was thinking
in the third
person

at the moment
of his assassination

in such a way
were Roman dictators
(first amongst
equals) accustomed
to write
and die.

CLEOPATRA’S TINY VENOMOUS ASSASSIN

Tags

poem, poetry

CLEOPATRA’S
TINY VENOMOUS
ASSASSIN

aspersions
aspirations

the latter like the
diamond hard blade
sawing through
your metaphoric
chains

the former, its incestuous
cousin

telling you the blade is blunt
is bent is about to break

ICARUS

ICARUS

Icarus
sweet boy

sucked in
by the Sun
wanting to
feel
like a god

underestimated
overreached

soared so high
he escaped Copernicus

found himself in
the realm of myth
where wax melts
wings fail

bodies
do not die
in a vacuum, frozen
to absolute zero

but
fall
broken
by hubris
like all
true heroes

loved, feared, despised
admired
by the gods.

STYX

STYX

it is good that
ink is black (as
if scooped up
from the Styx)

what colour could be better
for the death-like
numbness I feel
now I discover the truth
about you

colour for the sadness
deep as that river
and as bleak