PENCIL

Tags

Creation, Creativity, Destruction, Nuclear, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire, thermonuclear, writing

PENCIL

if a pencil
then also
an eraser

an eraser
to remove
everything
you have
written

everything
anybody has written

everything anybody
is going to write

LET’S SEE

Tags

death, poem, poetry

LET’S SEE

got too old
for beauty

no one wants
to go that extreme

only thing is to watch the stars
put in the veld alone

twinkling
fading

perhaps
the dawn is here

perhaps
it’s death:

let’s see!

SO MUCH

Tags

death, fake, Narrative, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, postmodern, satire, Story, Thanatos

SO MUCH

and the popcorn
flavour of the month
is
salted
nihilism

so strong the
death drive right now

so much to break
(faux art and
sculpture
to
create)

so much to
dull and dumb down
desiccate

and yes, eventually,
so much to kill

AND YET

Tags

death, Humanity, meaning, philosophical, poem, poetry, time, Universe

AND YET

it’s a sleep
I won’t wake up from

and yet I do
I always do

since the beginning
of the Universe
since
before

the beginning
(time and
consciousness
so
connected
so at odds)

I have never
overslept

never known anything other
than the absurdity of now

the chances of
which

so absolutely ridiculous

billions to
one against

I think I’ll just sleep on it;
waking up is death

WHAT DISSOLUTION TO FEAR

Tags

absurdism, Consciousness, existential, Humanity, identity, meaning, Metaphysical, philosophical, physics, poem, poetry, wordpla

WHAT DISSOLUTION TO FEAR?

School’s shut
leaving me
in a philosophical vacuum

a nebula of molecules separated
by oceans of emptiness

like they pumped all
the oxygen out, all
the hydrogen, nitrogen,
methane, chlorine, and
every inert gas

and so I tell myself
my name is not Gogo
I am
more than
pure space, simple
intellectual abstraction

my molecules, in theory,
according to the theoretical model,
smeared
all over the place

by the weakest of
forces
held together

free to
skip class, play
truant

wander
all over the place

leaving me nothing
one of
the
99%

who look up
to the rest

covet such lives
of substance and stability

and yet
everything to
fight for

from
humanity
detached

and same it is, but different, with
these words on the page
(once — no, not really — words
in my mouth)

nothing solid there — all relation and
difference, symbol and
myth making

those old stories recycled
you’ve heard them before, wired
into your brain

layer upon layer
perhaps this is how air
how
breath contrives meaning

like
folded origami (suddenly shape
and dimension)
like
weapon of hierarchy in
folded samurai
steel

and I have, if you would bear with me, tried
folding
this page, these words, that

they might
fill my space, create
fiction of being

that you and I
could buy into

paradoxically, our life-stuff to clear
distinct to us
when most merged
most near

and with this
softest assurance

what
dissolution to fear?

VERDUN (THOUGHT OF GREEN)

Tags

death, Humanity, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, Verdun, War, WW1

VERDUN (THOUGHT OF GREEN)

you took some of your
childhood with you
into no man’s land

remembered running home from school
funny the absence of artillery fire
Father Mother not at the gate
traversing a machine gun

the green
the green

you must have felt the grass
between your fingers
stalked with
sniper eyes
for tiny insects that you captured

lectured on the ways of Man
and then released

Oh that more were
there to listen in that sudden jungle
had heard your cautionary tale

a place where
trenches disappear, lines disappear,

the very concept
of war

disappears

suddenly something
not unexpected yet
the shock of
shocks

and there you are
here we are

still clinging to
old memory
the thought
of green

LIKE NOBODY’S BUSINESS

Tags

2001, A Space Odyssey, Consciousness, cosmic, death, future, Moon, Nietzsche, poem, poetry, Space

LIKE NOBODY’S BUSINESS

If was in the future
far into the future

I was giving a lecture
on The Moon

talking of the great symbols
of our collective cosmic consciousness

whilst you sat there
steeped in thoughts of death,
thinking of an ancient film

set on this very Moon
where Nietzschean superman
taps into alien presence, alien energies
is lifted out of sad species nihilism

but I
never having seen this film
kept spouting away

something
about the low gravity of this place

time here, I suppose,
moving slightly faster

ideas bouncing around
like nobody’s business

and our blue-brown
on its last legs sickly planet
at least with an
atmosphere however toxic
that might be

how long for that to remain
at the heart of these symbols, be
the fount of all our meanings

this barren, naked Moon
chaste female goddess
queen of
all unconscious mystery

enough
of a home for me.

WHAT THE SERPENT TOLD ME

Tags

death, Life, poem, poetry, serpent, Snake

WHAT THE SERPENT
TOLD ME

in the beginning
there was anger

fire and
water

a million
kinds of venom

every colour and
colour combination

out of the
premise of death

first slithered
life

DANIEL

Tags

Aging, brother, death, poem, poetry

DANIEL

as fate would have it
I am always
a few steps ahead of you
(nine to be exact)

in the vanguard, negotiating
the nature of
this shriveling distance

odds on, I am first
to dip more than my toes into
that
place of darkness

yes dive deep
when it comes
to total
immersion

as luck would have it,
you so much better
at depths and diving than I

SCHOOLED

Tags

Creation, Creativity, Intertextual, literary allusive, poem, poetry, school, Sexual, The Wasteland, TS Eliot

SCHOOLED

stared into
the controlled flame
of a Bunsen burner

sexual chemistry
in the class just
about to begin

and me
I had time-travelled back
to find the roots
of my loneliness

everything in
the adult world here
on a steep learning curve

but according to my mentor
my mind is that of a catalyst
melding the culture of words
interleaving time’s tongue

my shadow
poet
bard of desert, scribe
of wasteland

the
Universe contracting
not expanding
energy lost unless
eruption
in the system

the poet in me and
me in the poet
almost evaporated

went
back in time

to figure out
this meaning

and there I am, transfixed
staring into the flame
wondering
what it means