PROTAGONIST

Tags

character, Fiction, metapoetic, poem, poetry, postmodern, writing

PROTAGONIST

Ah! My
protagonist

and behind him
his antagonist

quiet! he has not
seen her

they do not
know their
true identities
as yet.

AND A SHOW

Tags

burning, Drama, metapoetic, philosophical, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, postmodern, theatre, writing

AND A SHOW

paid for supper
and a show

but stage too dark
to make out faces
see anything clearly

but you next to me: picking
up your smell (hormones
going crazy?)
fantasizing about
your husband or maybe
it’s because you
are here with me

either way, a situation far
too volatile presenting itself
for me to
sit back and relax, take in
things thespian and things culinary

needing
the dialectic of dialogue
to take me out of myself
through and behind
this curtain and
with it
all curtains

noting your fraught state
best I should embargo
any talk of curtains

chit-chat
about how I usually cook in the kitchen
to take my
mind off things, let the drama
of scenes quietly resolve itself

outside in the
street
the flames
are spreading

huge theatricality with which
the world is burning

GOOD MORNING

Tags

apocalyptic, Britain, British, Chaos, data, Ending, Fascism, Humanity, identity, Language, meaning, media, philosophical, philosophy, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, postmodern, poststructuralist, power, Reader, satire, transformation, Truth, value, wordplay, writing

GOOD MORNING

I wanted to say
“good morning”
but the words
would not
come

and what use
are words anyway now
because this is
the world of
data, data

every facet of life
and self atomized
vaporized
boiled down to
data

served every which way
stripped of
human
meaning
void
of right and wrong

good morning
let me say
good morning

there is neither light nor darkness
where I am right now
just odd bits and bytes to
switch me
off
my program having run

VECTOR

Tags

Aristotle, digital, Metaphor, philosophical, poem, Poet, poetry, postmodern, poststructuralist, wordplay, writing

VECTOR

tenor
vehicle

my poem
is disintegrated into
a zillion tiny pieces
will be
put together
just as quickly
the lightning took
the lightning restores

Oh tenor
vehicle
read up that
in dusty book
or
electronic text
in pristine library
digitally perfect
white
as neon

Aristotle most certainly
for all his foresight
never foresaw this

writing a poem
poem, poet, pen,
page

the whole caboodle
all of it metaphor

some
sublime vector this

wrapped up
as dream

NOT A SOUL DARE SWIM

Tags

Cambridge Analytica, digital, Dominic Cummings, exclusion, philosophical, Plato, poem, poetry, postmodern, poststructuralist, power

NOT A SOUL DARE SWIM
(for D.C. and A.C. and AC/DC)

“You always say that!”
Last Action Hero

you blackgammoned us
bust the bank
then paid
it back
out of our taxes

drew card 21 in the Tarot
but what
is the difference if it
were
reversed or straight

since
everything is reversed
everything
second guessed

even I
felt obliged to
get

a second opinion
(sick of reading footnotes
to footnotes
nothing ever straight)

so I time-
travelled seriously
back to BC

bashed on
Plato’s door
but his Republic
was closed
Athens was closed
(card of
the World
spinning like
a roulette wheel)

and so
as they say
in the classics:
“back to the future”

here
a new Republic
so bold and
so brave
so barefaced — no
irony

here
no philosopher king
gets near the gate
neverminc the door
(cue, track from Nirvana
I haven’t heard before)

no space for
these thinkers
even in
the garden

(seems poetic justice
that this should
have come about)

but there on that garden
all manner of wire, all
manner of contraption
nothing organic
this the data
does not
allow

just a river of data broad
as the Amazon to
fast for stream of consciousness

and those
that surface-skim
(not a
soul
dare swim)

GHOST OF KARL MARX

Tags

Dystopia, loss, meaning, metapoetic, philosophical, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, postmodern, poststructuralist, satire, writing

GHOST OF KARL MARX

the ghost of Karl Marx
came to my house
came
to rewrite

sat amongst open books
sharpie and typex, blank
pages to
insert

and boy! Did he write!
Boy did he write!

