ESPRESSO
was malingering in Hell’s
best coffee shop
started to fancy a coffee-
coloured barista
serving espresso
shrouded
by steam
and yet
still no mistaking
her demonic beauty
(so on point with
these fine surrounds)
and me
trying to catch her
jade green eye and
lure
it
towards me
as if she might fall
for a run of mill, ordinary devil
such as
the one there
in the corner
writing this thing
MONETIZE
monetize
demonize
I am
writing a new thesaurus
looking for
a common denominator
even as you
wait in the shadows
crumbling
to dust
once wondering but
now given your answer
as to
how it is
all going to
end
RAIN
the writer writes
the end of
the world
but the paper
is putting up
too much
resistance
somehow he just cannot
write his way to
his vision of
an ending
quietly cataclysmic
apocalypse falling
upon us soft as rain
SOFT
your poem
is soft
is malleable
when you call
it answers
fawns
rolls
at your feet
always there
to do your bidding
is as safe
a wicked pleasure as
anything the Universe
contrived
to devise
as harmless an intervention
as can be imagined
desperate to
appeal
this
I really feel
deep in the heart I’m
pretty sure I have
GAME
saw you reading
my poem
in a Video game
and there I was
writing this poem
as part
of that narrative
an Escher etching hanging
on the wall
windows
mirror
smoke dolls and
boxes
looked around but failed
to see anyone writing
about to
reboot me
so I just
drove to the ocean
to admire the artwork
the artwork there almost
beyond belief
EXCHANGE
paradox of choice
constant of change
let’s just surrender to
life, the flow, the poem
forget writers and
readers
who is where
who is what
where to find our story
the narrative that spreaks us
captures us totally
in its
open-
ended box
NATURALLY
a nation of shopkeepers
without shops
a nation of conquerors
without conks
a nation of accountants
called to account
in the event of
analysis
it’s a lout
rout
AS IT SO HAPPENS
as it so happens
the Church and State
are both
outraged
the Sun and Moon
have begun to
tango begun
to samba
and some devil drunk
on tequila
is in the vestry
demanding communion
damanding absolution
quoting from a mash-up
of Neruda’s sublime Cantos
and visionary
holy books
and all are aghast
having booked their places
these
sons and daughters
not a tatter between them
no missing thread
and thus
in assued completeness
remain well aware
that devil on tequila becomes
devil in tequila becomes
democratic
host of devils that
bring decorum down
become god of thd people
hacked to pieces and
resurrected
become
the bones
of the philosophers doomed
until the end
of argument
to host
perpetual return
BIT
you summoned me
for party-games,
for romantic
themes
or so it sounded,
so it seemed
given your dancing through
all protocols,
your show and tell
and mystery
graceful
as all Hell but too
leopard fast that
I might anything retain
and there we ending
playing Monopoly diplomatically
diplomacy
monogamously
unless
in Triple Entente or
Menage a Trois
and me
in inquisition mode
determined
to interrogate your very
sensuality probe you
high and low
for heresy
(whether best
or worst of its kind)
the Turing test
the litmus test the blind taste test
with control
and me busy scribbling my way
through raw data
conclusion (and recommendations) thick
with crescendo
and to think
my original presumption
(seduced into
aberration by
Descartes demon)
was that I did not could not really exist
and therefore
would never get laid
an alternate universe somehow
devoid of sexuality
I am at
the bottom of the Seine in
Rimbaud”s
drunken boat
awaiting Nemo
my last hope of rescue
need
to go full Nautilus
to get
out of this place return
to my gone childhood
where robots are spooky by
no means mind-
expanding and
voraciously sexual
she sitting with me in a pose
that
given the technology may
well last forever
time whirling, whorling
into gold blue circular
star patterns
insistent
on their forever
soused in an artistic courage
determined to have its
(wicked) way
we are not anything
nowhere
nothing
like,the rest
merci beacoup
for
the darling sex
(you so
so slickly
do
your bit)
NARC
beautiful planet
so we
can expect narcissism
everybody
overdosing on blue
smoking thick cloud
but now
like a battered football
a bit sore
about its looks
sad for the planet
sure it is has its own
ideal of
something to which
it once
so
tragically aspired
poems 2 die for