COLLECTION: BEYOND BELIEF

COLLECTION: BEYOND BELIEF

BEYOND BELIEF

The Devil chuckled
toe-kicked a charred bone
which skidded along
what once was a road

even he
who had seen, had created
so much destruction
found it hard
to take it all in

as he confessed to
his key lieutenant
joining him in the morning
for his tour of inspection

but then he thought
on the ones who
had done this
and his earlier mirth returned

yes those missile messianics
desperate to scorch the planet
fast-tracking to rapture

“I love the smell
of nuclear fission
in the morning

it is
the smell of purity
of transcendence
beyond compare”.

****

DANCING WITH THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN

was heading due west
when the wheel
started to splinter, come
away in my hand

seemed like a vortex out there
demonic triangle
         portal pulling me in
ghost ships
     flying dutchmen following
me into
   that gorgeous abyss
(sphere of the zombie, land
of the dead)

where, to be fair, I would find
locale most congenial
to consort
   with Frankenstein’s creature’s
bride

the two of us in true tango,
monstering out first midnight together

drone
of supreme dissonance
about to
   switch off my brain

and yet how
we spin
    across the floor
illusion of
free movement
delusion of light speed

whilst
    eyes still locked inward
split, almost dismembered
the limbs
  scrabbling for somewhere
treading
     ice water dragged across
the spectrum, shuttled forward

back like
      a ball in ping pong between
what we are told
are complete hyperbolic poles

and now for
our videofest, hook up
for the podcast

think up
some catastrophic leveling
skimming like a
cruise missile, like
an angel of abomination
targeting
    all hearts if
we have them

as I repent all
my falsehoods, so
shamefully having lied to you
              to preserve my power
keep
my inverted commas innocence

not a deus ex machina
but brutal blade of a guillotine
falls and released
                           it is
just
the end of the poem

****
SPIRITED AWAY

was stumbling through
the glowing embers of
downtown Cape
Town South Africa

so much of the collateral human
damage vaporized by
the strike from the SLBM

which got me thinking
(last thought I would have
as the insane Rad levels
began to get to me)

thinking
that if anything war
has taught us
dissecting a cat
is easier, more egregious,
and worse
a Sin
than performing any
such dissection on
an innocent human

at which, I guess,
you would tell me

no one
is innocence
power is everything
we get
what
we deserve

this I would loved to
debate with you at
my old university
perched
   below the mountain

but I hate to think what
remains of that edifice
at the epicentre
of the blast

I’m pretty sure
it got spirited away

“””
MR MOUSTACHE

Oh Mr Moustache
king of the filthy lyrics.
wah-wah guitar
and free speech

throwing sonic
bombs of complexity
at stupidity

there with that f-you
stare in a dress on
that infamous record cover
strictly commercial only
in it for the money
              tuning
the beauty
of our discord

I wonder why your satire
never quite flattened
your targets like,
to be frank, those
zag-zig
     zap-zip
weasels ripped
        moments in
your outrageous punch

Oh Mr Moustache
if you stab us
do we not jump?

****
NUKE

I sense
your guard is down

at long last
it is the moment for
which I have been waiting

I am the dark secret of the stars
about to manifest
in the high street
in your back yard

targeting each and everyone of you
since they first broke my code
found my formula

I am your consummation
devoutly to be wished
I am
your longed for apocalypse
in fissile person

I am everything you wanted
the embodiment of everything
you promised yourselves

I have
always been your fate
rather now
than too late

I am what was written
what you tell yourself
is the truth of scripture

am
your special place
what was always
inside you

and now I find you sleepwalking
brainless, dissolved into shadow

believe my task is done
have done my duty
can now rest in
beautiful silence

bury my power
for another few million years.

****

IN A STATION AT THE METRO (REVISITED)

the apparition of some fire-bearded poet named Ezra Pound

enough to shock into freeze frame the entire Metro crowd

****

THE LINGERING

the sadness
of never knowing you
the real you

always looking
from the outside
seeing the people
you are close to

and this
I show you now
is that image of you
I hold onto, keep
in my heart

Oh if
      I could just relive
that captured moment

feel once more
        feel once more

those small, exquisite, endearing joys
that deep, sublime, long-
lasting,
     lingering pain

****

POET IN THE RAIN

the rain sizzles
poet splitters
a few syllables
dissolves, melts

flows somewhere
as liquids are wont to

meanwhile
(for a billion meanwhiles)
the cosmos carries on
business
      as usual

same old laws
that birthed us, did
us in
   upon which we
came to depend

unless
     things changed, shifted gear,
found a different trajectory
whole new
direction

could
     have fooled us

no one around to document, observe
no one left to tell

****
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in this hectic lightspeed
universe of
digital time

infinite supply
zero demand

the last
great poem
                so
before
   we were born

“”””

