RETURN

Tags

Britain, British, Consciousness, death, Eat Coker, Ending, Heaven, Humanity, identity, Life, Liverpool, meaning, Metaphor, metapoetic, philosophical, poem, poetry, Reader, river, River Mersey, River Tame, spiritual, THE BEATLES, time, TS Eliot, Universe, Water, William Wordsworth, wordplay, writing

RETURN

a command came
from the brown god

which left me
under no illusions

and there I was writing
deep into the night
through sleep
through dream
following that river
my river

as we made
our course
to the sea.

****
Oh, the disregarded
divinity
of this labour
words are
cheap
are below
us
I hear you say

in the voice
your words commandeer for you

****

river of life
what songs
do you
have for me?

what songs from
my childhood
for I was born
beside a tiny river
a trickle of
a tributary
that
on its way
to the ocean went
Strawberry Field, became
full Sergeant Pepper

not that
those that bore me
much cared, knew at all

and last night I dreamt myself
crossing this river in your victorious city
finding my
way

finding my way
and now everything
that I write
you must view
through this prism

must write what I wrote
through this prism

river of life

celestial city
surreal little lanes and streets
of which your
four troubadours sing

****
deep
into the night

how deep
your inquire
and
what the depth
of this river?

really, such questions, interrogations
that I should be forced to
made to answer

for I know not of depth
beyond absolute abyss, the rest
relatively speaking
I only know flow
this
a poem of rivers

river of
my birth
river of my dream, my death,
rivers to which
I will always return

as the poet in the ninth prelude
speaking of
waters doubling back
finding ways
back to memory

I will just shrug and
smile

be your village idiot
not spiritual professor

(for what did we learn
not under
revision
in eternal state of advisement?)

as the night
gathers shape

and the fire of the spirit boils
the water of the soul

and the air
lifts up rain
caressing that surface

and the earth will wait
as the earth is wont

the earth has me booked
and placed
will find space
for my body

and the poem
being done

what left for its fate
but to fold into
ship shape

return
to the brown god (damyatta da)
give
back to
that source
set adrift on those flowing
never ending waters

TYGER

Tags

Blake, poem, poetry, writing

TYGER

the rats
ate his poem

the cats
ate the rats
that ate
his poem

the dog
ate the cats
that ate his poem

he sat waiting
for something to come
eat the dog that
ate the poem

it would have been
consolation
and consummation

but when tiger pitched up
all symmetrical and stuff
burning eyes and shit
the creature’s demeanor
persuaded him
would be better
to cut
his losses

write this up
as a poem

quickly, before
he got devoured

the tiger
ate him

or maybe
it didn’t

what do I care?
I have learnt through
hard experience
the folly of thinking
everything written
with rhyme
and metaphor

should be allegory
fable or parable

the unconscious speaking
pulling us into
those forests
of the night

AND THE INDIVIDUAL TALENT

Tags

Classic, poem, poetry, Romantic, TS Eliot, writing

AND THE INDIVIDUAL TALENT

for ten years
the true Classic
could not write
a single word
fearing
a lesser word
appear
sully the page

for ten years
the true Romantic
could not
stop writing, writing
writing
to eat, sleep or
drink
people who
cared about
his wellbeing
had to tear
his arm away

SAPIR-WHORF

Tags

conceptual, Language, linguistic, love, perception, philosophical, poem, poetry, Sexual

SAPIR-WHORF

need to invent
re-
invent

so much: perhaps
I should start
with a list

bullet-point it all
my need for
a new language
a new
poetry

in order
to express you
linguistically
caress you

all the better to
love you with
my little red
riding
wearing that
scarlet dress I
bought you in
Johannesburg

new modifiers, qualifiers,
participles (dangling and
non-dangling)
concepts so
conceptual breakthrough
they are the likes
of which
ain’t ever been
seen
(likes of which
the world
never seen)

SONG OF INDIFFERENCE

Tags

apocalyptic, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, Romantic, William Blake

SONG OF INDIFFERENCE

some mad poet was ranting
after they cashiered him
out of the pantheon

sounded to me like
William Blake on steroids

even as
the antichrist and a
horseman of the apocalypse
assumed the position
on the street corner
(the exact same
situation
on every street corner)

and so
in some monstrous harmony
we all
began to hallucinate

saw gods
ancient and modern flock
to the streets in search
of fresh followers

being gods of our
creation

so eager
for sacrifice

whilst the powers that be, politically speaking,
cut and carved to excise all infestation

nothing alien allowed
to compromise homegrown
visions
of madness

a priesthood already founded
to make much of old bones
needing to
erect Aztec-style pyramids
to fuel the furnace of
the sungod

only hope at this moment
hypothetical chance of escape

that the insanity might reveal
secret door, or indeed portal
for which
all codes are known or
which we
have strength to kick in

such as we
can only believe must lead
to worlds
more rational

alternate universes, parallel
realities

more stable
and coherent that
anything we’ve seen

MY ARMY

Tags

poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, resistance, William Blake

