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)

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TREE

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Consciousness, Creativity, History, Humanity, identity, Language, meaning, metafiction, Metaphor, metapoetic, Narrative, philosophical, poem, Poet, poetry, postmodern, postmodernist, psychological, spiritual, transformation, Universe, writing

TREE

asked a tree
if it — we — had
a history

or if we were just fictional beings in
a simulation, as Buddha
did
in fact suggest
(struggling to incarnate as
Keanu Siddhartha)

possible to
efface as
glitches in
the system

characters to be rewritten
(structural flaws
to correct)

making for something that
lends itself to
deeper analysis
better
viewing, reading
in mode
lyric, comic, tragic

or postmodern self-
reflexive that somehow
narrates itself

and so,
I asked a tree, am
still waiting in quandary

nothing as it
should be
(as many as leaves, all
its thoughts
waiting to
be
signifier signified connected

spliced and grafted,
assessed, processed)

ON METHODOLOGY

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erotic, Ocean, philosophical, philosophy, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, research, sea, sexual symbolism, wordplay, writing

ON METHODOLOGY

She is staring out to sea
across the Indian today
tomorrow (will be)
across the Atlantic

and I am writing
a philosophical dissertation
on her body

not writing yet,
so much to write
squeeze into
that space

and so
whilst she stares across the ocean
taking in its majesty
I begin my field work
taking an
exploratory approach.

THE JOY

Tags

energy, Fire, Humanity, joy, Life, Nietzsche, pain, poem, satire, star

THE JOY

you struck
a match

in the
darkness

but
burned your
finger

the pain
the pain

the
joy

sheer
joy

fiery
as a
star

HOWEVER EXAMINED

Tags

Also Sprach Zarathustra, Nietzsche, philosophical, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, postmodern

HOWEVER EXAMINED

had sex
(once)

went mad
died

had a
boringly minimalist
philological life

so dead in the water
he told Zarathustra to
resurrect,
recreate him

and in this construction
balance the self
so finely
at the apex
of contrary

as eagle
and serpent
(the snake
in that
text
dancing the sublime joy
of infinite duplication

eternal recurrence of a wisdom
writhing through
that writing

marked by an ersatz,
interrogated favour
and joy
in the destiny
of
forever
swallowing itself

OR NOT

Tags

Capitalism, Consciousness, death, Fragmentation, Humanity, loss, philosophical, poem, poetry, spiritual, transformation, Twist in the tail, Unity, Universe

OR NOT

At the next line
this poem will end.

Believe it
or not.

I watch things dissolve
have heard that the
Universe is consciousness

we are
all connected

return, as it is written,
back to an ocean of drops.

Before things get
to dissolve however,
I fear I will fragment,
my body crack, things snap,
the structure of
what I am become
a broken shell

we are
all divided, exploited,
thrown against each other
battling
to survive

things you
can put your price on
flimsy, fragile containers
for such
insanely precious drops.

At the next line
this poem will end

whether
you believed it, or not.

POEM ON WORKERS’ DAY

Tags

poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, ROME, slavery, slaves, socialism, socialist, Spartacus, workers

POEM ON WORKERS’ DAY

so I pulled into Rome
on workers day
to debate liberty
with some slave owners

wore red
which I had difficulty explaining
would be our colour

not the colour of Empire, of
its soldiers and legions

there, within earshot, a Thracian gladiator training,
his sharp Greek philosophical mind
listening to the debate
taking

as he dies on the cross of ultimate rebellion
all that was said to its logical conclusion

IF NEEDS BE

Tags

Consciousness, death, philosophical, poem, poetry, simulation, universxas simulatoon, writing

IF NEEDS BE

let me slumber
try not to wake me

for that all-inclusive darkness
my only love, my true friend

let someone, something
I have never met and
would never want to
take and make
use, if needs be,
of my consciousness

just let me be
dissolved into the emptiness
molecule by molecule, atom
by atom

do not reanimate, or recall me,
with words to confide that
it was all a test, a simulation
that I was but
a character in a dream, a fiction,
a thing
with fourth wall
never alive
at all

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

EDEN

Tags

Consciousness, Fall, forbidden fruit, Garden of Eden, philosophical, poem, poetry

EDEN

It was some forbidden fruit
that consciousness

tart, dull
and yet sharp

no aftertaste.