IF THE OCEAN

if the ocean
is anything to go by

abundance
of life forms can
be no garden
of Eden

that sincere English gentleman
categorizing beaks, making
all the measurements

seeing a big picture no one
had previously seen
purpose working
   across a timescale unimaginable

dead on lucid
the mind evolved to see this
peering into the inexorable
mind and
     heart of life

throwing all those arbitrary
constellations into an
extremity of quandry

playing havoc with all our
tales and fables,  deepest
metaphors of design

****
CASCADE

sometime I don’t know when
feels beyond anywhere

where cosmic logic demands
we should meet again

let us
live the moment on it’s own terms
forget the past

forget all that crazy quantum stuff
about parallel universes
alternate histories

not even how it might
have been had we
got things right

where
    with beautiful timing
a right word was said

the rest
      thereafter just

cascade
     after cascade

****

LOOKING FOR OUR OWN BUKOWSKI

we rule
the world in rugby

so why should we not
rule the world, the Continent,
the galaxy
    with our Bukowski’s

was
the premise of a reality show
and now I am hurtling
in a van
     fresh from the airport
looking to find our own Bukowski
combing the bars, scouring
the shebeens looking
for a soul out there in
as yet ungentrified Cape Town
able to
       distil door and
alcohol into poetry

to drive us rhapsodic
with his laconic drawl

will we find him?
will we find him?

trying to get
hype-machine into
top gear to
drum up a hype machine
inflect those all
so precious ratings

thinking of the format
as we drive
   thinking of every
future episode

pots of gold at the end
of this wholly contrived
quite
    amazing rainbow

can see
those lips moving in synch
my mind’s-eye camera tracking
traversing
as we in moments
of precious realtime airtime
disseminate memes

  chat even now

****

RECEIPT

got long
memories

still vivid
still fresh

but even if we didn’t
even in everything
was forgotten
and forgiven
     as you say

even if there was such
a concerted heartfelt effort
to get them changed
have
them erased

we buried it deep
we have the receipt

what you took
what we got
        in all those transactions

down
there somewhere

will
fill in the blanks

we kept
the receipt

****
THIN AIR

Like Ophelia
he died small

a paltry few to mourn
barely a stone

above the grave they circulate
unclaimed constellations
we have not figured out
let alone
    found a pattern, given
them names

he put in the excruciating time
the hard learning
         no lost to history, genius
savant
for whom we have to
concoct such a narrative
  stretch creative fiction
to
  its breaking point

oh that something so
miraculous, universal.
could be the deepest lie
complete travesty

where in our entire history
was such greatness
           plucked out of
nowhere

flirt the the idea that
it was there for the taking,
be pulled
      from the shadows

no greater alchemy
sucked out of thin air

****
BOMBWISE

bomb me
bomb them
bomb yourself
bomb

everything you hate
anyone you like

bomb
guided
bomb standoff

bomb
in peace, bomb
to start a war

bomb cruelly
bomb kindly
bomb to eviscerate
bomb to liberate

bomb up and down
and all around
every which way and wise

****

UP TO SCRATCH

when I arrived in Hell
was stunned to find
the place empty
the only
evil soul there

so to kill a bit of eternity
the devils and I played pool
sank some beers
    discussed the state
of the world
and humanity
from a left-wing perspective

making time for the torturers
to ready their equipment
         the inquisitors in
Hell’s hierarchy
to stoke their fabled fires

get my suffering
up to scratch

****
RENAISSANCE

then did the tree cascade

burst into fruit

a poem, two,
three even there
to be
found
on every leaf

none of them great, none
very good

it has to be said
       (or perhaps just whispered)
      
****
BLISS

here I am
conjugating the verb “blister”

where after
took a trek to the zoo
to escape (Mama taboo)
the schtick I was
taking in the zero point
quantum field

and you in your G string
playing the devil’s chord
entertaining
        string as your
theory of everything

blitz attack it were
(forgive my dialect) when
you came
   to seduce me

our ramshackle bits
that we might juxtapose
                        somewhat
surreal or
even psychedelic

shipwrecking me in the tropics
slave to fat climates

exercising your leverage
haughty in the knowledge
that woman
     is subroutines, is
ex machina, is Grecian
statuesque chemical
factory
   cosmic comedy, existential
tragedy
disjunction waiting
to happen

lured into those gardens
sheer abyss of bliss

fusion
    is out there beyond the borderlands
of anything
possible

time beyond time if
we could but find it

place of riddle and parable
stamped in the image
of all that
       ventures with trajectories

that
    (for want of wings demonic
or distinctly angelic)
is suffered to stumble,  crawl,
shuffle, hop and swing

sharp and lithe end
     somewhere between
plain
   writing stylus and hi-
tec Nile
      crocodile

