CLEAR

Tags

poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire

CLEAR

let’s camouflage
the constitution
cover it in
Kevlar and
storm-trooper gear
ride around
in panzerkampfwagens
and dive-bomb the street- corners

the meaning
of democracy
has to be clear

AND SERVE

Tags

poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, police, satire

AND SERVE

It’s simple
it’s consequential
you are born
in uniform

wish you were
not so much
skin and bone
but reinforced concrete, granite

you push an old man down
knock him over
as if
he were a skittle
his head
cracks open
leaking blood
not ideas or wisdom

no doubt it’s embarrassing
to listen to these people

your town
is named after the creature
your forefathers wiped outi
to create real estate
space for business

things you will
always be cooled upon to protect

TIBERIUS

Tags

Jesus, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, riots, satire, Tiberius Caesar

TIBERIUS

Tiberius Caesar
tear-gassing away
the poor mourners

so he could
have a photo-op
next to Jesus
on the Cross

because, who
knows, sometime
in the future
the Empire might
become Christian

and then
for legacy what
a good
look
that would be

SMALL PRINT

Tags

American dream, Bible, poem, poetry, riots, satire, Trump

SMALL PRINT

you wanted
the dream

but you got
the nightmare

and in
terms of
the deed
of sale
there is
no exchange

look at that man
opposite the
White House
waving a Bible
(sorry, THE Bible)

for ever and ever
he wants the small print
to be exactly the same

CHRISTO

Tags

art, CHRISTO, conceptual art, poem, poetry, wrapping

CHRISTO

It’s raining triangles
let’s soften them

SURPRISE me!
let’s wrap the world up
as if it were a present
never before opened

can
wrap this poem
wrap me too

Mummy me beautifully
with shining white bandage

and those places of history
let them
speak differently

trussed up thus, the Reichstag
seems sentient; could never burn

look at how different
from one angle those smothered features

look angelic
from another like something
just walked out of the morgue

you
remove surface
liberate
inner form

for better
or for worse

for art’s purpose
forcing me
to think conceptually
for once in my life

dodging the
unwrapped
snow, hail, rain

SURPRISE me

THE HOURS PASS

Tags

poem, poetry, time, wordplay, writing

THE HOURS PASS

the hours pass
the words need
to be squeezed out
like stuff
in a blocked tube

where is this so-called
lightning we
imagine
burning its
way across the page
as if in
stone
leaving finished product

unalterable, not a single comma
in doubt, not a
preposition open to change

Oh this is a terrible art
nothing flows out so fast
it is sure to suggest
need for a tourniquet

and then
when you fool
yourself it is a
word banquet you have
managed to
fit onto one plate

to watch them
nibble, skim, miss
what you
sold your soul for:
the thought of
some exquisite interplay
of flavours and tastes

the hours
pass

FULL HOUSE

Tags

house. home, philosophical, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, wordplay, writing

FULL HOUSE

“Instead of the thornbush
will grow the juniper
and instead of briers
the myrtle will grow”.
Isiah 55:13

we always come
full circle
a thing at
the time we
might not
recognize

and here I am
housed in a village
living in a
structure of
bricks and mortar

It came to mind that
exits and entrances
in the
architecture of
life
not always by
revolving or
by stage door

this whilst
I watched a worm
(living planet)
worming its way
from
my dusty yard
to another galaxy

wish that
I might have
know the
cosmology
to follow
in its wake

emerge in
place extraterrestrial
where they
have less
love of the material
greater respect for
the arts
affinity with poetry

where
deeply appreciated
I could
breed beautiful hybrids
with a female of
such seductive alien persuasion

****

my gallery
my library
my tomb
my mausoleum

my rat
maze, tesseract,
labyrinth
to mirror
the brain

cracks in the wall
(hint of divine writing)
still needing polyfilla
whatever
the text
says

my house is
my shell
my carapace
my chrysalis

from my
caterpillar existence
soon
butterfly wings

sometimes my home
gets so outlandishly porous
things
slip through
the walls
I drift into space

hear the bitter political homilies
of that part of me
that rejects property

would
deconstruct every space
of its individuality
restore to the collective

create gardens so utterly revolutionary
in concept
that all might come sojourn
all might
rest, perhaps stay

and suddenly, in harmony,
there in the drawing room
a spiral staircase
is opened
leading upward to
intellect
downward to
things I am
too scared to explore

