PLAYING FOR CHANGE
I hear you
travel everywhere
find people
create a rich musical tapestry
so much potential
in all humanity
when
we are
are at our
most beautiful
we
find our harmony
sing our
one true song.
20 Wednesday Sep 2023
30 Sunday Apr 2023
SIMPLICITY
O blessed simplicity
I cannot today bear
to think of anything
with puzzle or pattern
any kind of visual complexity
like an urban landscape
or a mosaic
for pattern can go crazy
pattern can be the insane
unfolding of what is
locked up in a chemical
diabolical complexity
of the infernal
or the seeming
impossibility locked into
pin-point
certainty
that skins across ocean
disregarding space/time
that is God
that is God
that is also
at this moment, poem
infinitely greater than this one
in its beautiful simplicity
really beyond
comparison
but
feel to make one
freedom is the thing
this sweet, sacred simplicity
seems to
be about all about.
05 Saturday Nov 2022
Posted Ancient Greece, Android, Family, gods and goddesses, Grace, love, marriage, Poem, poetry, Poetry, Poetry, The book, The ocean, The ocean, the sea, the sea, Transcendence, transformation
inTags
Beauty, Creation, Creativity, death, erotic, female, Humanity, identity, Life, love, mythology, Ocean, philosophical, philosophy, poem, poetry, power, sea, sexual symbolism, transformation, Twist in the tail, Universe, Water, Water power astrological, woman
CONJUNCTION
however improbable,
it was a discourse
sweet and true
myself and none other
than the goddess Aphrodite,
or
a clone of her, or
one of her machines
chilling
becoming somewhat
philosophical as we
discussed divinity, mortality,
love
and existence
until this sexual scarecrow appeared
out of the blue
wooden-jawed and all
wooden-headed too
as he tried to argue his case
in favour of toxic neglectfulness
as somehow
true road to fatherhood,
family and patriarchy
but
we paid him
no heed
bade him
just disappear
and take all
his disjointed spittle shit
back
where it came from
from
whence it came
(quite
unspeakable place)
whilst goddess and I did
strip ourselves naked
venture into
the ocean very
place where she was born
made love
in that foam, churning
it all
up again
to celebrate conjunction
essence
of Creation
13 Friday May 2022
Posted Ancient Greece, Apocalypse, apocalyptic, Censorship, Chaos, Civilized, classical, Control, Creation, Dark and light, death, Democracy, Destruction, Devil, Dystopia, Ending, entropy, Evil, evolution, existential, Fairy, Fragmentation, Grace, Hell, historical, History, Holocaust, Hope and despair, Humanity, hypocrisy, identity, intense, Intertextual, Judgement, Life, loss, Lost, love, Lunacy/madness, Mathematics, media, Metaphysical, Nightmare, Nuclear, Order, Peace, philosophical, Poem, Poet, poetry, Poetry, political, Politics of poetry/writing/Literature, postmodern, Propaganda, Questions, Repression, Revolution, satire, science fictional, social comment, the city, Time travel, Truth, Universe, utopia/dystopia, Value and meaning, War, Wasteland
inTags
apocalyptic, Censorship, death, Ending, History, Humanity, Life, loss, love, media, Metaphysical, Nuclear, philosophical, philosophy, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, postmodern, power, transformation, War
ARC
(for the dead soldiers
and civilians in Ukraine)
shallow grave after shallowg grave
Each marked by two crossed twigs
this is
what we are
this is what
we have become
(yes, little Oscar, my
beautiful refusenik,
beat that drum
beat that drum)
you can sing the nation’s song,
recite its story
yet
again;
yet again
can match with the people
to the city on the hill, to
the Winter Palace
yet again
(what was it the Jew of Trier said
about history as
forever repetition)
whatever you decide
power had decided for you
has decided
what is needed
who
is dispensable
under what authority
text is scribbled on the chalkboard of centuries,
the lessons that are to be learnt
coded, ratified
published in pristine volumes, broadcast
Universe-wise
who is remembered
who is forgotten
allowed to live
left to die
pretty severe these equations
meant to solve for everything linear
and quadratic
resolve the Hell
that is human life
and let us not extrapolate into
dystopian future, or survival post-nuclear
but select reverse gear
and Delorean
to Plato’s time
those regulatory Greeks (Pythagoras, Euclid,
Archimedes)
measuring the soul, circling
around love
hearkening towards some, call me crazy,
theorem of perfection
who now
is open
to that axiom
all geometry now
brutal in trajectory
arc
as in rainbow that Euclid
did delineate, did faithfully describe
now
just a slice of value intersection
where the x does meet
and destroy the y
11 Saturday Sep 2021
RINKHALS
I beheld a god
in his garden
dithering
and dallying
deity
in his dotage
on the way to
the pool pump
where
set to meet him
divine creature from
different mythology
spiritual; tradition
who, surprised at the
suddenness of
the intrusion
spat
literal venom
though her aim was off
and she lacked any previous
to aim
for absolute accuracy
teach him
a dead-eye-dick lesson
about grace and true divinity
he would
never forget
exactly as, were he
to stumble into the pages,
he would witness now
so quick to
denigrate
imagine himself on throne so
absolutely powerful
lording it over his children like
any quasi-imperial man.
08 Sunday Aug 2021
GRACE
I asked for grace
but you gave me “gloria”
I said
I thought that
was a virtue
that
might
fall really fast
and so you, being
so superb at Latin
(as indeed at all the Romance languages)
rapped out the full
declension of
this noun
which so impressed me so greatly
I was virtually
speechless
except words
did appear to find me
grace, in triumph yet again,
proving itself the virtue to depend on
in linguistic emergency
preventing
the salty satura from
pouring out of my mouth.