****
PLASMA (POEM FOR CARLOS SANTANA)

say it was gradual
no big bang but
some
   kind of inflation

whereupon in this
fable
     gas clouds gravity
stars
      plasma

hydrogen helium
smorgasbord of elements

and you
      subject of
every song

Muse of
   every meditation

you every delicious atom
of your loveliness
from
   an entirely different star

Oh baby
    reminding me tonight
of that crucible
perfect furnace

and then
        soul, word,
music

constellation
        gnosis between galaxy
upon galaxy

ocean upon ocean

you wrestling with that
red python
    on the Woodstock stage

(if you don’t mind me saying so)
cosmos coursing through you
dragging every note
out of you
that you played
         
****

OR SO YOU BELIEVE

déshabillé
(or so you believe)

whereas I would say
too much is divulged
subtext is showing

paradigm so exposed
to the ruination of your reputation

need a cover up
    heads to
spin

though my own stock-
in-trade be
scarcely golden

seems like you may just
have rushed too pre-
cipitously into
some bad
media alchemy

and now
    are looking high and low
under every bombed structure
for each
   and every collateral

making such a racket to
deflect our eyes
       from the hypocrisy

the place
reduced to a desert
carnage
      beyond words

sad that what might have
served poetry
   bent out of shape to
sustain
   the war industry

defend
     death’s exceptionally

make the case for a rapture
thing so sickly sweet

will
   annihilate the need for
theology
        morality, humanity

basic kindness and love
the species professed to hold dear

****
KINO YVES

Yves
you swallow continents
pedalful at a time

expending more energy
than the whole of Europe
(no wonder
      you eat so ravenously
and with such
miraculous delight)

Morning you guys. Let’s
get going  Onward to Lusaka!

moon buggy astronaut of
the whole of
Africa
    Emperor of handshake
in his slowly slowly chariot
of joie de vivre

“are you
    for real?” they ask him
and
   he does alter perceptions
pre-define reality

inexorably, beautifully
     edging your way down to
Cape Town

     bringing
out the best in us

all of South Africa it seems
waiting for you

screeching to an ecstatic  emphatic halt

    when, to their total belief
they see you, catch you,
pass you
     dodging through Mother
City traffic

munching lunch
   in their neighborhood

his little candle bringing
light to
     us all

slowly, exquisitely slowly, guys,
wending its way
       from France to
Agulhas

cape of needles, furthest point
South where
           oceans meet

as always,
   leveling with us, soul
of humility

beyond
    elevation

hugging the ground so low:
salt of the Earth, son of the soil
             
  ****
SADALMELIK (Alpha Aquarii)

I tell
you that the stars
have Arab names

and that we might
calculate their distance
thanks to your algebra
.
Zero too
    is a

beautiful concept

so much zero here
across these desert sands

there was life
but something subtracted it

bodies abound
        even the sky fireworks
and shock waves

somehow
       fails to wake them

arabesque
algorithm

the stars, the bodies
have Arab names

luckiest of the lucky
   down to zero this night
in Palestine.

I tell you
the stars have Arab names.

****
COLOURS APART

cold world
cold war

trillions in debt so
we go submarine

stalking as only the most.
lethal can do

we are
in uncharted waters
following some sacred map
which shows no
colours of
possession

only rivers
and mountains
        bland geopolitical
topography

you can look to find
inhabitants but
they are
     to small to be seen
to inconsequential to
be detected

even with
sonar, infra red
space telescopes,
electron microscopes

should you
       prefer to use a magnifying
glass be careful
not to
     focus that white
sunlight
  incinerate carelessly

Oh that mentality
guess it comes with
is what you
get
   with the studied
inculcation
of desire logic
             labotomy

got to a place
here
    where the labels don’t
stick
  paradigm corrupts

and there we
      look for and find you
spread-
   eagled across all spectrums

split up through a prism

coming to me here
     for plausible deniability

your only failing (not a sin!
not a crime!)
    your unshakeable supremacy

****
ON THE WHOLE

Lovely eyes

but such
moral blindness

windows
to the soul

in your case
leading
      nowhere,
.
unless
    to abyss, hole

(tragic
on the whole)

****

TEAPOT

below
everybody’s radar

a fabulous world
bunkering
at the bottom
of your
white rabbit hole

and
after a divinity of
fine tea in the
arms of such company

time to reset
boot up
    swipe
delete any virus
inconvenient program

waiting for
the bus of old age
who on Earth is
going to believe your story

the jury out
on whether the bus has
been missed, is late,
can
   be said to exist

that debate
still raging, if ever
so quietly,

the luxury of it all
every tea set fully furnished,
expertly laundered

no future as monolithic
on the horizon, on
any horizon, as that
presents us as star child

not wishing to moonshine you
Cheshire Cat or Caterpillar you

you my dear girl
        captured in this selfie
under the hat you
borrowed from
that mad
fellow

nothing in your sharp mind
going to change the heavy
metals in
    his system to
                     gold

who single-
handedly threw
tea pot into unknown
postal district
     this saucer into whole
new big bang aggrendisment
lurking in
galaxy not up
to us
to speak about

