THE GIFT

Tags

metapoetic, Paradox, poem, poetry, satire, writing, Zen

THE GIFT

Zen
you let
all
out

poem
you fill
up

take it
all in

make sure the
wrapping,
the packaging is
exquisite

the gift
absent

WHAT DISSOLUTION TO FEAR

Tags

absurdism, Consciousness, existential, Humanity, identity, meaning, Metaphysical, philosophical, physics, poem, poetry, wordpla

WHAT DISSOLUTION TO FEAR?

School’s shut
leaving me
in a philosophical vacuum

a nebula of molecules separated
by oceans of emptiness

like they pumped all
the oxygen out, all
the hydrogen, nitrogen,
methane, chlorine, and
every inert gas

and so I tell myself
my name is not Gogo
I am
more than
pure space, simple
intellectual abstraction

my molecules, in theory,
according to the theoretical model,
smeared
all over the place

by the weakest of
forces
held together

free to
skip class, play
truant

wander
all over the place

leaving me nothing
one of
the
99%

who look up
to the rest

covet such lives
of substance and stability

and yet
everything to
fight for

from
humanity
detached

and same it is, but different, with
these words on the page
(once — no, not really — words
in my mouth)

nothing solid there — all relation and
difference, symbol and
myth making

those old stories recycled
you’ve heard them before, wired
into your brain

layer upon layer
perhaps this is how air
how
breath contrives meaning

like
folded origami (suddenly shape
and dimension)
like
weapon of hierarchy in
folded samurai
steel

and I have, if you would bear with me, tried
folding
this page, these words, that

they might
fill my space, create
fiction of being

that you and I
could buy into

paradoxically, our life-stuff to clear
distinct to us
when most merged
most near

and with this
softest assurance

what
dissolution to fear?

SHINING

Tags

Humanity, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire, value

SHINING

On the table a gold sovereign
for which I would sacrifice
everybody, everything

start the war
to end all
wars

so much death
and bloodshed

my sovereign
still shining.

CONUNDRUM

Tags

Humanity, Paradox, poem, poetry, Twist in the tail

CONUNDRUM

I woke
to the world
my head
splitting
with a
question

so I asked the
creature that knows nothing
but has
all the answers

told me to
look

within.

WITHOUT IRONY

Tags

irony, poem, poetry, satire

WITHOUT IRONY

have run
out of irony

they say
irony is either
dead or
it is everywhere
like the air

we just
taking it
for granted

anyway
will run
down to
the shop

which is, paradoxically,
on top of
the mountain

but it’s a
Catch-22 because
no way
to summit

without irony

SUBTRACT ME

Tags

death, Ending, female, Fragmentation, identity, irony, loss, love, mathematical, Mathematics, meaning, Metaphor, philosophical, poem, poetry, power, Pythagoras, Sexual, Unity, wordplay

SUBTRACT ME

would that you would
subtract me, retract me

not divide
nor subdivide me

so divisive when
you do so
whether long
or short

or all the way down
to the absurdum of
lowest
common denominator

assigning
minus sign

my neck hung around
like dog in the proverb
taking my preordained place
in the negative
column

this negative space
what
in my
case
could be
more iconic?

where better
to split hairs, split atoms
balance
the equation?

countermand the stridency of
ego as infinity
absolutely plus one

though if we were to
deconstruct, go descant
suddenly
sing a tangent

from cheap
seat in the margins

(for which always the poetic risk
of becoming drawn, and quartered)

full-throat the love
that is such a
tough customer
when it
come to quantification

that sweetest voice
not always disembodied

even if
counterintuitive, counterfactual,
beyond definition

and yet
still mathematical

as it carves me up
as you
carve me
up
as you always do

me and you together
not a simple matter of
multiplication or
addition
thing in my
brain
going back to Plato
back to Pythagoras

my hand on
your hypotenuse
saying it
“does not compute”

PYRAMID FALLS DOWN

Tags

objectivity, philosophy, poem, poetry, quantum, science, University

PYRAMID FALLS DOWN

you call it “objectivity” but
in effect you are torturing the life out of things

yopu scrawl an equation on a board not with a chalkstick
but an icicyle
sending the Universe into grotesque
wave-collapse from sheer exasperation

see: on it way, a telex it is sending courtesy
of an ancient relay system in a neighbourhood spiral galaxy

informing whoever does not deign to lend an ear that
that it has a serious bone to pick with you
and your crew, whole lot, entire bunch of you

who as you stand present
something much akin to a perfect random sample

but enough of this mathematical exposition
let me, in all poetic narcissism, get round
to talking about me

hear me self-mythologize as I concoct a narrative
in which I slew the philosopher who seriously confounded me
skewered me on a dilemma (classic knight fork
if you think chess metaphor), trapped me in a paradox
whose nature seemed to me
to be hoplessly insoluble

Oh, there I was hoping I would grow up
with that kind of mind

the one that is not all too obviously out of place
in the ivied colonades (if they still have them)
of a university

tore a page out of the one that loomed up imperiously
at the top of the beanstalk

thinkers standing on the shoulders of giants but
then the pyramid falls down

AND YET

Tags

poem, poetry

AND YET

I have
many many books

and yet
can fit
will fit
into
a small, small
box

ain’t that
the paradox
ain’t that
the truth.

THE ALIEN POEMS: WHAT THE ALIEN POET TOLD ME

Tags

poem, poetry, Universe

THE ALIEN POEMS

WHAT THE
ALIEN POET
TOLD ME

an alien poem
is like
your Earth
football all
about first
touch

setting you up
as you
are seduced into
the soft dialectic of
inner and
outer
high and
low
beauty
and
terror

same
and other

for what is this poem
to you but impossible other?
(so much
you miss
as you
scoop the surface)

and what is
terror of the other
to this poem but

you its
reader

who should not
probe it’s horror
to deeply or

it will mimic your shape
become a terrible mirror

for what you
dare not face

your
exact self

BEE-LINE

Tags

poem, poetry, Universe

BEE-LINE
“… but just Ourselves
And Immortality.”

I thought I saw a bee
flying
to infinity
and in a race
with Ms Emily

who was in a horse-
drawn carriage or
perhaps Europa-
style on the
back of
a bull
or

between the operatic
gull-wings
of a Italian
devil,
an insane
Diabolo
of internal-
combustion power

and yet,
classic Achilles and
Tortoise, could
either
ever win

so much in this
true tableau
we
cannot tell,
must wait
and see

the picture shifting
this way
and that

so much in this
physics not
mass times
acceleration
times
what-what
(measured against
time which
we

now know
is not real

so much in the physics of
life

and of
this page

down to
conjecture, much uncertainty.