JOEL AND ETHAN

Tags

film, Joel and Ethan Coen, poem, poetry, script, writing

JOEL AND ETHAN

all places
are imaginary

towns mere
adjuncts
to parking lots and
highways

so keep
driving
keep driving

all places go wrong
chips fall
almost where
they may

best you can hope for
some teeny simulacrum
reeking
of match made in Heaven

fate
a fat tornado
(who
saw that coming?)
the fingers of God
twisting anti-clockwise
or some
metrological blender

we
poor deluded viewers
tricked out of dreams as
much as the protagonists themselves

whose words
soon as leave their lips
have choices to
make
are left to
their own devices
immured in the existential
flip a
coin (most important coin toss)

see whether called
upon to lead or
destined to follow

and the narrative
doubling back upon itself
second-guessing the story

as much layering going on here
as you could possibly imagine

right
in front of our noses
even as I am speaking

all places
imaginary

something about some
of them though
and
how artfully you lure us to them

PLEASURE FOR PLEASURE

Tags

metapoetic, Muse, philosophical, poem, poetry, sex, sexual symbolism, transformation, wordplay, writing

PLEASURE FOR
PLEASURE

first Muse
was a frog
bade me
croak

and
that croak
spawned something
somewhat more
mellifluous
(if I
say
so
myself)

as time flew
as time
crawled
as time
swanned around
and fanned

so the
lexicon got
longer, the
sense
smarter

and the rhythm shifted
from slightest of tremolos
to greatest convulsions tectonic

and the images
became transformed
and with them- pure
butterfly, pure
fairy tale
from amphibian to spirit-hybrid
to art house princess to
sex goddess

my Muse
came alive, became
embodiment
of beauty

and me
praying in each poem, pushed to
exceed that
she might never relapse

return to
her origins as
caecillian creature
tiny pond dweller,

at least
when we

doing it

not when I am matching
her gift of
inspiration, of
insight
and
imagination

pleasure for pleasure

immersed in the art
from which none can withdraw

VECTOR

Tags

Aristotle, digital, Metaphor, philosophical, poem, Poet, poetry, postmodern, poststructuralist, wordplay, writing

VECTOR

tenor
vehicle

my poem
is disintegrated into
a zillion tiny pieces
will be
put together
just as quickly
the lightning took
the lightning restores

Oh tenor
vehicle
read up that
in dusty book
or
electronic text
in pristine library
digitally perfect
white
as neon

Aristotle most certainly
for all his foresight
never foresaw this

writing a poem
poem, poet, pen,
page

the whole caboodle
all of it metaphor

some
sublime vector this

wrapped up
as dream

MARY S HORROR

Tags

Consciousness, Creation, Humanity, Mary Shelley, metapoetic, philosophical, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, science fiction, writing

MARY S HORROR

I envy you Mary
with alien-green envy

no momentous
monstrous moment
ever threw itself
against my
window

getting you
to write a novel, start
a genre
riding the
sheer relief that
it was all
just a dream

and there that
thing, that little life inside you

template
metaphor prototype for
every image of
otherness
at the heart of
our being

***

and here you are
reading your story
to those dropped-jaw poets
who never heard
nor imagined
woman nor wife

could
come up with
such a thing

in the very
first paragraph
fire
booster rockets
hit escape velocity

circumnavigate worlds radically
different in philosophy
strange
ultra
strange places
that your pen
will give
birth to

these children, grandchildren
creators created by
your
dark dream-vision
interrogating imagination

each upward spiral
a downward spiral

the horrible mechanics of
its engendering, your

most beautiful theme.

MARY’S SON

Tags

AC ience fiction, Crucifixion, Frankenstein, Humanity, Jesus Christ, Mary Shelley, philosophical, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, writing

MARY’S SON

Mary’s son
still walks the earth
did not die just
kept replacing parts

looked
a bit worse for wear

but now
there’s the promise of AI
and new technology
Age
of Aquarius about
to dawn

and as he
learns stuff about
humanity and
natural philosophy

or stares
at a leaf, configuring
the whole tree

imagines what unhappy use
such a tree might be put to

his species — or rather the parts
of the species from which
he was
first created and
basically is
still made —

deserving (in his augmented mind)
their bad rap for
deployment of slavery in
realization of Empire

FACE MASK

Tags

absurd, corona virus, covid-19, Creation, Humanity, identity, mask, poem, poetry, surreal

FACE MASK

was sewing
my face mask
and I
swallowed
the needle

a mask
so ridiculous
the virus could
only laugh
itself silly
take
serious pity

so many
needle-holes in
my fingers
the blood
flowing freely

blood being, they say,
transformative

neither virus nor
needle asphyxiating me

but pointing me
North, then
due East

hanging
me upside down

DREAMS

Tags

connection, Dream, Humanity, poem, poetry, writing

DREAMS

I am permeable
I dream
others’ dreams

utopias, dystopias,steeped
in fear or desire, alien
landscapes of strangeness

so complete, so vivid
and yet
make
no sense to me

and when in
these dreams I travel

then
do I really travel

beyond the laws and
confines of
my known Universe

foretaste, I am sure,
of
infinity

HAMMER AND NAILS

Tags

Creation, Creativity, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, socialism, work, workers

HAMMER AND NAILS

Workers’ Day
so I went about poetizing
rambling on
about this and
that

nothing much happening
down the production line

despite me
going hell-for-leather
hammer
and nails

hammer
and tongues

so many different tongues
in one
poem
(translated from
the original German)

so many
voices
in one
poem, in
one place

hammering away
in harmony
(Oh what a
dream for humanity
that would be!)

KEDGEREE

Tags

food, poem, poetry, wordplay, writing

KEDGEREE

up so many
down rhymes aplenty

your poem
is all
sauce

your poem
is a kedgeree

who know what tastes
get swamped

as reader, strong reader,
venture into
rainforest of your concoction

all over the place, wholesale
proliferation

stream turned river, raw-
running emerging

vital signs unsublimed
off the charts, out of
self-contained sphere

LIBERO

Tags

Beauty, Consciousness, Creation, death, Fibonacci, Freedom, Humanity, Italy, liberation, Mathematics, meaning, Metaphor, metapoetic, perspective, philosophical, poem, poetry, postmodern, ROME, writing

LIBERO

drunk on the promise of liberation
I crafted this poem whose very premise,
if you would permit me to explain,
does to
this very topic
appertain

insofar as it proposes, argues,
steadfastly maintains,
that words
be the clay
out of which all
was made

not as complete fiat but
slowly, slowly: process
of trial
and error

the code pre-established, all
the systems set in place

(this
as sure as
triangles
are
triangular,
spirals
are spirals)

all done and dusted
tried and trusted
written into the
acid of
our DNA

and so
I salute you
creatures
of truth and beauty

and fib you not
Senor Fibonacci

loving the light in
your fair land with
its paramount city

leaving your own
carefully calculated
indelible impression

and
here is the very book
in which it is written
(the one we
contest, always argue over)

so much
blood in the
sand
of that arena

why is it
that beauty must
always contend with death

again
I hold up my
net
and trident

(or sword: for
pen
best metaphor,
best metonym)

so much
marble and gold
begging the eye
to look upward
redefine perspective, dream
of long-last freedom

drunk
on those
dreams
of
a future
on promise
of liberation

under which
eternal pressure
I do write
this poem

trying to
tie up
loose ends
get
opposites
to meet

square
all circles

such ironic that libero
the word I shamefacedly stole
is actually your own