PUNCHLINE

Tags

Comedy, Hamlet, poem, poetry, Shakespeare, standup, Tragedy

PUNCHLINE

to die
on stage

more like
a Hamlet
than a
dead comedian

resurrection, finding
your punchline

ghosts swamping
the dark battlements
and there
we have Yorick’s
sleep broken
all he ever
is or was
fallen into the hands
of some gravedigger fool

where
are your
jests now
and would they
still carry?

a joke so timely
you might drop dead laughing

forces
social and cosmic alike
conspired to
make you their
avatar of laughter

stabbing at the fringes
of the armour
of reason’s regime

and so, to pull no punches
my Prince sweet

learn for safety’s sake to
negotiate a laugh

cheer up
and as your usurping killer
father’s brother
would have it

listen for the
bells
cast
nighted colour off

just splice and dance and
dice
with words

tell it
secretly
how it is

the show
so dumb

and yet
the laughter
still continuing throughout
the slaughter

here, finally, our punchline
not a punch
being pulled

AS SWEET

Tags

Juliet, poem, poetry, red, roses, Shakespeare, Shylock

AS SWEET

roses are
red

even the
white ones
secretly

cut them
(no shit, Shylock)
do they
not bleed

blood
as red
and sweet

by any other
name (or am
I just mixing up
my Shakespeares
and my
metaphors?)

COMMON

Tags

Hamlet, poem, poetry, Shakespeare

COMMON

“Ay, madam, it is common.”
Hamlet 1.2

poem is not
of necessity
love’s creature

thing for love
to parade in
the open like
panther
on a chain

no, if anything,
poem has more
in common
with curse (as in
lowest common)

curse that
strikes as
soon as
eye alights

like octopus ink
but
there again

akin to
rinkhals venom

once read
the poison so
quick and
slow
to do
its work

disorienate, confuse, strike
the nervous
system

with
aesthetic paralysis

whilst other toxins so admirable
for rendering the blood impossible

in open rebellion against
the system, refusing
circulation

demanding that it
be afforded the
supreme esteem
symbolic weight demands

WITH TITANIA

Tags

erotic, faerie, Fairy, poem, poetry, sexual symbolism, Shakespeare

WITH TITANIA

Queen Titania came to
teach me the delicacy
I would need
to devote to you

with what exquisite softness
would need to
ruffle your flowers

how to watch
the movement of
star across sky
when gauging
my speed

nothing even
slightly mechanical
when pressed up
against the window
of her delicatessen

the tastes there so
refined, so complex and
so intricate
take every delicious

moment
to acquaint myself

with feather-like touch
with exquisite sweetness

make love
night to morning in
absolute fairy
measure

almost
drowning in
dream
magic

yet perfect
learning-
curve.

LESSON

Tags

BREXIT, Britain, British, Einstein, Ending, Intellectual, loss, philosophical, poem, poetry, Shakespeare

LESSON

it started as gut feeling
then intellectual exercise:
draw ever narrowing circles

on this same blackboard
where the dust itself
magically transposed
into telescope looking
into ever-expanding galaxy

into tiny equation
that said everything

how human being is
light might
be turned to fire

no one reads those blackboards now
the world they were portal into
simply run out of everything
except billboard idea

the change so fast
that dust so volatile

a country that has wished
the worst days upon itself
rushing towards
its gorgeous nemesis
like a meteor

let me
try the virtue of patience
staring deep into
that chalk

iconic chalk you
might
add in, your fivepence worth
wishing to caricature

once there wax Empire, for all its deep sin,
this place concentric, its thinking radial

now nothing crosses
to these shores, we have made
ourselves taboo, insufferably precious

that poet whose words they wrote in chalk:
now there was a lesson!

GOODFELLOW

Tags

A Midsummer Night's Dream, erotic, Language, poem, poetry, Shakespeare, wordplay

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

AND THISBE

Tags

A Midsummer Night's Dream, gender, poem, poetry, Shakespeare

AND THISBE

spoke to
Hippolyta,
Titania

about the play
asked them
if they would
not be
too averse
to my
reversing polarities

going South on
the rule of
patriarchy

thanks but no
thanks:

no
Theseus calling
the shots after
his victory

Bottom well on his way
to major accomplishment
with exquisite fairy
despite head
being full of
football, Brexit beefs
and pints
of warm beer

no
my Bottoma is
rough and ready
for
her magical lover
we shall
name Titanus

and Hippolytus and
Thesia

Lysandria and
Demetria
Herman and
Hallanus

no this world is
tipped upside down

the sexual fun
decidedly female

and why should it
not be so,

what a
jest this

could be
(would you
not agree)

or my name
is not
Wilhemina Shakespeare

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

*****
*****

H & O

Tags

alternate history, Hamlet, Intertextual, Parallel universe, philosophical, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, Shakespeare, Twist in the tail, writing

H & O

the hear is oppressive:
no air conditioning present
in this Denmark prison

Hamlet observes
her
watches her

as she
sleeps

wonders why her
skin is so wet
cannot believe
she was
rescued from drowning

he touches her:
drops of water
slide under
his
fingers

slings and arrows
but stings too,

so many

he takes some out with a blade
some with the point of his dagger

his blood
her water

mingling
as their bodies mingled
fucked royally
gave him everything had got
a few hours previously
(hard as things
get non-
linear to give an exact timeline)

they exchanged small-talk, gossip,
sharp political analysis along
with the bodily fluids

unaware
in this light versus dark universe as
they truly
see it, there is another, so
many more Elsinores

Prince and (to-be) Princess
getting in some good Prince-Princessing

yet, who can say, my true Horatio,
what, as the stage is consumed by darkness
given wholly to sleep

what the dream
might manifest

and in that dream,
what the unconscious believes

ADAPTED

Tags

adaptations, computers, Design, metapoetic, monkeys, poem, poetry, random, randomness, Shakespeare, TV, writing

ADAPTED

a million monkeys
bashing away
with sledgehammers
on computer keyboards

you cannot knock
the work ethic: but then, suddenly,
seemingly out of nowhere
voila Viola, there it is:
the whole of Shakespeare, all
of the Folios
with scripts for sequels,
alternate endings

pilots a network
might wish to pick up (hoping
them the consumption to
be devoutly wished)

Oh in my mind’s eye I can see
these adaptations: the
good, the bad, the ugly
popcorn and pizza versions
of the original plays

our random universe did
so perfectly create