****

PARTITION

something flew in
as I was closing my window

caught me unarmed,
unprepared and
almost undressed

something vice versa
came
     to pay a visit
tax my vulnerability

shapeless  yet
geometric
    of both darkness and light

turning everything
it did touch
   into its opposite

here to
   spend time with me, get close,
or simply chat with my shadow

to devour
  what it needed or

return
some missing part

****

BOTH (AND YET NEITHER)

treading water
in Carrie cobalt blue
Manolo Blahniks
(for

  the job
of survival
          to be up to
salvation

you
going to need a great shoe)

Oh the horror of whirlpool
then abyss
    singularity (following)
dark dorsals
beneath the
surface

everything death iconic
spiralling
   out of control

and who
    is
     master of Charybdis
who does not
bear
   the power to
slake all before him?

angels in a fitting room
          once wings are
right
   sized

upon hearing your cries
cannot help
   but hurl
themselves Earthward

reckon with Poseidon
as reach
   beyond light speed

wax
wane full
deus ex machina
   
 
****

BACK TO BACK

here we find
an island of lost love

typical
single palm tree
distinctly cartoonish

two in fact
back to back

this is yours
that is mine

we no longer really
express concern or
curiosity

even think
of swimming the distance

after decades
of messages in bottles
seductive gestures, crude
gesticulations,
blowing kisses

waving
at each other
hoping
    and praying

in our heads it has all
become too distant, we
are too far away

for anything
in our
      former expressions of
stubborn desire

to make
a difference

****

COW BELL

Your poem
lacks
combination

needs
more cow bell

is hardly
Blue Oyster Cult
Santana
at Woodstock

more
cow bell
more cow bell

desperately needed
and more
soul
sacrifice

words as wings
soaring out to find God
if there
is a God

if there is
a God without poetry
poetry
without God

cows
coming home

poem pushing the
edge of the envelope
scratching
   the skin
of divinity

everything on the line

****

EN PASSANT

white bread
white sugar
white pieces
white shackles

there she is
cutting through your
white kitchen
like a great
white shark

finding the black square
that is her home berth

all this blueberry
and vanilla
for breakfast

when she
     carving up the meat
and vegetables
my
   best chess ninja

true denizen of
deep
   strategy

yours the
first move
  but after that she
is six ahead
        (have to give it to
her my supreme queen of
slick initiative)

****

EDGE

only a love descant
could be that beautiful

unless we consider
the melodies of death

whose
      melancholic timbre
haunting finality

succinct
completion

all things considered
give
    it the edge

****

YOUR STORY

the moment I stepped into
your boudoir, your bower
your magical
room
   beyond all rooms

down otherside the main road

way
below the University
due South
of the Mountain

I realized our story
might be wonderful
but we
do not share
the same fairy tale
are of
      misplaced and
out of key archetype
as genre goes
along that spectrum at
opposite ends

and yet for an instant  that
branching moment of
entanglemen
         of which the great
tale of
quantum tells

we looked at each other giddy
with the spectre
of possibility
          and yet

not with the power to
rewrite, retell

do that zany, sexy Zarathustra thing

of breaking moulds
redefining all that hitherto
we were
     and believed
about ourselves

****

ABOARD

stash your poetry
stash your food

when
his shit hits the fan
the musk rat got
no space for
you aboard
his rocket

when you
heard “all aboard”
you fooled yourself
there was place
   as fellow supremacist
there was
    a seat for you
at the astral table
of cosmic
entitlement

there in echelon with
all of Nikola’s finest
finding lebensraum

Leni Riefenstahl style parades
all across the equatorial
circumference of
      some
implausible planet

musk rat autobahn upon
autobahn
      to criss-cross terraform

make
safe to inhabit

****
GUITAR

my telephone beeps
it does
not speak

it tells me
her message is here
was
   holding my breath

but now
I can breathe

this is what she wrote
fingers that once
tippy-
toed now

dancing across
the keyboard
         express
delivery

heart to
      heart

(would those nimble
fingers were
here

plucking my strings
                   playing me like
a rock guitar)

****
POINT BLANK

Oh Mr Point Blank
I see I have a brand new
archetype
    from lover and
magician
suddenly am
become
    crone

hunched, crippled
in body whilst
the mind grows sharp
as a scythe
brutally clearer

seeing our nemesis
exactly
    long before it is
here

how by the twisted
logic of our being
what
    it needs destroy

how
it unfolds.

