REVIVAL

Tags

death, philosophical, poem, poetry, wordplay, writing

REVIVAL

they tried
to revive
the philosopher

but he was
too cold

there was, once they
had removed the packaging,

no dotted line along which
to fold
or cut,
for that matter
if he needed surgery

for looking out
through the window
of this perspective

no one could tell
what he would need
for full reparation

whether a canto or a stanza
or just two
lines
might give him
enough life-
blood inspiration to
Lazarus rise

resume
teaching all
the empiricist and
rationalist stuff

impossible
to reconcile

THE TROUBLE WITH VEGETATION GODS

Tags

poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire, War

THE TROUBLE
WITH VEGETATION GODS

the trouble with
vegetation gods
is that when they drop the mask
their dual identity is revealed

and the god of death
that stands exposed
is not the kindly
end -to-all-suffering
euthanize your pain
archetypal dude

no, he is the god of death
on scale agricultural, scope industrial
from phalanx to fire zone
to panzer grenadier on
caterpillar tracked carrier

he is your guy
he is
and will always be
our guy

and as for bullet one in a billion
with your name painstakingly
engraved upon it

that seed
you planted this morning

is the piece of red hot shrapnel
tumbling through your brain tonight

changing your mentality
on this, and other issues

CEMETERY

Tags

death, eternal return, father, Humanity, love, Nietzsche, philosophical, poem, poetry, power, Technology

CEMETERY

wobbling all
over the tiny roads

I leant to cycle
in the cemetery
the one up
at the top
of our
cul-de-sac road

later in life
was to go
full Kawasaki

but here was enough
just to
find my balance, know
that my Dad’s
steadying hand
had released the seat

even so
rapt in this focus, on
my technological arc

was not unable to notice
the host of graves (including
my grandfather’s) and
almost at
each point of the compass
the four
small chapels

so much stone
enough to turn
regular into
philosopher with
each sweetly marked spot little
conundrum of consciousness

later
under Libra, very sign of measure,
a native of October would
blitz my
belief system

spin his sense-shattering yarn
on power and the soul

Ah,
I get it now

things binary
be unavoidable
I pedal to
negotiate them
(look Dad! No hands!
and on
only two wheels)

must to my chagrin
my sister doing much better

and still
beloved, treasured as
it is
as seminal experience

the memory
still haunts me, still

battling to
find my feet, to steer, to
thread my
consummate way
through to
the very endgame

ASHES TO SCATTER

Tags

death, Humanity, Parable, poem, poetry

ASHES TO SCATTER

there are ashes to scatter
to the
four winds

not
in nurturing soil
as you would
with seed

for we are not, by definition,
salt of the Earth

the salt
we are

often
difficult to
savour

the truth
of a parable
hidden there somewhere

ONCE UPON A TIME

Tags

connection, death, Life, linear, non-linear, poem, poetry, time

ONCE UPON A TIME

endings
proclaim the rule
of the linear
I’m afraid

and yet
step back
see
how we have come
full circle, full circle

I was riffing on love and
you thought it death
I was riffing on death
and you named me a lover

Oh that cheap, pop-Freud
how convenient a crutch
stick with
which to understand
the Sphinx’s riddle

your Queenly egg of self-satisfaction cracking
telling yourself
this is where it ends
or could be
where it begins

sucker for redemption, for fresh beginnings
that’s a lip gloss that will always give
feel free
to send me to my grave
covered in that impression

ending
for the both of us, twinning
us from birth
better
than expected

LOOP

Tags

childhood, death, father, loss, love, poem, poetry

LOOP

let’s loop
the loop

thread
the needle

talk about you
dandling me in your arms
before I could walk, talk
think
before I knew
who
you were, what
was my name

not here yet, no
Damian to live and learn
and demonize

still out
of the picture, yet
in so
many pictures

still so much to
take on board, to get to know,
so much of the wiring yet
unconnected

but smell and feel
there I found you, knew you
began to exult in you
(did you
know how intense that was?)

but sweetness, innocence
cannot last forever, a turn would be made
these turns
always happen
(you can
bet your life on it)
everything gets tempered,
detaches, hardens

finding the light not
quite that Sun bright
and having
to negotiate darkness

but always that
dream of a return

CLOUD GARDEN (for my Father

Tags

death, elegy, father, flight, funeral, grief, poem, poetry

CLOUD GARDEN
(for my Father)

climbing
climbing
engines at
full power

let us
conduct some commerce
whilst the
machine transports us

elevates above
world as it is, world
of everyday life

**^*
if only one could…

but I can still berate myself
as to why I am not
flying back in time

hoping to recapture, re-experience,
that absolute love and awe
I felt as a child

that burning love

in truth I need
this to
re-ignite

****

now we
are circling, circling

soon to be
making our descent

seat belts, warning lights,
you are all familiar with the procedure
in truth, frequent flier,
it has become second nature