18 Thursday Mar 2021
Posted Apocalypse, apocalyptic, Author, Beauty, Capitalism, celebration, Civilized, classical, Commercialization, Community, Creation, Decay, Deconstruction, Democracy, Destruction, digital age, Dumbing down, Empire, Ending, entropy, Failure, Fascism, Fashion, Fragmentation, glamour, Global warming, Grace, History, Humanity, Imagination, Intellectual, intense, Intertextual, Judgement, loss, Lost, Mechanistic, Metamorphosis, Muse, mythical/mythological, Neoliberalism, Order, Planets, Poem, Poet, poetry, Poetry, Poetry, political, Politics of poetry/writing/Literature, popcultural, postmodern, Propaganda, Reader, Reality?, Repression, ROME, Sexual, social comment, SUN: the sun, The desert, The Fall, The future, The ocean, The ocean, the sea, the sea, The World, Truth, Unity, utopia/dystopia, Value and meaning, Water, water, woman, Woman, writing
inTags
Amanda Gorman, America, Apocalypse, collapse, Democracy, Ending, Fashion, Global warming, Muse, poem, Poet, poetess, poetry, recital, satire, The Hill We Must Climb
FOR THE MOMENT
Amanda is doing a photoshoot
they will tell their laureate
how to walk
what to wear
I’m listening to Chris Hedges droning
on like a Old Testament prophet
he’s lucky though, even if
so high on style,
when it comes down
to me
he’s preaching to the converted,
(Lord forgive me, thinking of
Amanda on the runway
about to take off into a
galaxy of camera flashes
I confuse
getting down to basics
stripping the fake from
our
postmodern reality
with imagining her naked
as though poets are distinct species, need
to find each other to breed
at least finally produce a progeny
with some hope of utopia
but you are
too much creature of hype and image, my dear
thing straight from the pages of
Frankfurt School or Jean Baudrillard)
meanwhile the planet (Janet) is going full Rocky Horror
the sky looking particularly alien this morning
crazy cloud cover suggest
something fomenting, certainty mutating,
firmament going to
crack and crumble like earthquake
hitting a
ceiling painting
that thing called nihilism
about to embrace us as all things collapse
but still
a world where first amongst equals
can spit out his poetic pronouncement
as to
how beautiful barbed wire can look
at night
or in the cold of morning
the morning Sun soon to relegate
concept of cold to
ancient memory
turning up the heat without
check
or balance
make our planet
more beautiful from a distance
shine
like Venus
(Amanda you are
your own greatest muse, your own
perfect Venus)
let
the Sun be
I hear them argue
none should interfere with, try
to temper
its holy predilections
and as
we sink
and drown
let us
find the new fetishes to sustain us
unlike you, my dear golden poetess,
my words damned to
spew, splurge, out
the wrong side of my mouth
as for you all, you nothing wordsmiths,
in that department
so ungifted
I tell you
to forget your dialectic, leave
teleology well alone
no secret code
under a rock
or
inside the rock
to divulge way out
of the labyrinth
if no
sense of wonder, just
a carcass of hunger
would it be worth
any trouble at all?
Amanda has finished now
the recital is over
the whole of humanity (or
at least
America)
has climbed that Hill
as so dutifully, democratically,
rhythmically instructed
she
smothered by a wave of wildly polite adulation
steam-rollered by machine of ecstatic
and yet
so precisely calculated
fashioned
for the moment
non-fake utopian applause.
24 Wednesday Jun 2020
15 Friday May 2020
IN YOUR ELEMENT
these scars
on my arm
are where
my skin burned
when you
touched me
lifted me
up out of
the ocean
and we
walked
for that moment
hand-in-hand
this is the water
I can still taste
you
bade me drink
until
flowing through my body
water and I
were
as one
sometimes I sense it
is there
a drop that
will never leave
has remained
it’s molecular structure bonded
in a place of perfect light
and this
the air
vehicle for the word
across which
your voice carries
through which, all
being well
I am meant to ascend
but for now
where I juggle things
this poem
this breath
every
aspect of myself
all that
must be weighed, judged
called to
balance
come to rest
and lastly, by no means finally
this earth that enfolds
ground from which the
child in me outgrew
where my
feet feel time’s sand, fertile loam,
kick up
some dust
(and who
knows what
gold
hidden
in such dust?)
this the
floor to
who knows
what ceiling
this the dark door
where you yourself were
made human, died
and were entombed
20 Friday Dec 2019
Tags
Adam, animals, Aristotle, Cat, Cats, Garden of Eden, Language, linguistic, names, philosophical, philosophy, Plato, poem, poetry, The Fall
IN THE FIRST PLACE
Damn Adam for naming
the animals
why on Earth did he
feel compelled to turn
to Latin for labelling species and genus?
and why did he not
tell us their secret names
the ones they use when talking to each other
because the names we give them,
sometimes they
ignore them entirely
take for example
my cat Tinky
finer cat philosopher and
gueriila fighter you
would be hard pressed
to find
and I was hard-pressed to find her once
hunting for her high and low
calling her name (tears and
panic just
around the corner)
already about to hit the lampposts with
reward notices
and then she arrives, nonplussed,
wondering why the fuss
giving me that look cats give
regretting the stupidity of
their chosen owners
regretting their fallibility, their
lack of grace, smarts and cool
which, Tinky asks with
eyes keen as Aristotle’s, conviction
sure as Plato’s:
“were these not
the things you
had and lost
when you
forgot our names
when we had the connection
and you knew
what was what
in the first place?”