ODDS ON
bet you
don’t encounter
too many wobbly
xenomorphs
out there
coming here to conquer
and convert you
teach you
the truth
of their
unbalanced philosophy
so many equivalences between
our worlds and cultures
including our deep
religious faith
in four-
lane highways and
reality
TV the black hole of
consumption we
were created to be
GRACE
by grace of
was saying grace straight
forty days
and forty nights
had to survive the flood
by surfing on my plate
could have
said it as
an epigram
spoken it
as haiku
no
saving grace
as every unsavoury creature
made its way to gorge its
greedy seven-
deadly self
turning our feast
into a mockery
as
bone-headed
as it
graceless gets
and raw
a ritual rhapsody
THE GODS OF FOOTBALL
the gods of football
turned against us
they scripted our defeat
up there, in the stars
No. They didn’t.
I checked with them
and they swore that
they hadn’t bothered to watch
were much
more interested in
the Burrow/Mahomes match up
than teams committing suicide
via the failed execution
of a diabolically bad plan
CLOSE
maybe
space is a mirror
no stars out there
but what is in here
and you and I
inside each other
searching like
archeologists
for
ancient
love
shared
stardust
gold forged in a furnace
whose heat so yellow white
blue
hot
we can never get close
WELCOME
welcome to the intergalactic
vessel Aristotle
headed towards
the galaxy Andromeda
the flight time is estimated
at three hundred
million years
we hope you enjoy
the flight
in the event of our
capture by
an alien civilization
please read the manual stored
behind the seat in front of you
detailing the entire
history of exo-, astro- and xenobiology
in science fiction
from HG Wells to
Philip K. Dick
BIDE
In an aiternate
universe
Hamlet
is feigning sanity
biding his
time
no drama
so not a whiff
of suspicion
that
when he takes
his revenge
it will come
from nowhere
more brutal, final,
than
Niccolo Machiavelli
ever did dream.
FF
Fast forward me
ro the edge, to
the end of the Universe
so that
billions of years old
relativistically speaking
I can immediately plunge into
writing my epic
that rewrites the rules,
allowing for
contraction of space
simulraneous reversal of time.
DEAD PERFECT
no one, nothing
has ever moved
across this dead planet
I feel we can safely concludd this
though more scrupulous
scientific analysis
might
say something different
and yet
here I am
in the picture
there is a world out there somewhere
in an expanding universe
dead perfecf match
for this one here
before us
now, of
which we speak
the planet
looking back at us
seeing, not seeing,
perhaps
even conceptualizing
there
being physics in
these rocks a serious mathematics
in the current uncertanties
regarding a history of life
and speculation about
what might well have
been a purple sky
before
something
may well have
absconded
with the atmosphere
STAR BRIGHT
sapphire blue star
at my window
and you with a dish full
of technicolour mushrooms
figured
even with
the blessing of Vega
this is
just too early
in the morning for
over the rainbow
but the magic in those fungi
such that
a tin-
brained man can
solve such
complicated equations
as any red-eyed billion terrabyte
wizard
locking the pod bay
or monolith
on the Moon
Shuffle through selves
as though through cards
Tarot cards
really ancient, origin
God knows where
that reek of dark
and translucent magic
and here
is the Empress, all
Aphrodite
she I was most faithful to
in the face of
steep disregard
her beauty, as you see here,
leaving me floundering
leaving me speechless
reading in the arcanas
the failures of my journey
as I cling to
this mask trying to
keep it secure as
it slides down
my face
the tragi-comic smirk
moulded there
mocking my feeble
attempts and onrushing failure
as I grope in
this swallowing darkness
for some
kind of illumination
some
kind of source perhaps there a
complete reading, a divination,
the wisdom
that I need
if there is wisdom
you always telling me
we can
find the wisdom
(so Empress-like
in everything
you
do).
poems 2 die for