LET ME

Tags

Ending, meaning, Metaphor, Metaphysical, metapoetic, poem, poetry, postmodern, Reader, transformation, wordplay, writing

LET ME

into this truly devious art
let me initiate you

what we have here
is a written document
scarcely different
from any other,
like Gutenberg’s Bible
in readable print

except, if you are sharp
of sense, quick
on the uptake
you may have discerned
in the pursuit of something
out of the ordinary
the lines are not
equal
lines are
not equal

and, dare I say it, there is oft repetition
(I wish to alert you to the possibility
you may well
be surprised to
encounter repetition)
and rhyme too: slight and subtle
or heavy and, ahem, egregious (yes, Mr Mathers,
I’m
pointing at you)

but
the one true difference
the one solid, spiritual difference,
that I’m sure
you will struggle to
agree with

is that
whilst documents are inked, poems
are in blood

like this little blood offering
you are welcome to
do what you wish with

feel free
to
sublimate this
sacrifice

use
it well

for purposes good,
better, best

or badly, yes
treacherously and
delicious badly

reading everything here quite otherwise
finding (alighting
upon)
no saccharine stand-in or make-do
but one-hundred and
ninety-nine percent ( I promise you)
raw
and refined
pure syrup-sweet perverse

TO BOOT

Tags

erotic, innuendo, love, Metaphysical, metapoetic, philosophical, poem, poetry, postmodern, Reader, Sexual innuendo, sexual symbolism, Shakespeare, woman, wordplay, writing

TO BOOT

I was reciting Elizabethan poetry to you
feeding you metaphoric fruit
for your tired old, enervated, postmodern soul

though our connection
was cerebral, and relationship Platonic

I wondered about the power of
the imagination to be truly transformative

and what
you might be led to by way
of reciprocal response
(or as it stands on the page:
“response reciprocal”)

for if we are working towards
a sudden juxtaposition driven
by conceit metaphysical

where the displacement can work
through idiom
most physical, metaphor
down and dirty

connecting us
every humour, every level
and
game-changer, to boot.

FORGET WHAT YOU HEARD

Tags

digital, love, Metaphor, Metaphysical, metapoetic, poem, poetry, wordplay

FORGET WHAT YOU HEARD

forget what you
heard about
quantum entanglement

our connection
could be broken
at any moment

though, yes, this poem
is indeed metaphysical
it lacks those sixteenth
and seventeenth century
crazy conceits

that speak metaphorically
of lovers linked
like centre-
point and
circumference

as if you, and I,
and the Universe itself
had a centre

where fortune
turned digital
can flash before your eye
faster, fleeter, than
the eye can capture it

ever
hope
of capturing it

sometime, somewhere:
distant galaxy or
billion years into the future

they may
take a snapshot of the Universe
that preserves things
as they are

you and I
here in this poem, in
a best moment

nothing more serious than
passing acquaintance
as things stand

subject to
the aforementioned

calamitously inconvenient
electronic separation

CAFE SANS OLE

Tags

apocalyptic, Chaos, Consciousness, Creation, Creativity, death, Desire, Ending, Global warming, History, Humanity, identity, Light, loss, meaning, Metaphor, Metaphysical, metapoetic, mythology, philosophical, philosophy, poem, poem poetry political moral, Poet, poetry, postmodern, poststructuralist, Reader, spiritual, Truth, Universe, value

CAFE SANS OLE

we drank tea
swopped mythologies
shared
what we could
across the table

noting up close
and personal
though our
toes once
did touch

perhaps forever destined
to look at each other
from opposite sides
two
parts of
a Hegelian dialectic
an
unwinnable chess game

on occasion we would
take a Hellenistic turn
explore the logos, and all its
vaunted -ologies

but try as we might
there was no
undoing of the done
nor the shutting out
of the looming demolition of the world
as pure hypothesis, abstract indulgence,
speculative fantasy

wistfully,
you did ask
(a note somewhat
off -key) whether
star is
etymologically embedded
in disaster

our contribution to the atmosphere
already heavy
already
all the barometers sensing
a downturn
towards the existentially fraught,
cosmically absurd

as if
the spirit of the place
feasting upon the dystopia
and apocalypse
in our eyes

or perhaps
just sipping, hellcat licking

hard to avoid this
since we speak as we write
act as
we are written

reaching the boundary, singularity,
event horizon of our characters

about to strip
and consume matter with

the weight
of our gravity

where once we might explode like a
Supernova, all light revolutionary

the last word
of our physics will
be very
dark I fear

***

and so,
talking of endings

here we are
already

quite beyond ourselves
our narrative
thread lost

two creatures
worth forgetting

Oh were
this meeting, this cafe
metaphor of something
greater than
fear of finality
of
endgame and
nihilistic creator

not
something you might show
up on a Sky Sports screen

(ending
of everything Plato
every
last Olympian dream)

ENDGAME

Tags

apocalyptic, Consciousness, Creativity, death, Ending, Fire, Humanity, identity, loss, meaning, Metaphor, Metaphysical, mythology, philosophical, philosophy, poem, poetry, postmodern, poststructuralist, relativity, science fiction, spiritual, thermonuclear, time, transformation, Twist in the tail, Universe

