CALZONE

Tags

love, poem, poetry, sexual symbolism, wordplay

CALZONE

fold me into your
duvet
like the inside of a
calzone, the
filling in
a sandwich

and make
love to me

until
my clock
stops

or the
Universe
goes away

GIFT

Tags

love, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, poststructuralist, sexual symbolism, spiritual, theological

GIFT

gift that we
give each other

trust Monsieur Derrida
to wrap an aporia
in with this

and me
thinking what
you are about to give
an act of
grace
special sacrament

that thing whose
mode of existence
might be open
to question
and yet which
cannot but truly
embody your essence
(prove to be nothing
if not its most faithful expression)

Oh this theology
I am up there with it
see how
in the hands
of the artist
whatever is in fact realized
all things are possible

my poem
each line a
finger and
a string

could be said
to be arrowing for you
yet never
so linear

Oh such hands
such hands

shaped for gifts
shaped for giving

everything about them
lending itself to metaphor

and so
insistent about
their service
augment the artist in
whatsoever inspiration

THESAURUS

Tags

Language, meaning, poem, poetry, power, satire, synonym, violence, wordplay

THESAURUS

lots of jokes
about thesaurus
being a
species of dinosaur

but hey, I’m
so armed with
words right now

not as add-
on technology
but as
that which
now comes
naturally to me

I could be
that monster out
of the collective
unconscious
called upon
to reveal itself

armoured creature
of Armageddon

every synonym of
death
down pat

GATECRASH

Tags

critic, Muse, poem, poetry, Reader

GATECRASH

so you
gatecrashed my poem
stripped it naked

just as you
are
gatecrashing
me now

and I watch you
undress each line
with all
that semiotic
intellectual acumen

leaving words
discarded like
underwear
all the way
up the stairs

until, in my
inner sanctuary,
you tear
everything apart
rip through
all my presences
so
ruthless and
brutal

my eyes
full
of tears

so thankful
and grateful

THAT ABSENT MEANING WITH WHICH ALL THINGS CORRESPOND

Tags

identity, Jacques Derrida, meaning, philosophical, poem, poetry, postmodern, poststructuralist, South Africa, wordplay, writing

THAT ABSENT MEANING WITH
WHICH ALL THINGS CORRESPOND

even a
thorn tree
has its insouciance

I say “its”
but not sure
to whom
(tree or me)
it really
belongs

so much scope
(I/me) for poetic
and
philosophical license

and talking about license
I went for mine to
Pietermaritzburg
but failed to
reverse park
or stopped
when it
said go

in which provincial capital
spoke Jacques Derrida once, coincidentally
beloved Pietermaritzburg
still have
a best-remembered
lover
in this town

but
scorning chance of
a lifetime (as always)
I regretfully
missed him

whether confusion of
date or time or
somehow indisposed

not that I was, as
my title might suggest,
somehow
present in
my absence

slide of that
signifier itself

so
far out
of things
in some
self-deconstructing margin
that I eschewed
the truth that there
is no
truth
except
what I
live as truth, do
as truth

for a
day wasted in Durban
idly contemplating the
limits of my horizon

this
I framed as
vital

question
for thorn tree not
French post post post
philosophy

or maybe
it was what
the thorn tree
put to me

either way, whoever’s call it was,
no one answered back

HERE’S A LITTLE

Tags

poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, post-truth, postmodern, poststructuralist, Truth, wordplay, writing

HERE’S A LITTLE

here’s a little inconspicuous truth
speed-read it quickly, park
it by the kerb

skim, elude what they
said about poetry in
all their apologies, those
buffoon Romantics

thought their
softly measured words
would change the world

and now, philosophically circumspect
to the letter
we no longer talk, think
about truth
since syllables do
beg to
differ

or so those mystics of the sign profess
who post-moderned us
in every
relative category

so candle, torch, flame or fire
all defunct now, no longer inspire

conspicuous by
their absence, no
space here for
defiance

a match though, which you
could just as well ignite or
break and fashion
into small stick man

your choice (as voice
runs dry and poem ends)

of image
to define

BETTER PLACE

Tags

Beauty, Ending, erotic, innuendo, Life, loss, love, Metaphysical, mythology, Ocean, poem, poetry, sea, Sexual innuendo, sexual symbolism, spiritual, transformation, Water, Water power astrological, woman, wordplay

