AT ALL

Tags

Humanity, identity, meaning, Narrative, philosophical, poem, poetry, Universe

AT ALL

“And would suffice.”
Robert Frost

The Universe has
a sloppy ending

I see it is written
into the script.

Tried to
make sense of it
but it is above
my pay-grade
beyond my
rationality level

not that
have not tried
to change it
not that I
did not try
to change it
burning through
an electrical element
creating
a tiny star, if
only in
heat and
incandescence

but this aside
there is no positive spin
to this cosmic tale
which
has no story really

somehow in
the bleakness of the firmament
its billions of light years
we are
doomed to beat ourselves up
again
and again
hoping for narrative structure,
presuming hero’s journey

these great
archetypes of mind
don’t cut the ice
won’t cut it at all.

MONSTERS

Tags

Alien, Horror, HP Lovecraft, John Hurt, Kane, love, monster, orgasm, poem, poetry

MONSTERS

there are Lovecraft monsters
down
in the basement
in deep space

then there are
those monsters
you yourself
are more likely to become

let’s, for want of a better term,
call them love monsters, monsters
Love herself has created

never
was thing with
vampire incisors and
tentacles more
beautiful

like the hapless John Hurt in Alien
I have one
seeded in childhood
still growing inside

sometime due to erupt with
ecstatic volcano

find its way through my flesh
to the light out
of those deep
alien subterranean caverns
of my mind

where it was
both digging for gold
and hunting for conspiracy

lying next to you to night
figured it might showcase itself
feared its irruption

but your post-coital quiet
suggested everything
subside
that had not been sublimed

MY SIDE OF THE STORY

Tags

Humanity, identity, philosophical, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, power, Reader, writing

MY SIDE OF THE STORY

You inquire as to
the side am on

I beg your indulgence
to let me take but a moment
to step aside
interrogate the legitimacy
of that question

in a Universe known for non-
linearity, hybridity and
space-time curvature

place that I can define for myself
to read and write poetry
close, in your locality,
vicinity yet
way over on
the far side
of every clear category
in your line of thinking

Oh clever, you retort, ace dodging
of my question
as if we could suppose
that poem
doesn’t have lines too
is totally syntagmatic in
hand-walking the reader from
opening to ending
with some hint of
a new beginning
perhaps resurrection, as
last metaphor
mirrors the first, seemingly
insisting on an aesthetic of completion
and inevitable return

I smile
you have me

(the smile being different
according to your gender)

as if
the name life gave me
can let me off lightly

so many
poems and their poets
dying fighting for a cause
in a war

other poets, poems started.

ALL THE WARNINGS

Tags

Britain, Earl of Oxford, Humanity, identity, King Crimson, philosophical, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, Prince, Reader, Shakespeare. Sir Thomas More, slavery, United States, wordplay, writing

ALL THE WARNINGS

All the warning signs were there
as my eye caught sight
of Lord Oxo, chatting amiably
with Sir Thomas, Lear, Prince and King Crimson

there where the Avon
becomes the Mersey
flows into the Thames
flows into
the Tiber, the Hudson
and the Ganges

sitars appeared, struck up a duel/duet
with lutes and zithers

music that could not drown out
the cries of suffering from the bowels of ships
heading for a new world, where the
dream is one of a power that can
green-transform everything

and there
engraved in stone, another
false monument, this to
no mere actor-dramatist, but
to the principles of humanity that
embody in
eagle-feathered, golden perfection
the great holy light of our human enlightenment

but
by a backdoor, by that same tawdry sea-city
the beauty of another music now returns
and
our Lord’s scenes, scripted and acted
are framed in such a way
that the metaphors of
our being are
rendered literal

Sir Thomas with a word or two about Plato,
Papacy, and the nature of the ideal State.

Under the spotlight for his soliloquy. Easier
to listen, easier to read
than author or reader
forced to follow from the heart of the flames.

NOT LIKE QUITE

Tags

Fall, Humanity, poem, poetry

NOT LIKE QUITE

like dropping acid
the Fall
was unlike

not snorting cocaine either
look elsewhere
for your comparison

and to you
spiking heroin as you do
can’t reassure you
that Fall
has you covered:
that hallucinogens, opiates
psychotropics
grew fast and furious
upon the banned tree of knowledge

to give
you the most perverse of advantages
the strangest edge

turning this world that bit
more alien

revealing exactly
where the fiction of
mind meets
fiction of world

how they
conspire, reconcile

and where
this connection begins
and how
it ends

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

BENEATH

Tags

philosophical, poem, poetry

BENEATH

trying to
avoid all
rancor

become
as deeply philosophical
as the next man

prayed to
the end of the curse
of being able
to see through

longed for the ability
and necessity
to read people completely
at face value

it breaking my heart
every time whichsoever
I delve beneath

ODDLY

Tags

poem, poetry

ODDLY
(for the Odds and Ends Re-launch)

oddly, the world
seems not yet
at an
end

despite humanity’s best,
most Sterling efforts

we have the
chance to
re-launch, to
shift
the site
to try
again

make at last
an astute decision

based on
not what
the demographics say
the PR wants, the hard
(and
blind) commercial
decision

no, on what
the heart needs,
what the soul wants

what a
dead, dead town
is crying out

for so
long
nobody hearing

oddly
the world
standing
up again

or
in this
special space
just chilling

MISSION

Tags

Humanity, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire, thermonuclear

MISSION

pop goes
the dinosaur
no way
it’s going to
wheedle, weasel
its way
out of this one!

comet approaching
at a rate of knots
ATTENTION ALL GIANT REPTILES
RESISTANCE IS FUTILE

it will be
a mission but
mammals got
this covered

they’ll suck
their tits a bit
then come
up with a plan

no mission impossible
for these little
media wizards millennia
in the making

***

and here we
in face are, millions
of years in the future

stealth bombers heading out
missiles in the firing position
(so you can
imagine the TV spin)

strange how
this intelligent ape
became so
phallus-obsessed
with walking upright and
coming to consciousness

and now they
are talking
drop in ratings for
those
bombed out of existence

the dead duck can
coil back on its spring then
truly fiery Phoenix itself

go out
proud, with great legacy,
(how this species loves that!)

and there
the shaman speaks channeling entity
she calls god president on highest

masturbating syllables as
spirit gibberishes itself

in the culture of the race we might speak
of a defective cyborg, robot or android
whose speech
patterns are shot

whose logos is skewed

whose face is contorted by
torture or
rapture

who needs to
go back to her Maker for
whole existential reboot

and up out of
their graves
except
they never died
unless
intellectually speaking

the dumbed-down ones spring
to truly rejoice

outgoing, incoming
it’s all just one
sweet show to them

sign
of mission accomplished

new kids
we have
not seen yet

about to get their chance

SAPIENS

Tags

agricultural revolution, History, poem, poetry, Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari

SAPIENS
(for Yuval Noah Harari)

though I feel it
I feel it

in my head, intellectually,
I am not in a position
to critique your
argument on
the Agricultural
Revolution

sitting as I am
down for
dinner
stuffing my face with rice