from page
to wall scrawl
his words did ignite

there
in huge graffiti:

Europe and
the world terrified

by
specter so
absolute

the specter
of shite

AT ELSINORE

Tags

love, meaning, metapoetic, philosophical, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, postmodern, poststructuralist, Reader, wordplay, writing

AT ELSINORE

I followed Schrödinger’s cat
into Elsinore
behind the arras, through
an entrance/exit door
where
to paradox the shit
out of everybody
we shared
a soliloquy

until Hamlet emerged, and
mistaking us for the players
(every Shakespeare a
Stoppard just
waiting to get rewritten)
put us
in his play

and cat and I were caught
debating whether Denmark was
a prison and
if so, might this not
be thanks to
Kierkegaard, or to
the Copenhagen School
Bohr-ing
the life out
of everybody

but cat did assure me
he had it on good authority
Ophelia was played by
Connie Nielsen, Gertrude
by Helena Christensen
which seemed to
one so queen-starved
to be
reason enough
to remain

unless
in this Möbius Escher world
binary choice is
no longer a reality, no longer
an option

the stage
being both everywhere
and nowhere

it seems, just like our Danish prince,
cat and I will be going nowhere
ours the most deadly
of all the sins

pure
overthinking of our fate.

AT ELSINORE (ACT II)

Tags

Hamlet, poem, poetry, postmodern, poststructuralist, quantum, Shakespeare, wordplay

AT ELSINORE (ACT II)

the time
was out of joint

so Schrödinger’s cat
rolled one for
the two of us
and we
smoked it

left me thinking
if I had
brought a guitar
could turn this
blank verse
into reggae

give it
some Caribbean
soul

this long
before Bob Marley
and the glorious
history of British
slavers
enriching themselves
off the suffering of
poor African folk

but we
(cat and I)
were desperate to
get into the
castle
having back-stage passes
reckoning we
could knock a
few walls down
if needs be
it being all papier-mâché

or worm our way in
disguised as grave diggers
so many
about to die
bound to
need extra labour

(cat wondering
why Osric
should be spared

asking what
–but for the
stylish extravagance
of his whiskers —
joy or
sense of
purpose
his survival might bring

TRICK POEM

Tags

meaning, Metaphysical, metapoetic, philosophical, poem, poetry, postmodern, poststructuralist, Reader, wordplay, writing

TRICK POEM

more than a trick
of postmodern reasoning

I am
writing the book
that I am reading

each word
on the page where

somebody’s pen
other than
my own

dipped into
my brain

dipped
into his brain

fusing us as one
never
ending two
for price
of one Universe
metaphorically speaking

THAT ABSENT MEANING WITH WHICH ALL THINGS CORRESPOND

Tags

identity, Jacques Derrida, meaning, philosophical, poem, poetry, postmodern, poststructuralist, South Africa, wordplay, writing

THAT ABSENT MEANING WITH
WHICH ALL THINGS CORRESPOND

even a
thorn tree
has its insouciance

I say “its”
but not sure
to whom
(tree or me)
it really
belongs

so much scope
(I/me) for poetic
and
philosophical license

and talking about license
I went for mine to
Pietermaritzburg
but failed to
reverse park
or stopped
when it
said go

in which provincial capital
spoke Jacques Derrida once, coincidentally
beloved Pietermaritzburg
still have
a best-remembered
lover
in this town

but
scorning chance of
a lifetime (as always)
I regretfully
missed him

whether confusion of
date or time or
somehow indisposed

not that I was, as
my title might suggest,
somehow
present in
my absence

slide of that
signifier itself

so
far out
of things
in some
self-deconstructing margin
that I eschewed
the truth that there
is no
truth
except
what I
live as truth, do
as truth

for a
day wasted in Durban
idly contemplating the
limits of my horizon

this
I framed as
vital

question
for thorn tree not
French post post post
philosophy

or maybe
it was what
the thorn tree
put to me

either way, whoever’s call it was,
no one answered back