TIBERIUS

Tags

Jesus, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, riots, satire, Tiberius Caesar

TIBERIUS

Tiberius Caesar
tear-gassing away
the poor mourners

so he could
have a photo-op
next to Jesus
on the Cross

because, who
knows, sometime
in the future
the Empire might
become Christian

and then
for legacy what
a good
look
that would be

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

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

MORE

Tags

Empire, Fall, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire

MORE

An Empire
is falling

but you could
yet hear it roar

were its mouth
and foot not
at the
orthodontist

where those
once razor, razor
flesh-
stripping teeth

are getting cleaned
and cleaned
and
cleaned
some more.

DIG

Tags

Empire, History, Humanity, Imperialism, poem, poetry, satire

DIG

the deeper
you dig
the less
the glamour

bust of marble
turned to
feet of
clay

the mighty
testimony of
the Colosseum

not enough sand
to swallow

all the blood
that came its way

CLEAR AND PURE

Tags

Colonialism, diamonds, greed, Imperialism, poem, poetry, South Africa, South African, wealth

CLEAR AND PURE

these tiny little
stones glitter
are like
diamonds except
that is
what they are

pure carbon

you can dig
a hole that
if it does not
go all the way
down to
Hell
fund an
Empire

can scar the Earth so deep
she never heals

I have family named
Kimberley since
my cousin, her father,
must have thought
her his
little diamond
his
precious little
tiny star

and if you take my ash
compress it enough
you can,
believe it or not,

make a
diamond out of me

what little light I have shown
in this life
captured for
eternity

clear and pure

JETSAM

Tags

Empire, Fall, island, Ocean, poem, poetry, sea

JETSAM

jetsam
between
my toes

washed in
by the tide

last remnants
of Empire unknown
too far
across the ocean

for me to
have heard anything
of its rise
and fall

to find in these poor
trace elements anything
worth reading
likely to
paint
a picture

all we
can assume is
that
it outlived it’s purposes
lost
its logic

sacrificed one
last gamble on a
failure of (so-called) intelligence

how it is
always with history

(as we
are always forgetting)

the machine
that is time

washes, rinses

subjects
to recycling

ROME

Tags

Empire, Humanity, poem, poetry, power, ROME

ROME

the golden greed of Rome
marble knuckle-dust
of her high achievement

template of how
it is done
how it
has to be
done

a power standing in the way
simply burn that
city, annihilate
a people, dissolve
that civilization

no words, no trace,
the text of a history
reduced to ash

reduced to what
the victory column says it is

in business of war, in
business of
State you
came such a long way

shining example of
what an
Empire
must be

LESSON

Tags

BREXIT, Britain, British, Einstein, Ending, Intellectual, loss, philosophical, poem, poetry, Shakespeare

LESSON

it started as gut feeling
then intellectual exercise:
draw ever narrowing circles

on this same blackboard
where the dust itself
magically transposed
into telescope looking
into ever-expanding galaxy

into tiny equation
that said everything

how human being is
light might
be turned to fire

no one reads those blackboards now
the world they were portal into
simply run out of everything
except billboard idea

the change so fast
that dust so volatile

a country that has wished
the worst days upon itself
rushing towards
its gorgeous nemesis
like a meteor

let me
try the virtue of patience
staring deep into
that chalk

iconic chalk you
might
add in, your fivepence worth
wishing to caricature

once there wax Empire, for all its deep sin,
this place concentric, its thinking radial

now nothing crosses
to these shores, we have made
ourselves taboo, insufferably precious

that poet whose words they wrote in chalk:
now there was a lesson!

WHEN I RETURNED

Tags

BREXIT, Britain, British, decline, Empire, Ending, entropy, poem, poetry, Postcolonial, postmodern

WHEN I RETURNED
“entrenched and calcifying
class stratifications”
Gary Younge

when I returned
everything was crumbling
but not in that happy
melt-in-the-mouth sort of way

a land of
broken statues

historical memories
grown ever more painful
with each passing year

once this
machine worked

once it ran on ahead
outstripped the pack
at full steam

but now how bleak
how dour
cement coloured skies
divulging near toxic rain

that somehow, magically,
stays within official limits
and so no one gets sick
no
discernible ailments

and there the images
that once rejuvenated
reminded us of
the great musical hall and
other popular traditions
feeding into
the great Beatlesque
transformations of identity

anarchy in the late 70s
along those stone cobbled streets
where my grandad
returned from war with
dream of starting a family

chipped, cracked
whose face is that
did they ever see this Britain, this
England coming

not just rejuvenated, but
rising from the dead
(form an
all-star dead rock band
with John and Jimmy and George
and Mary and Percy
who wrote such blistering
odes in mode
of truth to power)

but now
not a whimper of
that poetry

cannot call it
a wasteland because it’s all
too hypothetical, digital and
completely plasticated

no memory of
what went blitz as it
streaked across
the channel

what went bang and

what Guy Fawkes cracker could

remove every stone, every blade
of grass
the name of every city

those names whose esteemed truth you cling to
when theIr failures shone brighter
than the brightest searchlight

why we
need the darkness

for their
power to grow
and grow

empirically, imperially, universally,
exponentially

until the
bubble burst

so fatally
expand