THEY

Tags

earth, Humanity, poem, poetry, post-apocalyptic

THEY

they cherish
the Earth more
than we
ever did

from our bones
they learnt a
sublime truth
(one we
disavowed)
hard lesson we
rejected

and so disappeared,
leaving just our shadowy
uncertain, paleontological image
which they
sort-of honour but
do not revere

preferring the dinosaurs
who went
before us
“so much
superior in
every way”

not to
piss
on our
memory
shit
on our
graves

but so much
about our
history so
ludicrous
our lives
unworthy

ASLEEP

Tags

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

ASLEEP

when the missiles fall
let me be
asleep

as unconscious as
a seed
inside an
egg

witness to
no chain reaction

in which the saved souls
of the golden
are sucked up into
Heaven in
their less than millions

ascending with all
their spiritual, material wealth
(the injustice of
this
so heart-breaking)

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.

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

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.