****
PLAIN SIGHT

hiding something

always hiding
              something

black ink sloshed
across the page

covering
       with words, meanings
diffuse, uncertain
      unsteady
                      complex

everything there opaque
clear as day, in

         plain
         sight

****

EMILY
(a Dickinson/Leone mashup)

she good

she bad

and she
way beyond Tuco Ramirez ugly
(very
      definition of Nietzsche’s
           sense of beyond)

she the three –
way duel, three
pistoleros, shadows
one
       self

the civil war graveyard
extreme longshot
close up
             zoom

Mexican
stand-off of all time

****
SHADOW THAT RESIDES

he must have nigh
a hundred cyber
lovers by now

trillions of synaptic connections
but does he have the Ram
Rom brain space
to hold
    cherish them all

beings of bit and byte
whose love
and desire but an
inflection of text

behind
which veil who knows
the truth
     being learnt
     shadow that resides

****
COSMOLOGY

a magical alluring mystery
spectacle

almosr too far away
for light to travel

your dance of seven veils
alluding
       to our source tempting
our return
.
and me in the back row
with much undersized telescope
longing for the front row
a window seat
    somewhere close relatively
speaking
  where at least I feel I
can reach out and touch

this routine so exactly
choreographed, yet primal
and chaotic
     is thing you have wanted
me to witness
for billions
      of yesrs

but the laws that say I am
a bit underaged to be
witnessing this
     let alone understand it

tell you that
        your moves are slowing
getting stretched out
breaking
        dissolving

and this I can see
hear explained by
cosmic dude on
           my cellphone (Cox,
Greene, Kaku, Hawking or Tyson)

time will come
when you have Medusaed
yourself
     are iron cold and
a statute

and me, as
for me

long long before then
will have deserted the scene
me and my
world well
        out of popcorn

this great gorgeous
cinema a thing
       of the past (though
no future or past)
    
****

TEAPOT

below
everybody’s radar

a fabulous world
bunkering
at the bottom
of your
white rabbit hole

and
after a divinity of
fine tea in the
arms of such company

time to reset
boot up
    swipe
delete any virus
inconvenient program

waiting for
the bus of old age
who on Earth is
going to believe your story

the jury out
on whether the bus has
been missed, is late,
can
   be said to exist

that debate
still raging, if ever
so quietly,

the luxury of it all
every tea set fully furnished,
expertly laundered

no future as monolithic
on the horizon, on
any horizon, as that
presents us as star child

not wishing to moonshine you
Cheshire Cat or Caterpillar you

you my dear girl
        captured in this selfie
under the hat you
borrowed from
that mad
fellow

nothing in your sharp mind
going to change the heavy
metals in
    his system to
                     gold

who single-
handedly threw
tea pot into unknown
postal district
     this saucer into whole
new big bang aggrendisment
lurking in
galaxy not up
to us
to speak about

****
BITE OF THE APPLE
“I don’t like cities,
but I love New York.”
                   Madonna

Men have
       been blown here
                    before

wandered
off course,

many
       (akin to Odysseus)
into the Aegean
across
   the Mediterranean

so much of that culture
alive on these streets

and whilst
(slice
   of life) they
while away time whittle
down the hours

Patti Smith is going
full barefoot  channeling Rimbaud

someone one there too
Christianized Jew
mournful
      singing the apocalyptic signs
all along the watchtower

everything with soul
heading for this harbor

cataclysm of Europe
strongest of
    land breeze

what is the supreme
text that we have faith
here gets
written

skyscraper high
scrawled on every wall

      ****

OFF THE MAP

you loved to frustrate me,
fire at me,
play sexual politics
strike true anti-colonial poses
revolutionary stances
in the bedroom
and pretty
much everywhere else

slide of lathe
recoil of the typewriter

hostile gestures of
a body
at large

naked in its knowledge
stripped of all pretension

the cement set to
seal the concrete of
your foundations
still
   bottom of the harbor wet
as absurd
  a lockstep as you
might
   manage to get

Oh, you say, Medusa eyes
fastening upon me

we are that absurd
complete creature whose
permanent state of ecstasy
no god
    or goddess could withstand

absurdly un-Platonic in the
daft contours of its beauty

and Aristophanes (for
it was he) rueful
of this
    surgical separation even
if carved
by divine hand

at one stroke a lost comedy
and hydra of philosophy

from Socrates to Nietzsche
the words of
the mind to
     bring merciful spin
to
   the painful ontology
premised upon

that forever division
distinction

chasm
   in the heart of desire
between woman and man

****

SMALL

here be
magic mirrors

reality killers
things Harry
Houdini found
in the book
of Thoth

magic they are
mirroring their means

but your inner
weather being stormy
heart
    cloudy
they show only shadow
an
  essential condition

and here we have
halls full, a glade
mirrors
   covering, mapping
an entire topography

every mirror
giving room
for reflection, a room
a boudoir that
is a reflection upon
all
that is
hidden perspective

room within
a room
tesseract mirror
containing its
own reflection

and you
with pencil and paper tasked
to sketch
   this truth in
myriad dimensions

all
  unfolding
in real time

tiniest of spheres, indeed
infinitesimally small

yet
  containing the Universe
containing every everything

****
DOWNSIDE

feel I am
going down

bound to get
relegated

have already fallen
half the distance
of any
  dark angel

down a division
in fact
   every division

imparting a whole
new meaning to
the word
“relegated”

