OR RIPE CHEESE

Tags

poem, poetry, The Emperor of Ice Cream, Wallace and Grommit, Wallace Stevens

OR RIPE CHEESE

Emperor of
Ice Cream

Queen
of Margarine

Wallace and his dog
composed a poem together
so see
if you can
stop motion animate
that
creative process

using
the usual:
plasticine, modeling clay
or
(of course) ripe
cheese

PLAN IS

Tags

Plato, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire, Space, thermonuclear

PLAN IS

the plan is
to teach the Universe
the physics of Einstein

hope being
that we fill
the galaxy
with mushroom
clouds

take
the unconscious
to every planet
in every solar system

lecture on Plato’s cave
and Republic
the entire post-
Disney history
of pop culture

from fins on Cadillacs
to nuclear theme park

TO POWER

Tags

fake news, Frankfurt School, media, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire, Theodor Adorno

TO POWER

if it all fake
how the f do you
speak truth
to power

how do
you
locate the
source of your
stultification and
oppression

if you
need your
GPS to
locate your
existence

the networks blasting
in the foreground
of the background

eating Cheetos
reading Adorno

how the Hell
do your find
yourself?

RINGU

Tags

audience, Gollum, Lord of the Rings, media, poem, poetry, Reader, Ringu, television, The Ring

RINGU

you can’t step
in the same
river
twice

and the same monster
can’t climb through
your TV screen twice

your
precious TV set
you are watching
Lord of the Rings on
strangulated voice of
Andy Serkis
desperate to win
back thing
the Hobbitses stole

but beware
stuff, characters, demons
just popping in
through mirrors and
screens and
all things permeable

sitting comfortably on the sofa
to share you viewing experience
gnarled, prosthetic fingers
grabbing for
a biscuit, creeping towards
the potato chips

Gollum coughing and wheezing because
no fish in the popcorn

talking of reality
one has to
think television
because
the connection, once metonymic,
is now
in sickness and in health
marriage inseparable

poem too is permeable, but sadly
lacking comparatively

and lucky you are too
for there are wordsmiths who
do shapeshift, their
transformative powers bad
news for
your comfort zone

yes
you think it’s fake and
the words have

done enough
to put something
in that oven, strip search
and infiltrate you

so better buckle up, sharpen up,
no hope for you reading with
that glazed TV look and
obligatory commercial break to
feed your
imagination

or else
I will Ringu you
crawl out snake-like from
deep within
the subtext
the space between the lines
where your
curiosity
was needed

yep, could be
there before you
know it

curled up
cat-like in
your lap

(in which guise
a gorgeously green Orc woman
did once
surprise

no hive-mind jive
now
from those
redoubtable lips

many
love scars from
her conversion. )

MIND MELD

Tags

logic, poem, poetry, postmodern, poststructuralist, Star Trek, wordplay, writing

MIND MELD

I’m sick
of your sticky statistics

rather let me rot in my detachment
unless preserved from decay by the
power of dream time

Oh you
self-righteous ones
you have crunched
the numbers
on me
and my poem

checked the patterns to
see where
they lie, where
they match

as if
news from the tesseract
has not
yet reached you

Godel, Derrida
serving you a banquet,
full eat all you want
buffet of
undecidability and
incompleteness

Ah, therein the difference,
the sage
and the onion
both proclaim

you trying to convince me
with that Bertrand Russell look,
all the panoply
of a symbolic logic

so far
not so good

soon dear Captain
you will have
to give up that ghost

leave it to your first officer
to try a mind meld

L AND ME AND THE TIME CAPSULE

Tags

poem, poetry, popular culture, Space

L AND ME AND THE TIME CAPSULE

chatted to L
on the phone for hours
sex, rock music,
celebrity scandals, life, drama,
with lots of tiny
anecdotes, images,
remembered
sound bites that
spice everything

me declining to play a role
in her expert panel discussion
(not feeling
in any way the expert I might
have once proclaimed myself to be)

woke up
hours later

this space so cold
the inside of a refrigerator

or a time capsule hurtling through
the absolute zero of deep space
carrying the record
of our species
some wonderful words, great sounds
great images

popular culture, chit-chat and
trivial bullshit
(which is where I come in,
enter the picture$
which is
pretty dark and
freezing

so just
don’t take this call, shut down
your screens, take off
your headsets

unless you are in
the picture for
anecdotes and trivia
of a most
frivolous kind

for instance: these are the pictures of L’s
hot fantasy guys from
social media
think you will find
much here to interest you, amuse you
excite you

but remember
every second I am
thousands, millions
of miles more distant
from the planet

packed solid in ice
for safe-
keeping

frozen to the bone

TERNS

Tags

Hannibal Lecter, poem, poetry, psychological, The Silence of the Lambs

TERNS

“It will be turns with us too.”
The Silence of the Lambs

how is life treating you Doctor?
anthrax island must be
such a bore
even you
must have run out
of things to observe regarding
tern mating and nesting habits

and the weekly dips in the freezing ocean
make thoughts of an escape swim
across the Atlantic
little more than an abject fantasy of hope

daily I think of you
and your mode of existence during
this life quarantine
imagine a different reality where
you might have already secured your freedom
wiped the vengeance slate clean
and dined exquisitely, working
your way historically through
a more than impressive list
of dishes lovingly prepared
using treasures surgically elicited
from your A-list victims

yes, I thought about you
quite often Dr Lecter
imprisoned on this island
counting
terns making
sense of
their social structures,
their flight patterns

counting
turns

the number of rotations of the planet
to be computed between birth and death

housed here
we hope securely that
we might sleep safely

and now
having — I presume — heard
these words, divined the
deeper subtexts of
my message

the hidden flows and
treacherous currents

do you
mapping out your Universe inner
and outer

find time
to think of me?

GRIZZLED

Tags

Alien, communication, Humanity, media, old age, poem, Poet, poetry, satire

GRIZZLED

too grizzled
now
for my
own good

getting too
grizzled to write
for who, in
their right mind

is going
to read me

as I bumble along
in pedantic pentameter?

need to go
hibernate

find a cave (not THAT cave)
shut up shop

cave
need to
have

plumbing and
bay window, satellite
and cable TV
where
24/7 can
tune in to
your dream narratives
the sum of
your fictions

beamed
out to me
and out to the stars
out into deep space
(deep state?) whatever
that
could be

images trusted to
ambassador us, tell
aliens our all

tell
just how
fragile we are, how
alone really are

and blind
to all around us, to
the light years
between what
we are
and might be

ANOTHER COUNTRY

Tags

Christian, Cpuntry Music, Devil, Mick Jagger, poem, poetry, satire, Sympathy for the Devil, The Rolling Stones

ANOTHER COUNTRY

Jagger surmised the Devil
a man
of wealth and taste

polite in
introducing himself

finger in
every bad bad pie
source
of every wrong

how to
respond

when rock’s
another country

rock’s a
different paradigm

and selfsame Jagger
singing a song to put
you to shame

your faith in the Book
and a good shotgun blast

enough for
any evil

anything wanting
to change anything

CLEMENTINE

Tags

poem, poetry, popular culture, song, wordplay

CLEMENTINE

sun sank beneath the horizon
a plain not in
Spain
plane of
the horizon

no more
it’s bright
at least
not
for another day

so far
from the ocean
(Billy’s Ocean)
it could not
go Nautilus
go
yellow submarine

must have gone
miner, a forty-niner
dug it’s way under
resurfaced in
California
state of the
Rams and
Chargers
and
such
good vibrations
singing “Clementine”