TRUCK

Tags

death, Life, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, power, satire

TRUCK

truck killed many
killed
all and sundry

got into gear
did
what it had
to do

and people were confused
running hither
and thither

some thinking
work of the Devil
some the hand
of God

and the pulpits raged
fed by radio
and T.V.
with very different
views from theology

which did not add
or subtract a casualty

or provide fresh insight or
any clarity
whilst experts argued
issues of
will and purpose

and eye witnesses could
not agree
on white, or black

Advertisements

SUNLIGHT STREAKED ME

Tags

poem, poetry

SUNLIGHT
STREAKED ME

sunlight streaked me
tiger-striped me

translated my
words
from green
to ripe

and then
the night:
strange bioluminescence
neon fluorescence

in which
super-strange light

everything
suddenly mythic

every star named and branded and
absolutely vouched for

darkness never
less
alien or

so
candy-striped

LINES

Tags

poem, poetry, Universe

LINES

they came
they created purpose here

on worlds of rock and desert sand
or with brutal oceans like our own, teeming with predators
they built prisons
that some might escape
that some might
contain

knowing that
the cosmos is
antagonism, the
stars are antagonism

it is only in the
battle between their
light and fire
is meaning given
value conferred

this I know
all to well

nothing here that has
not been shaped
by the dialectic of
containing darkness
set against
release by light

and so I wait, chained victim,
for the darkness to find me
ravage me

do its worst
which is
also
its best

like the pain of a slicing razor
I feel them as they cut
their way
through, find
their way out
my words, my lines

FOR MYSELF ALREADY

Tags

poem, poetry

FOR MYSELF ALREADY

I went to the door
but the darkness
swept it
unannounced, before
I could open

so sure
it was at the right place
it didn’t even
bother to filter

in my state of
toxic shock
it handed me
this poem
and so, I thought
to myself: “big
deal;
so what if I am
a figure of darkness
deprived of light
as if I hadn’t been able
to suss this
judgement out
for myself already!”

But the darkness smiled
bid me read
each agonized, hopeless word

waiting for me
to add the twist, the turn

the moment
in my brain where
realization comes
like a supernova

I look and
there in the poem
the darkness gone

as if
I had known this
all along

just kept it
to
myself for
too long already

DARKNESS APPERTAINS

Tags

poem, poetry, Universe

DARKNESS APPERTAINS

darkness appertains
it is still stapled
to the very first page
hitching a ride on
Einstein’s light-beam
to the first “let be”

letting not a single
black hole singularity
deflect that
trajectory
to infinity

and so
snake-like but
not quite it
punctuates the rest

adding the slithery vital
subtext

without which
no sense

DARK PLACE

Tags

poem, poetry, Universe

DARK PLACE

I am writing
from a very dark place

how dark you ask?
as if this
were pantomime
or stand-up comedy

need to go
Continental to be
truly existential

and who would want
to put the average reader
through anything like that?

so let’s light a candle, flick
the neon switch
get the spotlight centre stage
(and scan
for anti-matter
with powerful searchlight)

so many self-help texts punting the obvious
no point in reading when
the poem goes desperate
acts
like a singularity
sucking in every scrap
of positivity
ever last golden thought.

IN A CHAPEL OF SORTS

Tags

Nazi, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry

IN A CHAPEL OF SORTS

I dreamt I was in a chapel of sorts
outside the stars were fuming,
blazing crazy

on a park bench an old-timer
was reciting a few lines
from Blakes’ Vagabond
when the Nazis came for him
ones that all through the night
been springing up
like malignant mushrooms

dragged him off to a death camp
which had been prearranged

and so, like the teeth of Cadmus’ dragon,
my dream spawned more and more
horror irruptions that left me
white with fear

and dead, it would seem, because
I woke up to nothingness

just the void
of all existence
and yet
infinitely better from
the world of my dream, destined to appear.

THIS NIGHT THIS DAY

Tags

poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, Universe

THE NIGHT THIS DAY

right now
the Universe is
experiencing
runaway inflation

lucky we got electricity
so no longer need
to gaslight our lives as
if it were a street

under these orange sodium
fuzz-balls of light

I stagger home a
little drunk

I say home
but these are

University flats built on
the very spot where Engels
hosted Marx
there is

a plaque

still something Victorian in the air
and the ghosts of those
two old dynamos
worshipped, hated there

when those
graves were dug, they thought “finally”
but let’s go deeper if needs be
err of the side of safety

the high-rise shapes of the
Institute of Technology

North of
England can get so cold

these words
coughed, fizzed,
spluttered

shame
there is no flame
cold
as a gaunt Cathedral

let’s not talk architecture
design so removed
from the night this day

THEY

Tags

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

THEY

they came
for the caterpillar
(such an astute metaphor)
for tarantulas
and the great white shark

but, sadly, alas,
for none of us,
not the brown,
the yellow, the black
the white

too much trouble
our day our night
our dark
our light

impossible to
separate them

AT YOUR PERIL

Tags

poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry

AT YOUR
PERIL

The book
is full of
evil energies

dripping
with dark imaginings

do not
open it

but now
you have read it
cover to
cover

how do
you live
with the truth
you have learnt?