BETTER PLACE
(for Francesca)

the Saint you were named after
loved little animals

they would lead him
to their little homes
invite him
to explore
their tiny burrows

it was Eden in my bedroom
and like our beautiful first parents
we failed to realize it

both of us born under that
divided, contrary, most transcendent
sign of the fish

it was
always like
when we got naked

deep ocean water filled the room
which, as we no longer
breathed air, only breathed
and devoured each other,
was no bother

we were swimming toward a mirage
swimming together towards
promise of something perfect
something infinitely better

when our vessel foundered
found itself
between Scylla and
Charybdis

between a
rock and
a hard place

and we
let the self-
contained fantasy slip away

lost our
special sea identities

left that deep
deep
special, sensual garden

for some supposed, half-
promised, presumed better place

LAGOON

Tags

Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein, Horror, Language, poem, poetry, science fiction, semiotics, wordplay

LAGOON

was playing a word game
and came up with “lagoon”

now I love that word
for all its monsters

more crude and less
philosophical
than anything that
woke up
Mary Shelley
to create science fiction

how I will miss
a world of constant
counter-intuitive surprises

like the insects running
up down the wall
being the product of
the angle of the spectacles
shifting in an
hallucinatory direction
(subtle pointing of the head
the preferred technique for
a first-time
commitment to
multi-focals, whether
near or
far-sighted

those slight degrees of shift
simply switching the genre

which fucks (as well it should)
with that well-established delusion
that reality is real

for how real is a
reality when you
are swamped with such desire for me

your fingers (all appendages)
wandering
all over me

determined to
drag me along to
some
great cave of philosophy

or down to your
lair at the bottom of that lagoon

for B-movie sex
that you have already guessed
is protocol rewriting, Kama
Sutra by-passing

raw content to be inferred since
restricted to off-screen

POEMS INSPIRED BY A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

Tags

A Midsummer Night's Dream, death, Dream, Humanity, love, philosophical, poem, poetry, sexual fantasy, sexual symbolism, Shakespeare, wordplay, writing

POEMS INSPIRED BY A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

SONG FOR TITANIA

I play with words
for you
Titania

I play
with your name

mouthing it
getting my crude
tongue around it

until the sense of sound
is drowned to
wet echo
it disappears

but not the sound itself:
ah yes! cobbling, weaving
the shaft-shuttle
regulatory of
good industry

supply, demand,
I am artisan
who (despite
all appearances)
takes such care to
deliver
good service

whilst as I pun
my way to a
perfect entendre

I see
something there mirrored

in the
solid nature of your
rapture

enchantment of your poetry

*****
*****

GOODFELLOW

that juice
that misguides

messing with
the truth that is youth
in its
absolute
love

slurring word sounds to
fit that
shifty, narcotic
sex-dream picture

Oh
I do not hear
what I hear

do not see
what I see

my brute body far more
beast that it has ever been
your
fairy bower so

exquisitely
kindly

your words dripping with
the wonder of your
mouth, lips
parts I might
list
if I had
time to

Oh the love you have given me
too much for lifetime, enough
for one-night stand (more
might drown me)

that juice, my Queen,
so translated, brought
base to gold
great
alchemy

beyond the perfume trick
of simple chemistry

we must have bathed in
must have flowed, rolled
over our bodies
like a river

at which sight
Puck so
deeply impressed

*****
*****

AS DERRIÈRE

she has
an assignment
on A Midsummer
Night’s Dream

perhaps she might
venture in the
woods to
write it

where
again she
may or may not
notice

as in the Guillermo de Toro movie
the insects grow to the
size of fairies

give their
circumscribed hive-mind to
a confederation of not-
yet revolutionary-
minded rude mechanicals

but what of the
transformative magic of desire
will she see me
transformed, so wistfully
witty and erudite in
country matters when
in the
Queen’s bower hammocked

enslaved
to each other

until morning, when all
is restored, Dawn dispenses nonsense
again enthroned propriety

and my beauty wakes to see
the memory of her love
lies not
(as she thought)
with her
soulmate, her hero

but
far lesser being

her
puppeteer

her
man at the strings

ventriloquist
who had her speak so beautifully
with such strange, strange
beauty

(layer upon
layer uncovered in

sweet repartee
and yet, as Bottom did say, no
solid ground there

flat as
a pancake

curved
as derrière

*****
*****

THE OTHER JACQUES

Tags

Language, meaning, Metaphor, metapoetic, philosophical, poem, poetry, postmodern, poststructuralist, wordplay, writing

THE OTHER JACQUES

there is
a

philosophical
elephant

in the
room

bigger than
a Dali rhinoceros
or a
kangaroo

but
not a

horse in sight
outside the
text

no taxonomy
to speak of
all

this
difference
to arrest