ZERO DARK

Tags

dark, Light, philosophical, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, postmodern

ZERO DARK

it is too
dark for
the poet

too dark
for the philosopher

no one is writing
no one can see anything
we are all
on automatic pilot
software to
compensate for
limited mechanics
of movement

I think myself alone in this
I think myself
unique in this

switched
on and off
by remote control

LEFT-FIELD

Tags

identity, meaning, philosophical, philosophy, poem, poetry

LEFT-FIELD

life is here
— be all and end all —
solely for us
to propagate

this my mother father told me
slick propaganda for
stuffing the face
at Christmas or (lesser evil)
at Easter

but wait! — there’s more!
there’s more, there’s more

the grey squid in my head
living in my head that
is all I am

this ratiocinative jellyfish
taking time out from family feasting
on festive flesh

had questions to ask, problems to pose
riddle to be answered

this out of the blue
from
left-field, from nowhere

questions so good
got me dumbfounded, had to sit and
think and write and stuff

go full philosophical (family
assumed me mad)
trying to
shut aforementioned squid, put
back in place

which I did

nothing like
squid on squid, squid unto squid

brain in a box
to turn Socratic, win
arguments with myself
(whether squid be be all
and end all
be all that I am)

AYAHUASCA

Tags

hallucinogenic, poem, poetry, psychedelic, shapeshifter, Truth, wordplay

AYAHUASCA

drank ayahuasca

my brain bubbling
so many new cells
each with its own
identity, own agenda

and then the
serpent philosopher
explaining everything

saying this is
the legally
forbidden
knowledge

that sets you
out on a limb, an
ever-extending limb

wipes
all slates climb

CAME ACROSS ST THOMAS AQUINAS

Tags

Metaphysical, ontology, philosophical, poem, poetry, religious, spiritual, Value and meaning

CAME ACROSS
ST THOMAS AQUINAS

came across
St Thomas Aquinas

he was playing dice
was playing chess

said the future
lies in the cards
the balance
between
good and evil

between
absolute presence
and absolute absence

evil
being

virulent plague yet
lotus eater

political intrigue and
bullet point blank
in the
back of the
head

is cosmic displacement
natural disaster
faith confounding

at its
most perfect
(barely achieved
by mere
mortal human)

it is irrefutable proof
of the existence of God

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?”

PHILOSOPHY OF BORIS (101)

Tags

BREXIT, Britain, British, philosophical, philosophy, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire

PHILOSOPHY OF BORIS (101)

Boris

be discombobulation

Boris

be conundrum

be lexically
so
hors-texte
an absolute
thesaurus
of difference

philosophically
his every utterance
(and yet
not wanting to
be on record,
not wanting
to be recorded)
is that
most ancient of
Greek philosophical
perturbations

problem of
Cretan liar
dialing
Cretan liar
upon liar

what does this mean
for the concept
of truth

and who, perchance, do you
feel most deceived

conundrum, conundrum, and
yet politically quite axiom

to stumble
from
category
mistake

to
category mistake

the whole world epistemologically
fellow-travelling on his
coat-tails
embodying the

pristine positivist clarity
of our fate

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?

BARRON

Tags

Bishop Robert Barron, Catholic, Heaven, Multiverse, poem, poetry, spiritual, Universe, writing

BARRON

a Catholic scholastic on YouTube
spouting about District 9, The Matrix
and Bob Dylan

did not realize the Universe had
so many channels

so many the music
of the spheres gets (peaks
and troughs) flattened
out to a dull drone

on Netflix the Nazis
are still in New York,
Japanese in
San Francisco

and here I sit
in a reality that could not
be less porous, more alternate

playing wth words trying to
undo the cosmos linguistically
figure out its sublimely secret scrabble

so far
my score so low
(high scores only for
sounds that resonate
between every
conceivable dimension)?

at least that scholastic
does a convincing
glimpse
of Heaven

IN AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE

Tags

alternate history, existence, happiness, identity, loneliness, loss, love, meaning, poem, poetry, The Man in the High Castle

IN AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE

my lover in an alternate
universe
(whom
I have never met)

is reading to me
from an alternate version of
Man in the High Castle

I lie on my back
at peace with the world
unaware of what
true democracy or
a completely loveless life can be

I think about hoping that he
is smart enough to be loving and kind
having no idea how
abject a thing loneliness can be

but whatever the universe you
are lucky, unlucky enough
to find this version
of yourself in
truth is, from resurgent Nazism
there is now
no escape

the dark idea of purity (our worst
political concept) already infiltrating
freely seeping through
for where is the person
without that part of them in them
that truly needs an Emperor, edict of
a Fuhrer
wants death camps for neighbours
they racially despise

it is only a matter of time before
we find ourselves frogmarched and swastikaed

this world or
another

evil always
resurrects

never truly dies

they reading a text in their universe
no doubt different from the
film of the book I am
watching (alone) in mine

LIKE NOBODY’S BUSINESS

Tags

2001, A Space Odyssey, Consciousness, cosmic, death, future, Moon, Nietzsche, poem, poetry, Space

LIKE NOBODY’S BUSINESS

If was in the future
far into the future

I was giving a lecture
on The Moon

talking of the great symbols
of our collective cosmic consciousness

whilst you sat there
steeped in thoughts of death,
thinking of an ancient film

set on this very Moon
where Nietzschean superman
taps into alien presence, alien energies
is lifted out of sad species nihilism

but I
never having seen this film
kept spouting away

something
about the low gravity of this place

time here, I suppose,
moving slightly faster

ideas bouncing around
like nobody’s business

and our blue-brown
on its last legs sickly planet
at least with an
atmosphere however toxic
that might be

how long for that to remain
at the heart of these symbols, be
the fount of all our meanings

this barren, naked Moon
chaste female goddess
queen of
all unconscious mystery

enough
of a home for me.