MY ARMY

my army
for the cultural
liberation
of the British Isles

has only two legs
only two
eyes

the William
Blake Division
(in which I
currently reside)

has no weapons as such
and the uniform
is a bitch
to sew
in the night

when you’re homeless
and hungry
and the colour and
pattern just
won’t
come our right

SHELLEY CLAIMED

Tags

metapoetic, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, Romantic

SHELLEY CLAIMED

Shelley claimed
we are lyres
and legislators

but my poetry
less like a lyre
than a
rusty
old pipe

nothing in that conduit
for the spirit winds
to pluck magically

nor
anything like a
legislator being
dunce
before the law

and as
for my Muse
the one I had
sharpened (charged
harassment, my
“getting far
top personal”)

the current applicants
to replace her
hardly of
the
stock that
threatens to
absolutely inspire

INTERLOCK

Tags

Beauty, Desire, erotic, female, innuendo, Language, love, Metaphor, Metaphysical, philosophy, poem, poetry, poststructuralist, relativity, Sexual, Sexual innuendo, woman, wordplay, writing

INTERLOCK

let me walk you
through the procedure

no need to run
we can go so
so slowly
watch the snails
zoom past at
relative speed

no need to
use that hard Newtonian
word “velocity”
later physics Newtonian
notions of freedom,
friction and resistance
opposite and
opposing forces
will all have
their place
all have their say

speaking of which
let me talk you
through everything
devise a poetry of
delay and deferral
to celebrate
every centimeter
indulge (in measure imperial)
every square
inch of your body

I say inch, but I am of course,
measuring in circles, and ellipses
and one-sided Möbius strips
that perfectly interlock

BODY TELLS YOU

Tags

Beauty, Creation, Creativity, erotic, female, Humanity, identity, innuendo, Language, loss, love, male, meaning, philosophical, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, postmodern, power, psychological, semiotics, sexual symbolism, the body, transformation, woman, wordplay, writing

BODY TELLS YOU

body tells you
are entering
dark world

no
uncertain terms

this body
you reject as
foreign virus, want nothing to
do with, can’t conceive
of anything to do with

Oh for a Universe
where we are all networked, we are
all reiteration, repetition,
we do not mince words
every sentence
has an
exclamation mark and
we stomp through the future like
sexual cyborgs
whose passion is
pre-coded in
each nuclear fuel cell

I digress
hopefully depress

would I could fly off at a tangent
hit escape velocity
and not stop until
I have left the
solar system met

Vega’s blue aliens

and yet
something in how I was written
sure to get me
boomeranging back to you
(aches beyond human understanding
down deep and dreamtime in my didgeridoo)

your pet theory
poet on a leash

otherwise
no ties
to hold me

or matching handkerchief

but
slipping the wire
snaking away

today I’m the dog in the adage
having my day

my energies
to the naked eye semi-
invisible

not yet the sort
that smash, mutate flesh

and yet
almost if upon cue
my body
to frail, odd
to contain
crumbles, falls to bits

Oh that I had that red boiling blood
of the raw alpha predator

not gamma guy
seems to
have the Cain trademark branding of
an entirely different galaxy

Oh
your palace of the self
that you assumed
safe for centuries

is tipping, toppling, enduring
the inconvenience of
slightly more than slight seismic shift

slides into an ocean of
collapsing Moon cards

my body
ever a mirror for
such phenomenal
conjuncture

gone liquid metal to
Mercury-message you

that which the future has determined, has
sworn it will have from us, will
absolutely make of us

would rise from its grave
having won every bet

BEAUTIFUL

Tags

Beauty, exclusion, female, love, poem, poetry, semiotics, sexual symbolism, Universe, wordplay, writing

BEAUTIFUL

Your words are beautiful
but sweep over me
leaving me
thankful and
yet sad, and drained

sometimes grace does that to us
reminds us of the mountain of
which we no longer dream

and so, in keeping, let us
get to my words and
their specific failures

so crazy in their assumption
that they have power to move
if not the soul, then spirit
and body into some
kind of purpose, serious action

or something which, ever so slight,
coupled with, dovetailing into
millions of
moments so small,

quietly shifts
orbits, alignments,
the configuration of
the constellations themselves

and suddenly
the words
yours, mine

everyone’s

have changed everything, created a
Universe of new meaning.