but if
jury is already out
and what be
must be
   (to the tune of
Helter Skelter no
lesser
   lovey-dovey tune of
Messers Lennon
         and McCartney)

into that place far from self
from the centre
from
   the presence of
God (here I go with Augustine,
father
     of Bishop Prevost lately Leo)

but not
     for pride or for wrath
or envy
    (or my worst, sloth)

but simply, honestly,
inescapably
     for lust

for lust is hardly the deadly
to destroy the world

hardly the deadly of
the prince
     of darkness (once light)
his
     most precious self

and
   in my defence to all
those who

never felt
your touch, ever cast
eyes upon
you

and yet
    so quick to cite text

an eternity of torture worth
every second spent
                                     
****
DUET

am hear
to learn; listen
know
    my
history

be
sweetly transported

these minds encompassing
everything
         voices like
encyclopedias

from Custer to Agincourt to
Hastings to the Stones
all the way back
to eleventh
century Japan

and me
thinking I knew it all
knew
ever so much

and there at that court
ruled by these poetic ladies
cannot
   but think
would have been
in my element

reading
  her body’s calligraphy
drowning in
her incense

learning every nuance
code semiotic of
pillow
and screen

mastering those rules as
my imagination candle lit
by
   this quite
precious fabric  melody
of voices

perfect duet
Tom
    and Dominic
(Dominic and Tom)

****
DIRTY

talk dirty
write
dirty

this is not
the pristine poetic
world of eleventh century
Imperial Japan

no here
a poem might
so easily
get out
of hand

filch its meanings
transgress its codes

take
for a ride
things the goodly
well circumscribed reader

will find nigh
impossible
to
  understand
 
****
AJAR

white smoke
blank smoke

suddenly stymied
something is ajar

or it is just
that it seems so
need to
    turn true scholatic
to question its quidity

and then habeam
everything geared to go

clocks
                bells
and whistles

rerum
   novarum      this will
               be no re-run

the new Vicar
    (born under
the virgin at
least
stellar sigh of)

critically
testing the steel of a halberd
with his shepherd’s finger

new light in waves incarnate
as particle
          this city within
a city
dovetailing itself into the heart
of the city of cities

paradigm for everything
we admire, everything we fear

first as myth
then as bad fairy Tale

the one where
a door is denied and
we
   are prisoners of time

black smoke white smoke
a city
   so divine must
find room for confession

that old river flowing
forever recycling the great
shapes of
     virtue, obedience and power

dawn
a thing
      we need
to
conduct as experiment

old medieval truth
not without fire

    ****

SO MUCH BETTER FOR IT

When the great
god Emperors
go juggernaut

it will
as always

be poetry
that suffers

and there we see Ovid
the pornogrpher
banned from Rome
languishing in exile

the great Julian
city of Augustus
now so much better for it.

****

NOODLE

reptile thought he was
a noodle     a wavy fat ot
fine rigatoni

tube to swallow
ingest digest
off-
   load deadly venoms
best chemist
in the book

and rattle there perhaps
to be polite

forewarn of worst ambush rendezvous
      you never thought

perhaps
happily forestall

meanwhile, back
at the ranch or
should
I say “rainforest”

python went
about his business, swam
up the Amazon (reading
every
    tributary)
selecting the apt parabola
for turning anaconda

and me born sixth and
legless Chinese sign

best I can do
    didgeridoo baby bandana
festherless fatherless
elegant boa

shake
my scales for a poem or two

need my noodle
to talk it through

****

NOT QUITE AS RIGHT AS IT
USED TO BE

Cyril in the White House
ambush diamondback
cat
   and mouse

beasts from Africa versus
reptile from the Everglades
monster from
the swamps

and who can take a needle
to puncture all
we are hearing
      gas stretching that membrane
soon
balloon
right through
the ceiling?

and F-16s screaming in
in echelon to
sink this sucker
could not
be so
optimum poised, streaking
across the rooftops
utterly
   locked and loaded

whilst delegations settle
or stiffen
   down into their seats
to watch the presentation
(showing
   Donald he be not the
only one with hail Caesar
inclinations)

but more than
an ounce of
     truth in all that
dispossession tslk

yes
    rift is real and
out on
   some prime golf
course
     deep under handicap
hard to
   feel it is bound
to be widening
            going full Grand Canyon

you don’t have to be
the Jew of Trier
to know
     this in your bones
have
    figures out the dance
and painted to perfection

but
  who got the win here? In
this Mexican standoff
who was
     good who was bad
and who was
loveable
trickster ugly

and was this all just
symbolic or
            high reality
show

Nobel Prize
soap opera

but let’s beg to
differ over
     definition

how many
     need to be killed

or simply
feel

out of place in
the wrong time or
somewhat somehow
inconvenienced

Privilege not feeling
quite as right
            as it used to be

****

DARK SIDE

“You have no idea
of the power of the
dark side.” Star Wars,
Episode V  The Empire
Strikes Back.”