plane circling
butterfly fluttering

monsoon somewhere such
is the chaos aspect

****

my life
poorly written, at best
a first draft

stuck, as all scripts are,
in the second act

but you, Oh my fine engineer,
my beautiful artisan

what great handiwork for all to see
here in this fuselage
other brother and his
chips off the
same block, gorgeous grandchildren

thousands of feet up
I am beholden to all
who understand the magic
of engineering

physics of lift, expansion coefficients,
I get the gist
am so
very happy to

as we
reach the apex of our climb
cruise altitude
time to level out

****

yes landing
there should be

we will have to
have one

to save the sanctity
of three-act structure

but talking
engineering

(plane shadowing the
ground)

what in our
design
is so specifically fatal

why could mortality
not be
written out
of the script, painted
out of the picture?

the engines singing
a vibrant, yet throttled-back
descant to this tune

seems sometimes that
if the Universe
has its joke
we are
the punchline

my mind clawing back
reaching deep into childhood
battling to figure
when death
first became a theme
(rise into consciousness
of what it is
to
be human
to be
of necessity
philosophical being)

****
through the porthole
time and cloud
seem to
be in
a kind of hiatus

the Earth at a distance
yet perfectly clear

a moment, where wistfully,
I would give myself
to the stratosphere

and you
high above the ground too
in your weapon of war

but death
not needing to
search for you, death already
got you
in its sights, in sharp
crystal focus

man of the sky, creature
of the Sun
the time
you were given spent
nurturing, gardening,
day upon day
committed to
the beauty of green

****
let us
as I whispered at the outset
do some
commerce

try some trade

put our heads together to figure
(my mathematics man) why

perfect love
is not the solution to
any known problem or equation

balance is never
a thing found
in absolute terms

the give and
receive m, somehow
always
in disjunction

but the sad axiom of truth in
these matters
is that we
should always love more

turns missed
roads not taken

stories that
won’t sell
that no one wants to hear

thinking now
of what words to speak
that in their careful truth
will do
exemplary justice

capture an essence
be
distillation of
these tears

****

so high
we might fly

that we
stretch the veil of the world, way
beyond
pushing any envelope

so high
we might fly

that there can be
no parachute

so close to the ground now
to the Earth which must welcome you

garden
cloud

garden of clouds where
forever sleep

DIEGO

Tags

Diego Maradona, elegy, football, poem, poetry

‪DIEGO‬

‪if only‬
‪we could ‬
be as
exquisite masters
of the planet

as you Diego
were of the ball

no human
ever blessed with
touch so sweet, so
Saint of
football perfect

yet all
its instinctiveness
dredged from a
terrible, wonderful
childhood place

whose life lessons
pushed you to
rewrite but
then tear up
the book
of what was possible

what magic might be conjured
by the game’s
true, sole,
demon of beauty

captivating us
all in
amazement
all
of football
surrendering itself

AGAIN AND AGAIN

Tags

Creation, philosophical, poem, poetry

AGAIN AND AGAIN

I love that conceit
“going to meet my maker”

what the Hell
could it possibly mean?

and
how should I there
deport myself

(whatever there
in that context does mean?)

should I be
fuzzy warm and sentimental- grateful?
or go
full Frankenstein’s monster for giving
me such an inadequate script?

finding myself
in the programmer’s tea room
far into the future
where someone wrote the code
that gave me life
bastard for trapping me
in that simulation

where
I lived and suffered, make
mistake after mistake, lost
my one true-
love (such a
badly-written cliche)
again and again
again and again

why am I not now
sitting on a park bench conversing
with Nietzsche
discussing eternal recurrence as
you reboot and reload?

Or maybe it’s got to be
scene with Monoloth as in Kubrick’s classic
as the star gate opens and I’m
left in a room with
elegant styling, fluorescent lighting

testimony (Renaissance paintings on the wall)
how far I have come
mainly as a species, less as individual man.

BIRTHDAY POEM

Tags

Birth, death, poem, poetry, Rebirth, renewal, Scorpio

BIRTHDAY POEM

the Sun glaring
through a hole
in the bedroom curtains

it’s early morning
so naturally, everything looking
to the East

I need words though
am desperate for words

to describe what I am seeing for you
or to create a mantra

same-old, same-old
will just not
cut it today
on your birthday

I flail around in my tired old way
driven to write, to find
perfect thing
to say
for the sake of friendship, legendary friendship

fall back on the
old mythologies paradoxically of rebirth and
renewal
today in this sign of Scorpio
sign of death and
yes, resurrection

but
renewal will do
yes renewal and fresh, re-born energy
would be such a blessing

for you
on your birthday
this special November day