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

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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

RETURN

Tags

Creation, death, Life, metapoetic, poem, poetry, Shakespeare

RETURN

there is a poet
in the cemetery
writing

as if
on cure
things

take
a dark turn

for is it not
this literary machine thing
devolved to pen
and paper

life’s deepest resistancew, death’s
finest achievement?

I mean — check out these stones: so many have poetic couplets
some of them epigraphs
no space for odes or even sonnets
still less
Iliad or Odyssey

this I muse whilst
graffiti on the chapel wall
pictures Sam Beckett tumbling
from birth to grave
signs too
that Nietzsche is back
back with braveface to live a return

Sun going down: convenient metaphor that
for how everything recycled

like these very words, some of them
(like “Caesar”, “dust”) dug out of their fertile grave
back from the worms that
we imagined owned them
still something of that a little less than
ghost attached that once
we might have given a name to and
that name Shakespeare’s

words
inadequate, not doing justice
especially to such names which
deserve not
to be dropped

so I
break that solemn wall

do you
openly address

restore with
heart and
with light

the death and life in all I have said
need your insight to connect

together to make
this accomplishment
(small small jewel being
our return)

BADLY

Tags

BREXIT, Britain, British, Hamlet, poem, poetry, satire, Shakespeare

BADLY

It will end badly
acts one and two
will crash into
act three
quantum entanglement
will happen in your popcorn
and all those Danish dead
on the marble-tiled floor at Elsinore

will rise up like zombies
hunt your sweet smoky bacon tasting meat
(no desperate defending of
any fourth wall
like Aragonsg at Helm’s Deep
to stave off that defeat).

GONE

Tags

BREXIT, Britain, British, Caliban, island, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, Prospero, satire, Shakespeare, The Tempest

GONE

no handshake (so
unsanitary!)

no
deal

let the little, little land
sink beneath the sea
(already an island
of sunk
humanity)

gone like a thing, a person
that fall overboard
plunged with determination
like a broken anchor, a massive
lead sinker
(that they all told you,
being experts, that you
absolutely needed to
catch any
kind of fish)

but the sea is dead, the ocean is dead
Their death by drowning being
absolutely contagious

drowned stage, drowned theatre, Prospero
and Caliban, drowned
absolute island
no one left to care, remember their history

AND FAIR, PROSPEROUS DAYS

Tags

BREXIT, Britain, British, poem, poetry, satire, Shakespeare

AND FAIR, PROSPEROUS DAYS

“With smiling plenty, and fair prosperous days.”
Shakespeare, Richard III, 5.5

we revelled in our crystal night

thinking the twinkling broken glass
like fallen stars, from
sky or ceiling of
some star chamber

Oh the pressure of change bringing
blood to the face, a native gammon gumptionb
that would lead to, read
itself as revolution
(so weak a definition through want
of a book)

or could they be jewels what otherwise
might be taken as dagger slivers
stuff of Medieval whirling wheel of a crown?

let it be so, royalty nothing
but a herditary power to pronounce, rule as a Tudor,

jewels enough here
to festoon the reforging
of an English crown

IDEAL READER

Tags

Donne, love, Marvell, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, poets, Reader, Sexual, Shakespeare, writing

IDEAL READER

have a nice
turn of phrase
so why does it not
unpin you?

saw how Shakespeare,
Marvell, Donne
got you so quickly
into a poetic tangle
left you soul-fulfilled
and (a little) undone

perhaps it is
that I have
much to learn
about the rhyme/
rhythm business

such about ideal readers
I still need to understand

THE PLAYERS PLAYED

Tags

actor, actress, Aristotle, Game of Thrones, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, Shakespeare, theatre

THE PLAYERS PLAYED
(poem for an actress)

beneath tinsel
and cardboard

the players played
secretly delighted at
how the crowd streamed in
(once those numbers
so very thin)

Elsinore, Bravos:
no one cared to much
how much fiction
wrapped in a fiction
(where history warped
who
had faintest idea
who could
tell?)

banner, sidgel,
here the York mythology
there the truth that only
the victorious rose of red might tell

but the heart of Hecuba
ripped raw for Hamlet
a Muse of fire
in that
terrible candle
which might, as the Greek sage swore (strutting
a stage himself)

burn us deeply, completely,
brand us with the hypothesis,
of by fire, sweet
terrible death

whilst we, who conspired to bring you,
this salutary farrago
best we can do be
dodge the noose
move the scenery

just a little
that light from the gibbet touch
you a little
viewed from
this strange angle
across the cards (world, wheel
tower), through
castle walls

UNMAPPED

Tags

good v evil, Humanity, inhumanity, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire

UNMAPPED

There be no
place of dragons

no
virgin territory

the kingdom of the gray ape
is mottled
good
and evil

(not so spotted
as Satan’s shield)

North
South

apex of beauty
nadir of bestiality
(what could be
more ridiculous about
this map?

he whispered in
an Iago aside)

Oh, and I am monster too, burning the sky
ripping up the earth, poisoning the sea,
with every toxic footstep
across this landscape

monster that crippling itself
feeds on its own

and yet, here I am
trying to shape, to
save, to conserve

to give a different image
a cultured shadow
(ironic, when we have so
provoked the anger of the Sun).

EMPTY

Tags

Ending, poem, poetry, Reader, Shakespeare, stage, theatre, thermonuclear war

EMPTY

The stage is empty
the audience have
not pitched

the stars are clouded out: so
cannot be used as source of allusion
or point of reference

but the ghosts of all we thought and felt
as a species, this thing called humanity,
are here in abundance

listen, as the wind whistles through the broken stage props, the tattered awnings

here their voices: Hamlet, Othello, Caesar, Lear
listen to the whispered words to
glean a sense of the power,
the command they
believed they had

so much power, too much power,

Oh our dead world, whose last thought was:
with this miracle of destruction
we might all be kings again.