STUCK

STUCK

and where do
these “alternative
facts” come
from?

from the parallel universe
in the cookie jar

being mindful that when
you quantum leap
in there to grab
an alternative
cookie

you do not end up (as in
the great Simian joke)
with your
fingers (small
as they
are) stuck

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SAYO NARABA

SAYO NARABA

let me leave
to find a
new world

those who
wish to follow
can follow

forget, unlearn,
learn again

still in my memory
echoes of what was before
in the Sengoku Jidai
the war of Empire

how much consciousness
atomized at
Nagasaki

and would the Universe
care to recycle

let my
atoms blow
and if the consciousness go
or follow

it is no
great tragedy, kabuki
dance or
mime-show

I told you I loved you
and meant it, that
is enough for
one life

wrong to ask, to
expect more

THE MAN

The man rants and raves.
What dare I do
but accommodate him
as the TV is doing
as the TV is designed to do?

Tweep! A message arrives
on my phone: it’s her
wishing to cheer me

but the words (as those so very different ones
spewed out on the TV)
have lost their lives, their power, their meaning
they float past me, before me,
devoid of anything that can help
anything to bring a positive change

O, my caregiver
what dream have we lost, seen collapse into
electronic whisper, media fantasy?

your beautiful face
floating before me
as I turn away finally
uncouple, unlink, detach
from your orbit

my paper though, no nearer to completion
writing on radio during apartheid
and the strangely challenging, alienating
alternate-sounding world
of the science fiction programme

otherwise mirror on that
abhorrent, obnoxious
dehumanizing world

where racial logic collapses
in the face of strange conjunction, limitless possibility

possibility that
I just walk through this mirror
(in which I so often
imagined
our worlds colluding, colliding, collapsing, combining
together, if not forever, then
but for a few
delirious hours)

away from her, away
from the single-eyed, raving
racist Cyclops god, nay demigod,
of the television

into a parallel, if not indeed
universe, then at least
some stable, ungenocidal, alternate realm

where someone is writing,
is writing me (as I stand ghostlike,
peering over his shoulder
her shoulder
reading my story
being written, my tale
being told

hoping against hope
he does it differently.

Sent from Samsung tablet

THE JOKE

he was going to
make a crude
punning joke
about the two-slit
experiment

but his brain
became entangled
some messages lost their way

heard stories
about how their creator
father-mother did
not love them, never held them
left them doomed
to always just
be single molecules
never wavefronts, waves

SET SQUARE

take a set square
see if the
angle will
do

the one from which
you measure everything as
if you yourself are
not part of
the picture

as if
looking out from your box
like Schrödinger’s cat

not even
brushing the glass
with your whiskers

IN MY SECULAR APOCALYPSE

in my secular apocalypse
I an drinking the last
cup of coffee in
the Universe

somewhere a fat chaos butterfly
is stirring her teacup to
make sure the
storm to
end all storms ensues

but forgive her
this indulgence, and
be not overly concerned

right now
we might just be
slipping between
possible universes

sometimes what we are
both writes and
follows the script

SOCK IN IT

if there is
quantum
entanglement and
everything

is
connected

how come
I only got
odd socks?

JUNK STORY

I was reading
some quantum junk
about zero point
alternate realities
possible universes

when it seemed
as if someone was reading me
reading the junk story
into junk existence

TWIST OR STICK

I shuffled
I dealt

the cards changed as
I turned them over
as I
looked at
them

and seeing this
I looked for
a magician or
quantum
physicist

in the
room

(it was not
the same room).

BEHAVE

first you’re
a particle

then you’re
a wave

then a smartie
then a billiard ball

then
Meccano
then
crochet

why
don’t you behave?