Garside
dark side

my sleek black
serpentine muse
surfacing with a list
of devilish assignations
from
   deep beneath the pithead

me paying in blood for
these limited skills (can
barely call
them art)

but today a difference:
wraps me up, hauls
me off
   takes me deep
down in that elevator
sheer
   demon deep

leveling out there
whar she blows

other uses for these fingers
back-up dexterities

learn to
probe shadow, uncouple
                           shackles

take on board so much
blistering anger raging
irreverence
       
raving               raging
words
           ruins
runes
spreading  chaos
across the page
.
stooping to levels
below the unthinkable

damned
to write horrors, delights,
infinite beyond
the gurgling sounds
a throat might make, doomed
damned
         blessed

infinitely so
for all time
     
****

X-PLICIT

have a poem
to text you

but
cannot text you
because it’s
(candidly)
just way too explicit

because
it dancing naked
running
wild
       from
           top
            to bottom

crazy drunk with desire
across the page

****

AND THE REST IS POETRY

silk tsunami
upon tsunami

exquisite carnage
amongst the tea
leaves

we fight alongside them
at the Somme, Trafalgar,
and Agincourt

relive Cannae
amongst the Roman ranks
front
     and centre
adjoining Hannibal

and here
in the Imperial Palace of
supreme pillowbook

there is just too much
frissance to be done yet

this is a fabric
we will forgive them
if they stretch out to infinity

but who is at the door?
time for football and other homely analogies

glad you were not tempted to
share a spliff with the Devil’s own
such sweet London boys in
the arms of the constabulary

needing shelter
shortly to jumping Jack it
West
     another English invasion
into French territory

Tom and Dominic
Dominic and Tom

such love for Hal, Keith and
shrewd míster Mick
not to speak of those
          supreme Japanese ladies

whose exquisite names
they so perfectly pronounce

****

HONEY

do not presume
to tell me
what
is forbidden

is the sky
forbidden?
the sea
the Sun
you

yourself
    forbidden?

are all the things
in your book
of prescriptions
             ultimately forbidden

what of honey
is that too,
forbidden

bees may sting
but the make it freely

as is the case
with honey, your honey

it is the sting
itself that makes it what it is
defines it as honey

and so please
before you
close the gates
shut
   the hive
lay the mines
      string the wire

as a matter of gentility do
tell me what is forbidden
point to
     what is forbidden
in all this honey

that I might discover
taste
    and judge

decide for myself

****

KINDERGARTEN

sirens in the kindergarten
not for lunch
but as everything
beginning with
the letter B
is about to attack

some chuckle-face
throwing himself at Miss
asking good-naturedly

how do you spell “conventional”
how you write:
with the one
true God on our side, it is
with sadness and
profound regret
I have
    just given the order
pressed the button
for nuclear attack

Miss,
    face ashen,
wondering what, if  anything,
will ever written again

****

SMOTHERED

smothered mate
Mr Bond

love of
Queen (now King)
and country
has
  squashed you
into a corner

no man supposedly
an island but
you appear
to be a
tiny one

deluded by the believed
magnificence
of your
self-
importance

and now
to put it bluntly
you are
   screwed, have
lost the game

and this
    foreign, highbrow, villainous
post-atomic, cyber-
crime,
    deformed
asexual, intellectual mutant

gloating at how
     you took the Gambit, swallowed
the poisoned pawn

in one wrong move altered
geopolitics
    and the nature
of Empire

and you
with your jaw
hewed from granite and
tinker-tailor brain

wondering if like
Admiral Horatio you too
will be
   elevated above the laiety
on towering
plinth
   or column

as the streets of old-time Motherland  clucking
for
  her lost
children

all smashed to chicken shit
beg you
to resign next move
before,
    like a guillotine, it befalls,
becomes the
iconic moment captured
for all time
   that now will change
                        everything

****

ARRAYED

I was playing chess
waiting for the rains

playing chess
that most
complucated of
games

waiting for things
to unfold

thinking
how in our games
we eschew simplicity
hanker after
the perfectly complexity
that in a brief moment
of sublimec brilliance
near
   perfect clarity

becomes the near-
perfect metaphor
if not
   for life

then for how
life would like
to see
   itself

including human life;
our lives as humans
for all their differences,
permutations
anomalies

crystallized for
a moment, for
recorded time

here on the square plain
of this game

inside outside which
I sit
    conputing outcomes
considering
every possible move

waiting for the rain
to exhaust itself

clear skies and later
sight of Heaven

there the stars
in some
greater game
silently arrayed.