ENDGAME

at the end
we will be a fable
part of the mystery

that butterfly
that sent out a tiny
wing-wave
minuscule shift
in the cosmos
fleeting disturbance
in the force (it was)

will they know
how we laboured to learn
to find, explore
what frustrations
and what failures?

our planet filled with
electrical light — a beacon
in the galaxy, so
we thought
so we believed
until
it burned

and our mystics, surely they
of our race in some sense abide,
in some way
survive?

who saw this domed night sky as
if the speckled inside of an egg

waiting for the key
the code, the word to
crack it open

shatter that shell into a billion
star-pieces
stick your fingers (sexual
metaphor) into
the fire of
a star, Vega blue or
bright Sol yellow

then at last
for one brief moment
we can
be at the centre
of everything

until the tyranny of day night day
night
of absolute light dark binary
re-establish and restore

Oh the raw fusion energy of
Helium fire
secret to all

in this cold cold Universe
that knows desire

ACHTUNG FRANKFURT

Tags

apocalyptic, art, Capitalism, Censorship, Consciousness, Control, Critical Theory, Deleuze, Ending, Fascism, Frankfurt School, Humanity, identity, liberation, loss, media, Metaphysical, mythology, Nazi, philosophy, poem, poetry, postmodern, poststructuralist, power, psychological, radical. left, Reader, transformation, Twist in the tail, value, writing

ACHTUNG FRANKFURT
“the mapping of countries yet to come”
Gilles Deleuze

achtung Frankfurt
achtung Frankfurt

stuff you thought
locked inside that box
beginning to ooze out

thick
as instant pudding
thick as
vanilla blancmange

overloading all
your circuits
rewiring your smart
keen rational mind
down
dial adding
minus one

Oh it’s hardly
day of judgement
hardly battle
of the gods
as gotterdammerungs go
it’s quite pleasant really
big brother
without the brother
somebody
got talent
without the song

all in all
it’s mountainous
the wisdom here to
be heard
and seen

is putting your chess game
off the scale
general knowledge
through the roof

your consciousness
we take
a piece each day
teleport away way
nothing too
apocalyptic, though

there are torches
in the street

JOHN DONNE WAITS

Tags

absurdist, John Donne, Metaphysical, poem, poetry, Salvador Dali, surreal

JOHN DONNE WAITS

having done the dishes John Donne waits
for knocking off time at the factory
to release Salvador, his mate,
nine to five slaving
at the conveyor belt
making
clocks that run backwards,
teapots that
seemingly straight
from Alice-land
flatly refuse to pour

who would have thought it, surreal
to go commercial, to really be big deal
and here
now the prospect
of Freudian dream-conceit

those tools mathematical
base of exact, intellectual comparison
softening in the Dali heat

nothing precise or
exact
any more
(no more
or less
all more or all
less)

backwards clock ticking
in fits and starts

John wondering why he
now centuries late

he waits and
waits

for Salvador Dali
(not Samuel Beckett
or Tom Waits)

UNIMAGINABLE

Tags

FREUD, Metaphysical, poem, poetry, psychoanalytical, psychological, Sexual innuendo, Unconscious

UNIMAGINABLE

succulence it was
that haunted him
(and so much
of it too)

they fell between
the stools of
jewel and paste
the granite and
iron of
the symbolic order

every line
enjambed: the
reign of dark Sigmund
reaching its sublimely Stygian end
the light and
the shadow falling upon
each other as if
eternal acrimony

but the sheer joy in her darkness
as he entered that room
(for every
exit an entrance when
viewed from the outside)
and as exits and entrances go
here one to exult over
pure mutual
self-sacrifice that
true
elevation demands

was
symphony
was sepulcher
was Eros in art
truly
raised from the dead

always unbelieved, disbelieved, as it
swells to supremacy in respect of grace and glory
or,
to encapsulate in a phrase,
becomes unimaginable

ONCE UPON

Tags

Alternate universe, Big Bang, Cosmology, Metaphysical, poem, poetry, time

ONCE UPON

once upon
a time

there was
time

forwards, backwards
would depend on
your universe
(no sex
before marriage
no marriage
before sex
no
petting
before kissing)

it’s all relative anyway really
you say tom-ay-to
I say tom-aah-to

North, South
top bottom
up
down
6 and
9
what could not
be otherwise

Big Crunch, Big Bang
if it starts with death
then
life
gets even stranger

and there the two cosmologists
the one degenerating but
getting so
much wiser
the other getting younger, healthier
losing his marbles

fit their two Brief Histories together
with
twist of
sellotape

and there you have it
the circle that
circle itself
forever

ZENITH

Tags

love, Metaphysical, poem, poetry, wordplay

ZENITH

everyday
I watch you
look
and listen
carefully observe

— it is
my absolute pleasure —

you
as you rise

reach your
zenith

set

it’s so outworn, overused
as an image I know
but
I can’t help myself
stay
my pen

too impatient to wait on
the cavalier elegance
that will just
pour
off my tongue

simultaneously embodying
a purely Puritan
absolute
faith
and devotion