DIG
the deeper
you dig
the less
the glamour
bust of marble
turned to
feet of
clay
the mighty
testimony of
the Colosseum
not enough sand
to swallow
all the blood
that came its way
07 Thursday Nov 2019
Posted Empire, historical, History, Humanity, Poem, Poet, poetry, Poetry, Poetry, Uncategorized
in17 Saturday Aug 2019
JETSAM
jetsam
between
my toeswashed in
by the tidelast remnants
of Empire unknown
too far
across the oceanfor me to
have heard anything
of its rise
and fallto find in these poor
trace elements anything
worth reading
likely to
paint
a pictureall we
can assume is
that
it outlived it’s purposes
lost
its logicsacrificed one
last gamble on a
failure of (so-called) intelligencehow it is
always with history(as we
are always forgetting)the machine
that is timewashes, rinses
subjects
to recycling
17 Saturday Aug 2019
Posted Empire, Poem, Poet, poetry, Poetry, political, Politics of poetry/writing/Literature, ROME, Uncategorized
inROME
the golden greed of Rome
marble knuckle-dust
of her high achievementtemplate of how
it is done
how it
has to be
donea power standing in the way
simply burn that
city, annihilate
a people, dissolve
that civilizationno words, no trace,
the text of a history
reduced to ashreduced to what
the victory column says it isin business of war, in
business of
State you
came such a long wayshining example of
what an
Empire
must be
09 Tuesday Jul 2019
Posted BREXIT, British, Decay, Decolonization, Deconstruction, Destruction, Dystopia, Empire, Ending, ENGLAND, entropy, Failure, History, Humanity, loss, Lost, Poem, Poet, poetry, Poetry, Poetry, political, Politics of poetry/writing/Literature, post-apocalyptic, Postcolonial, postmodern, Poststructuralism, satire, social comment, utopia/dystopia, Value and meaning, Wasteland
inTags
BREXIT, Britain, British, decline, Empire, Ending, entropy, poem, poetry, Postcolonial, postmodern
WHEN I RETURNED
“entrenched and calcifying
class stratifications”
Gary Youngewhen I returned
everything was crumbling
but not in that happy
melt-in-the-mouth sort of waya land of
broken statueshistorical memories
grown ever more painful
with each passing yearonce this
machine workedonce it ran on ahead
outstripped the pack
at full steambut now how bleak
how dour
cement coloured skies
divulging near toxic rainthat somehow, magically,
stays within official limits
and so no one gets sick
no
discernible ailmentsand there the images
that once rejuvenated
reminded us of
the great musical hall and
other popular traditions
feeding into
the great Beatlesque
transformations of identityanarchy in the late 70s
along those stone cobbled streets
where my grandad
returned from war with
dream of starting a familychipped, cracked
whose face is that
did they ever see this Britain, this
England comingnot just rejuvenated, but
rising from the dead
(form an
all-star dead rock band
with John and Jimmy and George
and Mary and Percy
who wrote such blistering
odes in mode
of truth to power)but now
not a whimper of
that poetrycannot call it
a wasteland because it’s all
too hypothetical, digital and
completely plasticatedno memory of
what went blitz as it
streaked across
the channelwhat went bang and
what Guy Fawkes cracker could
remove every stone, every blade
of grass
the name of every citythose names whose esteemed truth you cling to
when theIr failures shone brighter
than the brightest searchlightwhy we
need the darknessfor their
power to grow
and growempirically, imperially, universally,
exponentiallyuntil the
bubble burstso fatally
expand
08 Monday Jul 2019
Posted History, Intertextual, Poem, Poet, poetry, Poetry, Poetry, Politics of poetry/writing/Literature, satire, Uncategorized, writing
inTags
Alice in Wonderland, Britain, British, Captain NEMO, Charles Dickens, Empire, Jacob Rees-Mogg, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, Professor Moriarty, satire, Sherlock Holmes, Victorian
IN THAT AGE
(for Jacob Rees-Mogg)In that age
I would — no
shit Sherlock! —
be Nemo, be
Moriartyput enough poison
in your teacups
see if that
will do for
your charity what
Dickens failed tobut here he is, a British
liege lord who claims
to Sasha Baron that
aristocracy he isn’tbut he rewrites
the Victoria textwith much (for a Catholic)
evangelical Empire steamOh puff away, puff away
drowsy Dodgson caterpillar
this very vaunted Empire
frozen for
all time in its
missionary positionyou can cart it like a statue
shape it like true steel
exceptwe have no steel
no ways enough for
wars of imperial envythe philosophers of Heidelberg
now having much wider sway.
