THE ALICE POEMS
ALICE THROUGH THE LAPTOP
look into my laptop
little girl
little girl
get past all the passwords
break
the launch codes
yes
look into look deep down into
through all the smoke through
all the mirrors
smoke thick as
that spiralling from
a Nazi chimney
Nazis now our newest
sweetest friends
this
the virus said
the virus told her
where upon
caterpillar doubled down
reiterated
said
girl who does not see past the Guy Fawkes treacle
of deep conspiracy
will never get
to be butterfly
look deep
look deep
voice already fading
across the centuries
look and
climb aboard
my Trojan horse
****
Oh the conspiracy
conspiracy obligatory
they will deny it
these denizens of
think tanks
they will say it was all
just a whim
just
an afterthought
this the story Alice heard
so many times must have
stuck in her brain somewhere
heard
that Amanda creature screech
until her
ears did sing
a vision of a dream upon a hill, a sort of
lesser sugar candy mountain, less
imaginative
more bourgeois
where everyone can
come gather, Professor Habermas,
and flaunt
their new hairstyles
kind of thing
no astute disembodied Cheshire cat
could think
(who no one listens to — what good
talking head when
not on television?)
creature to scratch the eyes out of
your media moguls and
their true pontiffs and
pontificates
Professors and pseudo-
intellectuals elected by
Holy See
whose great infallibility is
to go with the flow, deliver all sainthoods and
catalogues of miracles
blinded by the spotlights as they try to
focus the camera
hunting the Jabberwock, the Hunter
or the Snark
crack cocaine aplenty for whosoever doth find them
or lead the way to the
academy of war
where one might
bone up on one’s Clausewitz
refresh ones
hand
to hand
with brothers
dumb and (grade) dee
STEP THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS AND DO BELIEVE
and the flowers
persisted in asking Alice
if she did not have
a brand name
confusing her
with an Amanda
whoever that might be
round the back of the factory
where
they manufacture all
the bread in Wonderland
the brains of the little children
from somewhere forgettable
out there
were being ground into
a nutritious paste
by a mad Hibernian monster priest
and all this while
the Hatter and his
comrades in arms
went gallivanting across
the Steppes
they had hoped to do
what had
never, ever been done before,
to have tea in the
very lair of the Jabberwock, with
the Walrus, the Carpenter
and every little tiny Oyster mate
who had
enlisted for this glorious escapade
to finally free
the blood red Queen
that a golden age of
murder do begin
and we
warm and safe in our
shrinking beds
might get
by dispatch, each
an Alamo hat
made of genuine Cheshire Cat skin
sewn in a
sweatshop on the sands
of Mars
if this
sound crazy my dears
my little dears
step through the looking glass
and do believe