THE REALITY PEOPLE (FINALE OF SEEM AND ONE, TRUE CARNIVAL)

Tags

Humanity, philosophical, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, power, satire

THE REALITY PEOPLE
(FINALE OF SEEM AND
ONE, TRUE CARNIVAL)

the Reality TV people
are here

sheafs of complaints, want
to direct the program, start
a new government,
rewrite
the constitution
bore a few holes
get cured of scrofula

no piss-take this, all real
piss and shit
and yet so totally,
absolutely, wholly
postmodern

don’t worry
things will get surreal
but there
will be no art
no poetry
because
no imagination

so let them in
if you wish

alternatively, go
Leonidas at
the hot gates
fill
them with lead
as they burst
through the door
(contrary to appearances
they do die
are human
just a
bit confused
between
comic-book mythology
and religious conviction)

so much
divine damage
and yet
so little
as revolutions go
this one needs
a very small “r”
(smallness being the cause,
hence
all the sidearms
big as bazookas)

but all this
is what it is
despite all
the
everything
is fake
mindset
this
existential
conspiracy

no Disney ride here
I’m afraid, called
“you got
sold
down the river”

can make it into a movie
if can find
Johnny Depp

but speaking
of rivers

this must
be their Rubicon

they
Caesar’s legion
even unbeknownst to them

but — what is the
day’s hot take? —
is this their Julius
man of
steel

or lard

royale with cheese and
every shade of ice-cream
(but nudge-nudge, wink-wink)
everybody knows
the flavour
ultra-vanilla

this no
pundit, prophet did foresee
as
finale of seem
one true crazy carnival

SEMINAL

Tags

Aphrodite, Dream, goddess, Humanity, love, mythology, philosophical, poem, poetry, sexual symbolism, Venus

SEMINAL

I witnessed the birth of Aphrodite

correction:
I was
there in person, in a dream
moment she was born

or a few moments later,
if you are asking for exactness

drowning in an sea of
Olympian goo

woke up
moment before I
went under forever

feeling drained, as if
a vampire had been at
or with me
(so more difference there
in that little
preposition)

all I did manage to catch in my
mythscape
was but, exactly, appropriately,
as I’ve already said
the tail end of her

and being goddess tail, tail of
love and beauty,
the wave of desire did
not leave me untouched

and I did
think of you, particularly
when she became you,

shifting from gorgeous shape
to gorgeous shape

before she climbed a sudden
spiral staircase
up to Olympus, or perhaps Heaven

place in this incarnation
I knew I could not, dare not follow

and so
must remain satisfied
with last
glimpse of her apotheosis

her impersonation of every mortal beauty
I ever read
as character
saw
in person

even, as your case,
found the greatest pleasure
and yes, misfortune,
to love
to death
and then way more.

AT ALL

Tags

Humanity, identity, meaning, Narrative, philosophical, poem, poetry, Universe

AT ALL

“And would suffice.”
Robert Frost

The Universe has
a sloppy ending

I see it is written
into the script.

Tried to
make sense of it
but it is above
my pay-grade
beyond my
rationality level

not that
have not tried
to change it
not that I
did not try
to change it
burning through
an electrical element
creating
a tiny star, if
only in
heat and
incandescence

but this aside
there is no positive spin
to this cosmic tale
which
has no story really

somehow in
the bleakness of the firmament
its billions of light years
we are
doomed to beat ourselves up
again
and again
hoping for narrative structure,
presuming hero’s journey

these great
archetypes of mind
don’t cut the ice
won’t cut it at all.

NEWSFLASH

Tags

Alien, Censorship, Humanity, wordplay

NEWSFLASH

They came. They invaded. Ultimately
they conquered.

Things are quiet now. What more can I say about them?

What more dare I say; am I allowed to say about them?

SHORTCUT

Tags

Humanity, poem, poetry, Reader, wordplay, writing

SHORTCUT

Poem is
definite shortcut
to what
you cannot
possibly say
cannot
hope to write

shortcut to what?
you ask
(not really
paying attention)

let me elaborate
or,
on second thoughts,

let me
ponder this a while

get back to you
after a few centuries

when
meanings, reputations,
have much
solidified

or poetry
or the human race,
for that matter,
have ceased to exist

just plonk yourself down
here on this page, chill
for a bit, period.