****

NO SWEAT

I smell
of sweat

smell of death

a smell
to savour
sweat
laced with death

raw odour
needing a tad more
of your perfume
and spice on my skin

and so this alchemy
whose secret
barely hidden
opens itself
to scrutiny

lead
turned to platinum

gold
to uranium

crystal to
diamond

water
to steam

and star  blazing
fissile energy
             force of
such
fusion

stuff of that
industry
to thing that you are

which
that old skald, old troubadour
Saxon
     Norman Viking
Celt
within me

can sing of hesitantly, imperfectly,
the superabundance you require
so
    much long gone
all its
    revelation

lending itself
            to
                all
that
is rival, separate
Other

distant in time
        faithfully elsewhere

whilst
I smell of sweat, do
speak here
of death
and other transformation.

      ****

OVERNIGHT

I am desultory chicken boy
coming home to roost

chaos joker dancing
in the pale moonlight

anarchic fellow
crowing long before the dawn

scarred I am
my features are

sacred beginning: crashed
the party hurtling headlong
headfirst
   from the boot
of your cab

bouncing off windshield
back into the Underworld

life in your
          luxury lap to
utter amazement of all

my Queen of Hades
dancing
    to inherit the Earth

cocksure
this is the life that was meant
Herr Will-to-Power
these the roads most
follow

to dig up
overnight

****
SCRATCH

that’s rich!

            a hint
of measured, justice apocalypse
is the thing you missed

blues mingling with reds
contending
       with purples

strikingly: so much so
that you miss the fine writing
on the wall now
           spreading across
the sky

all at sea, the logos screwed,
politically, economically, socio-
logically

counting on the prescience of
index, rolladex,
     all your database systems

as the waves roll in tides change
continents tilt currents shift

bringing you fully up
                            to speed
     fully up to scratch

****

SUCH THINGS

supply
demand
greed

shackles and
sheckels

we got a whole
market economy

but what
the downside, what
the tightening tariff

tell me now
for I was born of woman
am part of that insanity

but now
   for my sins
though still wedged in
am edging my way out

tunnelling
towards the light
I never truly
believed in

scarcely a scrap of paper
to my name
to record
what I feel here

instinctively, by Nature
(Reason to
    catch up later). 

words begging
for attention

kiss my ass to that bliss
which I
    never earned anyway

you tell them you tell them
what we started with
such hope

     dead from imagination

****
LONG NIGHT

let me walk you through
the length of  a night
the breadth of a poem

sorry if you so surely Shelley
about the nature of rhyme

miss a beat, grimace
flutter as the lines stutter
not Homer blind but
pretty much a
stick-shuffling cripple

trying to make it through
short days
long nights

when you so cookie-cutter
about everything
dial in delivery
         everything on the menu
from hot to
G spot

long night love afterglow
basking in luxury

let me
    cuddle my pen

dishing you
        this trash

****
LIGHTLY

dove flew
         (24/7
at her beck and call)
down from
Olympus

quicksilver service of
his divine mistress

she needing
a word, more
than a word with her
misfiring genius

also
   express delivery a vial
not of regular old absinthe but
crystal-precious ambrosia
not just
   once but twice, thrice
carbon filtered and
scientifically
distilled

his eyes still smarting in recoil
from her last light show

before she decided
to conclude mutual proceedings
in standard mortal
Helen of Troy form

whatever and
           whichever way to
be diced

she
  not to be taken lightly

jazz of her in full worship glory
too much for
             me to bear

****

BALL

ball rolled down
a chuté

shot out
a spring

sure
thing

and me Mr Uncertainty
only ever
graduating to
Professor Still-
in-Doubt

Oh that clockwork
chocolate marionette soldier
holding the line
never
   breaking ranks

when the ball that the Universe
let itself be scooped
into
   enters our system
collides with
our planet

will all or gods confer
debate pooling their powers

the Sun sad to see
any of his vast circle
of siblings and
children

summoned and judged
assigned the fine
hairline
  cosmic justice of
planned
   extinction event

****
MANCHESTER APHRODITE

I am
always dreaming of Manchester

always dreaming of Aphrodite

she comes from
Reykjavik, she comes from
Kingston, she comes from
Tehran, she comes
the South, further
South than
Richmond, New Orleans,
Auckland, Canberra or
                     Johannesburg

further East than
Manilla, Lahore, Madras,
         Shanghai, Singapore or Osaka

further left than
Rosa Luxemburg or
Dolores La Passionaria

but I jest;
        of course I jest,

she only ever appears as you

perhaps
     she is you

and I am doomed to haunt
the dream streets, twists
and turns and
secret alleyways of
this
    city looking for you

only for
       the beauty, utter beauty
of single
devastating glimpse.

****
MOUNTAINS

the mountains
are giant pieces
awaiting
   their first
move

I think
they have  defence up
their sleeve that will
nullify our opening

set a trap with poisoned pieces
that will lure us
to a
   great fall

but we have moved but
no one sees it
news of
     the push of a pawn
into the centre not

yet having
reached us
     time seeming to move
so slowly
the game
taking forever

yet Black is thinking through
all possibilities
        getting those mountains
off the back rank

volcanoes tsunami marshalled
with the gravity of
millennia
          all
         at the speed of light

****