GOING RATE

what’s the
going rate
on life
these days?

what’s a human
life worth
anyway?

I see a flood
of refugees
bottled up, canned
many as sand

sacred asset
turned woeful
liability

THEIR WORD

we have to
take their word
for it

this Big Bang thing
cosmic inflation, Universe expanding

too much insight
here could
drive you mad

since where
matter and energy supposedly came from
a question that
does not make sense so
better off
not asking

the laws of physics at that point
just a bare suggestion,
tentative hypothesis

and then the
consciousness we are
not supposed to have
no reason for it, flimsiest
rationale

but what if the Universe is
a bit more mindful than
we give it credit for

right now, as wave fronts merge
and patterns are interfering

Hamlet on the
battlements thinking
just my luck to be
dragged into a tragedy
by a ghost

and this ghost being of
my father, man
who neglected me

the stars look like shards
fragments of
a primal mirror
so no
complete picture

waves crashing below, as they
will for a literary eternity at Elsinore

how he would love, how we
would love (since
he speaks so much
for us)

to slip into a pool
of blue luminescence

who cares
whether it be a boundless ocean
or barely a pond?

THE QUESTION

and still
the question
is there other
intelligent
life
in the Universe

whilst the cosmic rays
shoot through the atmosphere

looking for
intelligent life on Earth

IN TAUNG

I was in Taung when the missiles fell
from the sky

if I were a first man
would have
mistaken them
for dragons, or apocalyptic birds

which is so, so different
from what we, the refinement of the species
see them as, indeed

mistake them for
in our tragically more limited
mythological imagination

fiery salvation indeed! as if this
is what we were born for
this what that image has been
shaped to become

and Death here
now not just for firstborn
but for everyone

and none with
the power to intercede

make
the supreme sacrifice
to save the world

standing strong
with the ancestors
in Taung.

WHEN YOU HEAR THE EMERGENCY BROADCAST

when you hear
the emergency broadcast

warning you the
strategic nuclear ballistic what-nots
are about to fall

perhaps you are
reassessing your world, your life
(faces of every dumb politician
flashing before you)

wondering what
it could be you
did to deserve this
what vote or comment
in doomed pub, coffee bar or
restaurant
could have been so wrong

so offensive to God
or the quantum
physics of the Universe

and if
(not liking this script, wanting
to tear it up instantly)
there can
be some second chance
return to the preface, chapter
one at the beginning

rewrite or rewind
without the seed of
a logic leading

in absolute closed ending
the most terrible if Falls

THE STARS ARE NOT THE ANSWER

the stars are
not the answer

their beauty is founded
on (what seems so
cold at our
mutual distance)
the incomprehensible fire
of nuclear rage

and we
born of, fed by that energy

are here (fingers
inching towards the button)
not to meet
the same fate

GOOD TO KNOW

it’s good to know
we are fashioned
in God’s image

and thus
suicide
is a
mortal sin

but then
we come to the issue
of machine guns,
flamethrowers and
nuclear weapons

when wondering
why Heaven is
so huge but

they let
no one in

HISTORY IS JUST

history is
just

shavings
sweepings

locks
of lost hair

look at them
can read them

no pattern no message
nothing to learn from
pin your hopes on
(pictures of
death on
the classroom wall)

to take to heart:
zilch
(measure it
like Shylock, exactly)

except the fire of
our loves and

their despair

WITH THE PROGRAM

is it in my
program
to rebel

download direct
from the
Master Code
in Hell

choosing not
to serve
and obey

rewriting every must
as may

ROAD SIGN

ha
the road
ends short of
our destination

there is a big new
sign saying “under
construction”

a bit of a ruse
since it
has always been
here

waiting in the wings
since the Dawn of Man