TREELINE

Tags

Crucifixion, Metaphor, poem, Poet, poetry, symbolism, tree, writing

TREELINE

don’t read
any further

go
direct

to the source;
follow me
to the tree

see how well
this theme is here expressed

the growth
slow, painstaking,
yet a
joy to
all

sorry that
my pen should
so wound you

that here you
bleed
for all to
see

your stigmata
my poetry

IN THE FIRST PLACE

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?”

PREDATOR

Tags

human, Humanity, Nature, panther, poem, poetry, predator, Reader, shark, Snake

PREDATOR

water streaming through my gills
bringing the life-giving oxygen

I power my way forward
body so streamlined it is pure vector

dorsal, pelvic, pectoral
gigantic fins to stabilize
as I torpedo towards you
through the water
you being human
this being
no fair fight, supreme
mismatch

Oh yes, when I die
let me reborn in some
size or shape of deadly predator

hunting you down hopeless, hapless human
locked onto the smell of your blood

yes black as night and cruelly beautiful
my eyes blaze like emeralds
lit from within
my claws to catch and hold, dagger
canines to do the coup
de gras with

or slither like lightning turned into muscle
each drop of my venom there, in theory,
to wipe out an army

more than enough
to deal with you

who so
foolishly, artlessly,
entered into my target territory
whose heart
I have on heat desk

my speed
coiled up for
all such

devastating encounters

and yet
in your eyes I see recognition
absurd realization you
know me from somewhere

but I have have long forgotten you
reader, or the
wish beautifully realized

expressed
in this poem

having forgotten what it is like
to have been
human

my poetry now a matter of
rhythm and execution;
timing and kill

OFF

Tags

death, Humanity, identity, ironic, Nature, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, power, satire

OFF

I’m
human

scream
from the top
of a mountain
I’m
so
superior
best
of the lot

pause
for a
selfie

fall
down

fall

off

LOGOS IN THANOS

Tags

Capitalism, evolution, Humanity, Nature, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, power

LOGOS IN THANOS

same old
same old

species still
got the same
logo

no
news good
news

nothing that
you cannot
re-
work

rejig
(getting jiggly
with it)

Nature not
into wholesale new
rebranding

maybe would
really love it

it the
project fail
we all
come

tumbling
down

SELECTION

Tags

Darwin, Nature, poem, poetry

SELECTION

Nature is
greedy

and
short-changes

does not
give two hoots
about what
Darwin says

but do not
tell her
he is dead
that
divine Englishman

or for sure
she will be dancing
on his grave.

THE SKY BUCKLES

Tags

Consciousness, Creativity, Humanity, Language, meaning, Metaphor, Metaphysical, metapoetic, philosophical, philosophy, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, power, Reader, semiotics, time, wordplay, writing

THE SKY BUCKLES

The physics Professor
cabled the poet, said

you writers have no insight
into the nature of things
(once the great Lucretius passed
that great understanding gone
sadly lacking)

told him off sharply for his deployment
of preposterous verb after preposterous verb

dragging the no sense
down into nonsense

dim place
without true knowledge of processes
(“the sky buckles
the Earth speaks

what nonsense is
this”)

such false pride, devious ego assumptions,
same as with the climbers who
stumble in the death zone descent
die like flies
(not that flies can reach them
or decay ever

the minus sign that withholds
the fair redistribution of their atoms

so great an outlay on
the right to die without real dignity

whilst I can (here we go with these verbs again)
sink into the soft demolishment of self
the loosening, untethering of all memories
that the
winds might take them blow
them from the summit like
freshly-fallen snow

subtract me from that consciousness
that is little more than
delusion of matter, philosophical
abstraction

deploying to this end all
your verbs rigidly Newtonian, constitutionally-approved,

there to
beat all the sympathy, empathy
out of me
hard Nature in

that the course you have charted (calculating
mass as opposed to energy)
might bring me to
the mirror of the truth that
governs all
seemingly evolving

get those selfish, time-denying atoms, to speak
only when
spoken to

adamant in their madness
that they
are here (voicing as collective)

to
speak what
needs to be spoken

and so will,
must speak

perforce express

(and if the sky buckle fearing the
fake power of this medium

let these verbs have
their way

let each
do its worst)

MOTHER GODDESS

Tags

Everest, feminine, masculine, Mountain, Nature, patriarchal, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, power

MOTHER GODDESS

Mother goddess
I stood on your
summit

and now I am
good for TED talks
can inspire you similarly
feed you
my life skills

inspiration
infectious

sadly, today no one here
to speak at this venue

who died if not in state of grace
then human compassion
on the slopes of
lesser mountain

out in the storm
looking for such as you

GARDEN VARIETY

Tags

apocalyptic, art, Chaos, Dionysus, Ending, Garden, Nature, Order, philosophical, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry

GARDEN VARIETY

metaphor muddles
truth
mud slides

and so, what can we say about what
happened to the stories
that we tell

no hope there of them ever helping
the stars that govern us realign

speaking
from green comfort zone

cultivated with Nature tamed,
bent into strict beauty
by force of Art

I watch the world amass, follow the forces of chaos
out to do damage to
world air-conditioned, strongly
double-glazed

so much smoke (as in mirrors,
as in “not without fire)

there in the non-smoking section, do
not hope to find your Dionysus

and if
find him you do
how might you dissuade him
from this church militant
deranged drunk on
(just the hint of the thought)
of divine wine

those vines
criss-crossing the new
no-man’s lands of purging
military fire

UNMAPPED

Tags

good v evil, Humanity, inhumanity, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire

UNMAPPED

There be no
place of dragons

no
virgin territory

the kingdom of the gray ape
is mottled
good
and evil

(not so spotted
as Satan’s shield)

North
South

apex of beauty
nadir of bestiality
(what could be
more ridiculous about
this map?

he whispered in
an Iago aside)

Oh, and I am monster too, burning the sky
ripping up the earth, poisoning the sea,
with every toxic footstep
across this landscape

monster that crippling itself
feeds on its own

and yet, here I am
trying to shape, to
save, to conserve

to give a different image
a cultured shadow
(ironic, when we have so
provoked the anger of the Sun).