I promise I or
someone speaking in my turn,
on my behalf
will
get back to you.

MY SIDE OF THE STORY

Tags

Humanity, identity, philosophical, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, power, Reader, writing

MY SIDE OF THE STORY

You inquire as to
the side am on

I beg your indulgence
to let me take but a moment
to step aside
interrogate the legitimacy
of that question

in a Universe known for non-
linearity, hybridity and
space-time curvature

place that I can define for myself
to read and write poetry
close, in your locality,
vicinity yet
way over on
the far side
of every clear category
in your line of thinking

Oh clever, you retort, ace dodging
of my question
as if we could suppose
that poem
doesn’t have lines too
is totally syntagmatic in
hand-walking the reader from
opening to ending
with some hint of
a new beginning
perhaps resurrection, as
last metaphor
mirrors the first, seemingly
insisting on an aesthetic of completion
and inevitable return

I smile
you have me

(the smile being different
according to your gender)

as if
the name life gave me
can let me off lightly

so many
poems and their poets
dying fighting for a cause
in a war

other poets, poems started.

PERVERSE

Tags

Chaos, good v bad, Humanity, light v dark, mythology, philosophical, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, wordplay, writing

PERVERSE

you stand stoney-faced
spelling out my Karma

I turn from that wisdom;
close that window into my soul

am of a sudden ready
to embrace chaos, dally
with uncertainty

throw myself into
the arms of Kali,
the coils of a Gorgon

be enveloped
give them the best I can

until
lifted up, elevated
or
cast asunder, drained

such
a crapshoot
good, bad, ugly
for better
or for worse

sacred or
profane

legal, so strictly legal,
or
unrhymed, free
to run on
nothing so perverse

A WORD

Tags

Humanity, poem, poetry

A WORD

was hoping to
have a word with emptiness

but emptiness
spoke first
got in a question to which
I did not know the answer

leaving me
totally nonplussed

a greater silence
thus ensuing

I must have missed
the lesson on
how to answer emptiness
sometime during
that slice of time
now dead to me

learning all the life stuff
I would ever need to learn
during my childhood
at home
and at school

ALL THE WARNINGS

Tags

Britain, Earl of Oxford, Humanity, identity, King Crimson, philosophical, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, Prince, Reader, Shakespeare. Sir Thomas More, slavery, United States, wordplay, writing

ALL THE WARNINGS

All the warning signs were there
as my eye caught sight
of Lord Oxo, chatting amiably
with Sir Thomas, Lear, Prince and King Crimson

there where the Avon
becomes the Mersey
flows into the Thames
flows into
the Tiber, the Hudson
and the Ganges

sitars appeared, struck up a duel/duet
with lutes and zithers

music that could not drown out
the cries of suffering from the bowels of ships
heading for a new world, where the
dream is one of a power that can
green-transform everything

and there
engraved in stone, another
false monument, this to
no mere actor-dramatist, but
to the principles of humanity that
embody in
eagle-feathered, golden perfection
the great holy light of our human enlightenment

but
by a backdoor, by that same tawdry sea-city
the beauty of another music now returns
and
our Lord’s scenes, scripted and acted
are framed in such a way
that the metaphors of
our being are
rendered literal

Sir Thomas with a word or two about Plato,
Papacy, and the nature of the ideal State.

Under the spotlight for his soliloquy. Easier
to listen, easier to read
than author or reader
forced to follow from the heart of the flames.

NOT LIKE QUITE

Tags

Fall, Humanity, poem, poetry

NOT LIKE QUITE

like dropping acid
the Fall
was unlike

not snorting cocaine either
look elsewhere
for your comparison

and to you
spiking heroin as you do
can’t reassure you
that Fall
has you covered:
that hallucinogens, opiates
psychotropics
grew fast and furious
upon the banned tree of knowledge

to give
you the most perverse of advantages
the strangest edge

turning this world that bit
more alien

revealing exactly
where the fiction of
mind meets
fiction of world

how they
conspire, reconcile

and where
this connection begins
and how
it ends