GIANT
how
absolute om
evil is
survival oriented
one shiver, shake,
slight seriousness
in planetary wobble
and all darkness
leaches out
stuff
that ice worlds, dead
rock planets
are all made of
not to speak
of the huge death narcissism
of every
gas giant
APOLOGIA (POUR LE
KAMPFWAGEN)
sorry for
pissing
down
the barrel
of your tank
it is a beautiful tank,
let me
be the first
to admit it:
caterpillar tracks
reverse
forward gears
reactive
armour
(or do you
call it “armor”?)
so beautiful
so precise
I do
not, did not
wish to deride
just mar
its beauty
sully
it forever
least I can do
WEREN’T WE?
weren’t we
supposed to hold
up the mirror
to human nature
not let it fall
splinter, shatter
crash and burn, break
into a billion tiny
diamond-bright pieces
jagged shards, blood
soaked, blood
painted, bloody
never to be fixed
never
to be returned
never reclaimed
never restored
all those bits of light
dancing in the Sun grotesquely
hold
up the mirror
to human nature
who the fuck, nowhere
near his right mind
came up
with that idea
(go not pass go
leave the planet
sail steadfast, venture into the cosmos
cross
the galaxy
not, never
in a trillion lifetimes
nothing out there
to mirror what
we
might well be)
weren’t we?
WHEN IT KILLS
“As with many tragedies, our story opens in a moment of triumph.”
Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors
Now we
see
how deep indeed
this story goes
how sure
the colour
in the rose
of itself
in every detail
its thorns
the truth
of its beauty’s cruelty
the colour
fixed on absolute
when
it kills.
AND FILE
imminent
immanent
who knows
cares
what these words
mean?
whether they circle
each other in a loop
stand in
series
rank and file
or jostle with each other
flex their muscles
or scratch like stones
giving
sparks
birthing
fire
RECALLING MR POPE
sound
echoing sense
but what if there
is no sense
rule of your nonsense
Mr Pope
descending into
the entropy
of brute power
I decline
to add
for why say anything
when gets so grossly filtered
crushed by the imposition
superimposition
of hideous, ruling
mythology
under which stone rubble
words die, asphyxiate
cannot breathe
AND SO
and so;
God showed Job
the small things
of the Universe
the fine
print
of his creation
as they
walked together
across the smouldering ruins
the fields of ash
the huge expression
catastrophic to
a fault
of those
who refuse
to see
who
do not read
BACK TO
I was back to
the futured
to my
old university
one of those ribald
dreams where
the basic narrative comes
courtesy of
capitalist content creator
and there I was
both ancient alumnus
and yet feeling
the total freshman
all my higher degrees
revoked
on grounds of
relevancy
struggling in the climate
contrasts to make
my way both
upstream
and downstream
intellectually frigid, frozen
broken
desperate to
if not remake
at least
reshape
the wheel
whilst the Sun scorching brains
leering contemptuously
through
the stratosphere
protoype for every
god Emperor, every golden
King
and, yes, indeed
I am afraid to add, every
trivial
trivial Dean
as I made my way through
the panoply of departments
renamed
where not structured entirety
every theory
so local, limited, narrow
yet
same same-same
not of the intellect
but of ideology
servile, appeasing, without
a mind
to contemplate thought
of difference, thought
of resistance
triumph of appearance
and death of shame
back futured, back dated
limbo lateral
shifted
what else should I say?
EDITORS
the editors called
them in
hectored them
told them that
to keep
the people down
we need
to keep language
he we she it all
they them
need to kill
the words
kill
and liquidate
kill
and paraphrase
topple words
from their throne
strip poetry
to the bone
(reduce it to a
sweet
bare rhyme)
down
down
down
kill and devour
reduce all
words to spit
and spume
our few
true words will
hold all power
and so
the unthinkable
can
be made to think
and think
the death of truth to power
poems 2 die for