GRIEVE
grieve is a verb
loaded with abrasive vibration
seems like its nouns
should be grief
but also groove
for there seems to
be a chiselling, rasping,
shaping
process involved there
whether in all the grief stages
whether in every form
as it will
emerge in conjugation
I cannot be sure of
though there is today
such a cold, quiet
clarity to
the grief
I grieve
NO SAINTS
no saints in my family
but martyrs for their faith,
that
is a different story
and Norman knight
following William
the Conqueror across
the Channel
dealt land as a bounty
because of battle bravery
against the Anglo-
Saxon English, other
side of my family
and descendants of both sides
caught up in that war
to end wars, we barely
understand now, short-
hand signifier
for all brutal, terrible,
inhumane wars that
could have been
avoided
a flash of Serb Austro-
Hungarian rivalries,
a single, seemingly
inconsequential assassination
and the whole
world on fire
how would they have understood this
our ancestors, family
from times so distant
and now
here we are
now here we are
the tree with all its graftings
the river with all its fresh
tributaries blossoming
out
into the future
I leave it to you with so
much time before you to
quietly overlook or
begin
to care deeply
my pen
(and what it means)
finished here
for all that this is worth
WHO TELL THEM
It is our stories that are told
and we who tell them.
We who have the campfires
who being flesh and bone
feel the warmth
feel the cold
are in the front line
of that ever battle
for survival
or, more exactly, in perennial
reserve
we left to ponder,
honour, remember, feel
as much empathy as
a human
being can feel
and yet
we do not
there are nothing beyond
the barest of lists
of all those lights
that were snuffed, all
who disappeared which anomaly we justify
in golden terms, speaking of
the space and capacity
and love
in Heaven
but, staring into the campfire,
I sense out in the cold darkness
great absence
present those forever outside
looking in
many as molecules, so
many, many, many
and why
we are not there too
why we are here
and now got so crazy, crazy lucky
we
dare not ask and
thus never do
this a tale
here right now
as we do tell them
HARD STUFF
you are hard stuff
all of you are hard stuff
same genetic makeup
but I am
of air and water, and
you of aphsalt, rock
and iron
the good stuff of the Earth
all that floats around
its molten core
dividing up the tribes
helping in the fine-
tune proliferation
of each
and every species
and keeping us
a house in schism, forever
divided
no hard-stuff engineer
of a mind
to fix that
AND AGAIN
we discovered
a planet of poets
annihilated with
our death ray
could be a useful
profitable resource
so had
their bodies skinned
last night I had a pretty
intense, harrowing dream
inspired by reading
one of their poems
about someone
who ill-
advisedly brings
back to his house
a captured alien, one
of their queens
and dare not leave her
unattended for fear
of what
we might fast-
evolve or transform into
and so my
guilt-ridden nightmare
of horrific self-
transmutation
am never
going to read
any of those poets’
poetry again dreaming such horror again and again
SUMMER SERENITY
must be some serenity
out there for me just need to pack
a rucksack, set out
and find it
go through all the acts
and phases, whole
hero’s journey
autumn
winter spring summer
all the seasons
searching but
not, sad
to say
necessarily finding, but
me at least
dancing with summer,
glorious Summer
talking grace and determination
all those roles
as Texas queen of science fiction
and she
imprinting every kind
of message subliminal
into this mixed up head
than my serenity journey
be doomed
from.the outset
much check my
files, my innards
peace be
programmable there
WHATEVER
it is all
whatever
light
and shadow
you could write a poem
close your eyes
and die
find the God-particle that
explains eveything all those conundrums
solved, no more questions
to ask
just do the Maths
or have coitus with one
of us to put
you in the frame of mind
you
in spiritual communion
with the Universe
and suddenly nothingness
is not the shock horror you let yourself
be led into
making it out to be
SERIOUSLY
This is poem
it is allowed
I give you
explicit permission
to believe whatever you like
can choose to believe
everything
something, nothing,
something and nothing
no big eternal truth
nor any huge perfidious
lie
being told here
no cover ups, whistleblows,
reinterpretations of history
one way
or another creation of mythology,
dabbling in fantasy
letting ideology speak
as if it has every right
to be heard
and
taken seriously.
PUZZLE
I stay up.all night
solving chess puzzles
which is OK
I cannot sleep
fear something
like a rogue asteroid
out there
with all our names on it
as yet undetected
will strike me and my world
when I am unconscious
diverted by some
troubling insignificance
in a recurrent dream
but
if it has my name
our names on it
at least it shows
on the part of
the cosmos
a level of awareness, of
recognition that
I would not
have believed
marking us for a dark fate in
such a clear, purposive
and determined manner
shows a rational malignity
that just
has to be Greek
a reassuring thought
currently stuck (black
to mate in
seven) on a problem
whose solution I just
do not see
do not see.
Mr Wonka
keeps his Jabberwockies
in a special, secret room,
carefully hidden, as if
he were a
James Bond villain
with an ultimate weapon
threatening
global doom
and not just tooth decay
and yes they do Jabber
all day and night so
there is much
sound proofing
and sedative gas piped in
to stop them
from bickering incessantly
over what the lines in
nonsense poetry mean
not
toves, slithey or otherwise,
are they fed with
but generous helpings
of meringue, and creme brûlée
but Wonka himself
not really a fan of Freudian
fantasy
however given such
an English fairy-tale veneer;
mathematical joke and
logical
conundrum given
a fair sprinkling of
to distract you from any
birth trauma, worm hole
singularity, cosmic horror
felt as you
with Alice down
the rabbit hole do
disappear
flattening out horizontally
in order
to board Wonka’s boat
at the entrance to
his terror tunnel
where he will
flip into a ranting
temporary insanity
to remind us
he is sweet entrepreneur,
but also
bizarre fruit
of a strangely cross-
pollinated, Rimbaud, Lovecraft,
Edgar Allan Poe tree
as we steamship along
journey timed to exactly
to recitation length of
his weird
psychedelic
avant-garde film of
a gothic poem
flowing with the chaos of
the cosmos
shades of
Rimbaud’s
alcoholic Seine trip
or maybe
trapped in what
seems like an eternity of
malignly-authored
simulation
moving not at all
(in the absurd
there is
no
terminus only
infinite
departure)
for the truth here we need we need
to ask
the Jabberwockies (at
least
the one of them that
as in the riddle
always
tells the truth)
Charlie and Alice
having long disappeared.
poems 2 die for