ECLIPSE

Tags

poem, poetry, Universe

ECLIPSE

viewed from
Space we
must be
in eclipse

I laughed at Archimedes
with his lever
we had a beer
played some
poker

and then (with
two errant Martians)
a game of Bridge

I played hearts
he drew diamonds
and when I
dug deep into
my spades

that Greek bastard
trumped me

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NOOSE

Tags

poem, poetry, Universe

NOOSE

I know some
stuff about
quantum
mechanics

a little about
string theory, too

but not enough
to change my
emotional
orientation

in fact, not
even enough
to tie a noose.

CHEMISTRY

Tags

female, male, poem, poetry, sexual symbolism, Water power astrological

we have
such good chemistry

we bond, attach, react, dissolve
once we have started
there is no stopping us

our dealings are the hot exchanges
in the stars
after which we float
through space
as plasma and gases, iridescent,
beautifully spent

twin galaxies wrapped together
spiral arm around
spiral arm

and the
nuclear physics of our love-making
enough with
a single touch
to light
a city
or set it alight

the way we fuse, like sodium and
chlorine do when I taste the
sweet salt of your body
or hydrogen
falling into oxygen’s
inescapable embrace
(creature of air bubbling through
this creature
of water)

we have
chemistry
are chemistry is
this ongoing
life-love process

beyond which however having
found each other, we
decay beyond our
half-lives
simply
evaporate — are

beautiful chemistry, text-
book chemistry

but beyond this
love laboratory
are nothing
immutable

are
(sadly) no
thing at all

RIGHT PLACE

Tags

poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire

RIGHT PLACE

you came to
the right place

if you want fast
poetry

place your order to go
everything on the menu
comes with
side serving of kitsch
and slab
of processed cheese

best thing since
Big Bang or
advent of
sliced cliché

THIS NIGHT THIS DAY

Tags

poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, Universe

THE NIGHT THIS DAY

right now
the Universe is
experiencing
runaway inflation

lucky we got electricity
so no longer need
to gaslight our lives as
if it were a street

under these orange sodium
fuzz-balls of light

I stagger home a
little drunk

I say home
but these are

University flats built on
the very spot where Engels
hosted Marx
there is

a plaque

still something Victorian in the air
and the ghosts of those
two old dynamos
worshipped, hated there

when those
graves were dug, they thought “finally”
but let’s go deeper if needs be
err of the side of safety

the high-rise shapes of the
Institute of Technology

North of
England can get so cold

these words
coughed, fizzed,
spluttered

shame
there is no flame
cold
as a gaunt Cathedral

let’s not talk architecture
design so removed
from the night this day

EINSTEIN IN NO TIME

Tags

poem, Universe

EINSTEIN (IN
NO TIME)

I have no time
got poetry
the train is
pulling out
of the station
destination infinity
working up enough
steam

so you can see through
the clouds and clouds as
we reach the clarity
of a thought
experiment
bending minds like spoons
at the speed of light.

ICARUS

ICARUS

Icarus
sweet boy

sucked in
by the Sun
wanting to
feel
like a god

underestimated
overreached

soared so high
he escaped Copernicus

found himself in
the realm of myth
where wax melts
wings fail

bodies
do not die
in a vacuum, frozen
to absolute zero

but
fall
broken
by hubris
like all
true heroes

loved, feared, despised
admired
by the gods.

BEE-LINE

Tags

poem, poetry, Universe

BEE-LINE
“… but just Ourselves
And Immortality.”

I thought I saw a bee
flying
to infinity
and in a race
with Ms Emily

who was in a horse-
drawn carriage or
perhaps Europa-
style on the
back of
a bull
or

between the operatic
gull-wings
of a Italian
devil,
an insane
Diabolo
of internal-
combustion power

and yet,
classic Achilles and
Tortoise, could
either
ever win

so much in this
true tableau
we
cannot tell,
must wait
and see

the picture shifting
this way
and that

so much in this
physics not
mass times
acceleration
times
what-what
(measured against
time which
we

now know
is not real

so much in the physics of
life

and of
this page

down to
conjecture, much uncertainty.

KILLING ME

Tags

poem, poetry, Universe

KILLING ME

It is killing him
writing so fast
to change
the world

erasing inhumanity, injustice
and suffering
things moving so
fast it is
a blur outside

just colours, shapes and
forms flowing into each other

and this, as he loses
any sense of anything individual, sees
nothing but the complexities of pattern,
must be
he realizes

how God sees the world, and beyond
that the Universe, Himself writing
everything at blistering
speed
the speed

of evolution, of
thirteen billion years
collapsed into a second

of this moment
in my poem, his poem, whoever
is writing
whom
at this moment

strung across the fabric
of space time
stretched out
to infinity

and yet
here we all are, twenty-four frames per second.

SEVEN/SEVEN

Tags

poem, poetry, Universe

SEVEN/SEVEN

I imagine my death
will predate
the death
of the Universe

I can watch from
the dust of my grave
as the stars all wind down

hardly a ringside seat
in a giant planetarium

but there again
in that great heat death

the seats will
probably melt, the
compere shy away.