but outside I fear the ground they have
fenced off for me has
been reclaimed by
a less beneficent Nature
whose
panthera style eyes
savage our
cultural dream

throttling the life
out of things
less brutal in beauty
writhing with snakes, weeds
and scorpions
— fascinating things

but my
mind ever-expanding
(or so
I did delude
myself)

when consciousness gets crimped
by every mental disease
those cracks
in the wall hitherto
deemed holy, taking
sexual configuration

or
capturing the
great cracks in the world
to a
perfect T

****

not the house of my childhood
in any semblance of likeness

not the
house of bad wolves,
wicked witches
and straw
vulnerability

no secret rooms
(well, none
that I know of

where under
the floorboards lurk
lost Lovecraftian tomes)

not the house
I was fortold
or
got presented
in a parable

not a
house of
forgotten memory
premonition
or anywhere on
that spectrum
of allegorical time-stream

just house
of
first time
round

first draft
in my imagination

where humans
first walked

and your
my
story began

***

wind
Sun
rain
Sun

and Moon and stars
if you would step
outside
to greet them

house of
first
maybe
last days

maybe house of
the death Winter
last Summer

what the world
would intend

perhaps
the entire sense
of a roof and
four walls

totally dissolving

perhaps
the Universe revising
our very concept of space

to the West from
my porch I absorb
unbelievable sunsets

watch the
day go down
the light disappear

buckets of fiery gold getting
spilled along
the horizon
so clear to my soul
such
a leonine, Aquarian image

****
and time to think I have
yes I have
well enough
on my hands

and time to read too
so many books that do beckon
I laugh at
their suggestions for
they are
in number
way too many

I laugh
and they
laugh back at me

****
a storm
came

and like all storms
it has an inside
and an outside

things we
did nor expect
have not
seen before

and here
in my place
of obvious protection

sounds of
things scurrying

shadows
taking on a life of their own

tons of little cliches
of cheap horror cinema

the air asking questions
to which there
is no answer, no
easy reply

and I
have sat puzzled
through these things
as the years
stack up, accumulate

tease me with the
hint of a pattern I cannot
fully grasp, which will
not totally be revealed

and so
to the cards

what better way
than through patience
to cultivate
a sense of pattern

always about the
cards you dealt, were
dealt
and those
you need that
lie hidden

there
for sure a key card
currently missing

so head out back
where in a tin shed
lives a sangoma
or ancient astrologer

resident alchemist
whose job it is
to tend the garden
pottering around with
his great
transfigurational schemes

the gold paint in
my walls
is it going
to go
Versailles palace
go
way more golden?
the house
subtly expanding
contracting as
if taking,
releasing breath?

do these persons
exceptional of psyche

have the power to
shelve my
childhood pain

override its
curses?

protect me from
the kinds of evil
no book
(of which
there are
so many)
can deflect
or at best defer?

and let them tell me
what is
that cracking, splitting,
shattering sound

than the livid Earth, vengeful
uprising

the raw red magma
annihilating foundation?

unless
I am
much mistaken

unless
I am so hopelessly wrong

****

living room
dying room

can go
seppuku
in this
pristine kitchen

after which
my soul can roam

move from room
to room
mapping the labyrinth

from space time
to space time
negotiating the tesseract

following the finest of threads
wherever it
might lead

something in this
architecture

an unravelling of
narrative

a veritable stew of archetypes
a game
without solution
without
a final state

unless
this small, ornate table
white with cloth
and candles

each lit
but barely burnt

and a book
now opening

at
its final chapter

what could
be a
more
complete image

what image
could be more complete?

AND AGAIN

Tags

poem, poetry, Sexual innuendo, wordplay

AND AGAIN

wanted to
thank her
for loving me
in a
practical way

as
practically
as possible

as practice
makes perfect

again
and again

MASK

Tags

Humanity, mask, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry

MASK

sarcasm
bigotry
belligerence

so many
looks

not good
for us

sailing down
the catwalk in
full view of
all

the saving grace
your mask

CONSPIRACY

Tags

conspiracy theory, Intellectual, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry

CONSPIRACY

the
conspiracy
theorist

and the
intellectual

for the
intellectual
power is pattern
much to
say about
that tapestry

for of conspiracy
the theoretician

it is what
when you the pull
the curtain
aside

stands horribly
revealed

(and the world ain’t no
tapestry but a
pervert’s old raincoat)