06 Saturday Jul 2019
Posted Mathematics, Poem, Poet, poetry, Poetry, Poetry, Politics of poetry/writing/Literature, spiritual, Uncategorized
inMAN-MADE
once upon a time
I was a star
at Mathematicsmight even have devised
my own ATMor created algorithms to
compute secret numbers,
analyze linguistic
frequencies
in the Bibleanswer once
and for all
the debate on designeverything gist to the mill
of my universe-crunching algebrabut that
was then and
a road
not takenand at
that selfsame crossroads
my incompetence at woodworkpractice most bugbear
destined for
textbook failcouldn’t even plane a
simple plain crossbeam withwhich to
construct cross good
enough
for Empireto elevate the populace
lift feet way
up
off the ground
20 Monday May 2019
Posted Uncategorized
inTags
GOLGOTHA
they hustled me out
of my position of vantage
these agents of Empiretelling me
to move along“move along!”
“move along!”
“there is
absolutely nothing
to see here”atvwhoch I smiled
an ironic smile
a smile
informed by a long view
encompassing every
single
Empire
in historyso I did not get
to see what was going down
what victim was
no doubt singled out
for treatmentwhen Empires fail,
founder, fall
into ruinyou cannot imagine
what strange, wonderful,
unaccountable creatureseventually emerge
to embrace the light
30 Friday Nov 2018
Posted BREXIT, British, Colonialism, Empire, Poem, Poet, poetry, Poetry, Poetry, political, Politics of poetry/writing/Literature, Postcolonial, Uncategorized
inTags
BREXIT, Britain, CALIBAN'S, Colonialism, Empire, poem, poetry, postcolonialism, satire, Shakespeare
CALIBAN’S ISLAND
haunted by ancient Roman ghosts
first triumphant Empire, now back
to the dictator Caesarmighty Britannia
stands alonedetermined (yet scarcely able)
to resist a new dark ages of
its own makingthe island
itself setting sailready, if needs be,
to comb the whole ocean
for trade and colonial conquest
searching for things in
their native habitat
to commandeerpaint with illusions, fictions
and shadows
dreams ofpower
and glory
creatures to demonize
25 Thursday Oct 2018
THE VIEW FROM MAHIKENG
I’m laughing at Brexit
from Mahikeng, the town
where Empire
was almost lostno longer the centre
of anything, pretty much now,dust-devils in Autumn
and the stones
still lying pretty much
where they fellsometimes you scratch around
you find an old Martini-Henry cartridge
or one from a lethal Boer rebel Mauserhow the mighty have fallen
those old Mauser rifles
until Brexit
they were the unfortunate truth
that threatened to
rewrite the book
take down the flag
18 Thursday Oct 2018
Tags
Colonialism, Empire, Jules Verne, Mafeking, Mafikeng, Mahikeng, NEMO, poem, poetry, thermonuclear
LOVED JULES VERNE
I loved Jules Verne
but nothing
like as
much
as Nemo loved
his wife
before the English
killed herand so
your submarine now
stalks their bloody
enslaved EmpireI write this
in Mahikeng, formerly
Mafeking
thousand miles
from the oceanwhere Empire and
rebels fought
to a standstillcurrently
at least a couple of hundred
kilometers from
the nearest obvious
target site
for a new all-
conquering Empire’s
inertially-guided
multiple-warhead
thermonuclear missilelaunched from
the place where Nemo
held solitary sway, defined
a hope for a
life
unchained,
manifestly free.