WHEN I RETURNED

Tags

BREXIT, Britain, British, decline, Empire, Ending, entropy, poem, poetry, Postcolonial, postmodern

WHEN I RETURNED
“entrenched and calcifying
class stratifications”
Gary Younge

when I returned
everything was crumbling
but not in that happy
melt-in-the-mouth sort of way

a land of
broken statues

historical memories
grown ever more painful
with each passing year

once this
machine worked

once it ran on ahead
outstripped the pack
at full steam

but now how bleak
how dour
cement coloured skies
divulging near toxic rain

that somehow, magically,
stays within official limits
and so no one gets sick
no
discernible ailments

and there the images
that once rejuvenated
reminded us of
the great musical hall and
other popular traditions
feeding into
the great Beatlesque
transformations of identity

anarchy in the late 70s
along those stone cobbled streets
where my grandad
returned from war with
dream of starting a family

chipped, cracked
whose face is that
did they ever see this Britain, this
England coming

not just rejuvenated, but
rising from the dead
(form an
all-star dead rock band
with John and Jimmy and George
and Mary and Percy
who wrote such blistering
odes in mode
of truth to power)

but now
not a whimper of
that poetry

cannot call it
a wasteland because it’s all
too hypothetical, digital and
completely plasticated

no memory of
what went blitz as it
streaked across
the channel

what went bang and

what Guy Fawkes cracker could

remove every stone, every blade
of grass
the name of every city

those names whose esteemed truth you cling to
when theIr failures shone brighter
than the brightest searchlight

why we
need the darkness

for their
power to grow
and grow

empirically, imperially, universally,
exponentially

until the
bubble burst

so fatally
expand

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BITS

Tags

Alien, cannibalism, Desire, Humanity, hunger, identity, loneliness, love, poem, poetry, science fiction, transformation, Twist in the tail, Universe, woman

BITS

So long on
the planet

have begun to

think
like the planet

look
like the planet

mountains of alien
thrusting up
through my
flesh as
new landscape
takes place

which brings me to
my humanity, species
that needs company

and thought of
my hunger, my loneliness

whether I need partner
for love or
just
to
chop into bits.

K99B

Tags

Capitalism, Consciousness, cyberpunk, Dystopia, erotic, Humanity, identity, Life, meaning, Metaphor, philosophical, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, postmodern, poststructuralist, satire, science fiction, Sexual, Sexual innuendo

K99B

“buggier than batshit”
Philip K Dick

downtown Tokyo
(not sure if it was TOKYO B66
or TOKYO C67)
a drug-addled psychic
grabbed me
said “listen, bitch
godda gedda grip”

then disappeared
(magic being the
art of
pure distraction)

and so
they were throwing Jesus bombs
up and down the street
would like to say
that for you, my dear,
I caught and saved one

but it wouldn’t be true
not even
mythologically
certainly
not spiritually

and as for me and you, is
there any truth more questionable
than ones we
presume sexual?

(Nietzsche and Bukowski’s ghost-like grins
signalling approval
I shoe them away
no time for dead prophets
or
homeless people)

before long they had latched onto me
sex-selling Androids, because I fit the profile
(nothing capitalism cannot do
when it finds its
imagination)
and of course, retina-scanning my memory
then all
shapeshifted accordingly, enterprisingly
into form quite like you

same eyes, hair voice and
obviously skin colour

but as for
more intimate details, well
then I’d have to
ransack my account, push up
debts payable

and what fun is it really
what joy in the afterglow

cuddling with steel and fiberglass framed
as binary equation?

advertisements for this that and the other
as room-sized holograms, projected, freely given

somewhere someone
having had a huge brain-wave
regarding those on the edges
margins of
the system
how they
might be brought home, brought in
to the centre, the heart
be perfectly aligned

this
in downtown Tokyo or
Detroit or
Johannesburg

Johannesburg D55
or K 99B

DAY OF THE WARLORDS

Tags

dark ages, future, Horror, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry

DAY OF THE WARLORDS

The day of the warlords
will soon be upon us

they will catch you and butcher you
take your wife and daughters

the world that they govern
for their genetic strain only

yes, soon it will dawn,
you can take my word for it

find it in your calendar
write down that date

for the Heavens have trumpeted their bloody
god-like glory

they are the absolute reason
we crawled from the swamp, learned
all we hold dear

IT IS ALWAYS SO

Tags

Australia, culture, District 9, film, Mad Max, poem, poetry, South Africa

IT IS ALWAYS SO

It is always so:
history changing the moment
something
smashes
through the screen

my friend told me
how it was they were
all down in Sydney
drinking beer at
the barbi
watching the footer
on the telly

when Mad Max
Rockatansky came
crashing through
the screen

and I myself
was busying myself
buying ChesaNyama
when the District 9
saucer floated into view

parked itself over central
Johannesburg

changed that
skyline

changing us
forever

almost killing me: such
a shock to my system
I nearly choked on my meat.

DEAR GODS

Tags

Apocalypse, apocalyptic, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire, thermonuclear

DEAR GODS

Dear gods (goddesses), demigods
little cherubic deity wannabes
this message is for you
whatever your shape,
size, gender,
cultural affiliation or
skin complexion,

thank you for your
kind offer of
apocalypse, ending,
Armageddon (that
hardy perennial)

but we would
like you
to know
(take pleasure
in advising) we
possess the
power ourselves to
have it at a
time (and place)
of our choosing

worst you could do,
anyway, would at
best be pretty feeble
compared to our
vast arsenal of
weapons biological,
chemical and,
above all,
thermonuclear

tends of thousands of these babies
enough to
take care
of ourselves.

THE ALIEN POEMS: TEST SCRIPT

Tags

poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, Universe

THE ALIEN POEMS

TEST SCRIPT

alien poem
is Turing test

alien poem
tests for consciousness

that you will not
assume the power
and kill yourselves

like
we did
#poem #poetry

HOMEWORLD

Tags

poem, poetry, Universe

HOMEWORLD

Tell me about your homeworld
for I have travelled
space and time and found
only dust
and darkness

planets that caved in under
the weight of their worst ideas

tell me
how rich the earth, what
strange and
alien beauty grows there

for what I touch
in my world, poisoned
by my every thought,
turns to
silica, turns
to ash

I listen as you speak, the tones
of your language so
very different to speech terrestrial

am mystified, am
swept away

things in each alien word linked
to your seas, your skies, the
suns that
circle each other
in your system

all having resonance, rhythm

a music that my
dead home, dead planet

never
got to know.

MEANWHILE

meanwhile, as
we say here: “back
at the ranch”
the elites were
happily ensconced
in their deep
bunkers and shelters

preparing rich
alternate histories
for when the emerged, great
mythological tales to ensure
the world could now,
definitively, be
shaped in their image

that they might
safely assume the power
to embrace the new dawn