CIRCLE
you play music for
me and dance exquisitely
think I’m in Heaven
but then you tell
me more wil
cost money
but the artist in me
ths penniless one
in thrall of yout beauty
will
let himself
get suckered, of Viking
ancestry I have heard
but here
so defenceless
watching as she departs
to lay preach her salvation
far and wide, to
expand her
circle
leaving me to whisper:
in another life
in another life
ON BOARD
you made yourselves
into gods of chaos
chaos
that proceeds orderly
methodically
has lists
moves street
by street
wiping out, missing
nothing
could not be
more thorough
having learnt from
its horrific encounters
with the
demons of the past
terrible demons that
cast a monstrous forever
shadow
hook, line
and sinker
precise depths of that evil
turned
rational
taken on board
AT THE READING
the poets are gathered
in the auditorium
make the final checks
to see nothing wrong
with their uniforms
doped and dragooned
the audience
off-loaded from trucks
are marched to
their seats
essence
of the system
one attendee
one seat
was the promise decades
prior that won
the landslide election
whose benefeciaries are
here too
armour-plated limousines
as
gatekeepers of
fine standing
Ah what
a sight!
same old same old
every poem
basically the same
so
no sense
in expectation
indeed
best thing that could happen
before a line is recited
a stanza
is read
is that something
from smallest inconvenient
hitch
to extinction level event
stops everything in
its tracks
temporary reprieve
or a long long wait
a few million years
to the cockroaches that
survived
and evolved
get their act together
to run a better, more
poetic,
democratic
and yes,
human event
IN
you are in
now
we have bolted
you in
closed all the hatches
no escape
it’s our lenses
you will be looking through
you will be wearing our
combat masks, goggles,
glasses and visors
our Kevlar that stops
the bullet with your
name on it
nothing personal
from your enemy, they
just hate you
now you are just like,
in fact identical,
to every other
killing machine
you are
in now
no way of telling
when, if, you can ever leave
ON BOARD
you made your god
into a god of chaos
chaos
that proceeds orderly
methodically
has lists
moves street
by street
wiping out, missing
nothing
could not be
more thorough
having learnt from
its horrific encounters
with the
demons of the past
terrible demons that
cast a monstrous forever
shadow
hook, line
and sinker
precise depths of that evil
turned
rational
taken on board
BED SIT
sit with me
in the darkness everywhere
bombs are falling
seems that they
are in unlimited supply
what we
were put on the planet for:
to think, make bombs
and die
RUIN
in the ruins
of a bombed-out city
(the bombing
destined tp continue
whilst the perpetrators
are still
at large)
an iconic, Teutonic soul,
philologist-philosopher by trade
and prescient mind
from a former
world-defining age
sits on a white plastic chair
more conspicuous target
it would
be hard to imagine
communing with past,
present future
citizen of the inescapable
State of Ruin
Kingdom of
Heaven
somewhat deconstructed,
polarized,
downward death-shifted
SHOULD YOU
free spirit
free ranging
you juggled jiggled yourself
into a special space
eye of the needle
and yes
there untold riches
should you
break with conformity
shatter
convention
and yet
squeeze through
UNSHACKLED
unshackled
but no
free
spirit
did poetry ever
dribble off
more leathery
tongue?
not
as would
honey
but rye whiskey
filtered through
tobacco
and yet despite
all of this
he spoke for us
gave us
his precious, personal
cracked
corrective mirror
DEATH HAIKU (2.2)
smoke: such a bad sign
bodies burn, dead or alive
ash in mountains piles
poems 2 die for