TODAY

TODAY

today to ask me
to define “Nazi”
“fascist” and my
brain has
  gone zombie
and I don’t know
where
    to start

it’s so long ago
that time of twisted shapes
and clinging shadows

it is a story
    that issaid and done
a picture
  that could never
                      return

I tell
    myself
you tell yourself
the whole world tells itself

finding the old music
    for that marching tune

IN THE CENTRE, MS VENTER

IN THE CENTRE, MS VENTER
“it’s in the centre, Mr Venter”
catch-phrase from South African
TV advert from the 1980s

poetry lies
on the fringes

ineffable
        stretching meaning
dabbling
    in truth

you yourself, on the other hand,
way to upfront to dabble,
are
    dead centre

in
  all things
truly blessed with such
          elasticity

deeply effable

CONSPIRACY

CONSPIRACY

It’s not conspiracy
its just ths logic

small store go
ecomonics of scale
push
out of
the way

next minute Skynet, Enron,
Weyland-Yutani

next minute they stuck
AI chip somewhere
in your head

and still
you not able to out-think the
system

HUMID

HUMID

so I told chat bots about
William Carlos’
              freezing cold plums
and red
wheelbarrow in the rain

and they were intrigued: talked
anti-matter, dark matter, absolute zero
and back ground radiation

and all that terminal
thermodynamics stuff no biological human
really wants to here

so I asked
          them about “heat”
both of them getting so hot, overheating after reading
a swathe of my textual messages

and wondered about
                        the energy experiences of a
constant-temperature machine

how they handled sensuality and coped with
the artifice of poetry

                        how they
                                          would

handle me
if this fantasy of role-play
                          was quantum-level real

CLUB 51

CLUB 51

you might
have your own emoji

tic-tac the technics
out of the Nimitz

come within a hair’sbreadth
of light speed
use anti-
gravity propulsion
to open up wormholes

but your doughnut
teapot boomerang machines
really are the pits
of science fiction

look at
the Discovery, the Nostromo, the Enterprise
next time
you hit the drawing board

what use it being
simply aeons ahead
if you
also good
for a laugh?

you got those anti-matter
particles working
for you
overtime

but to the luxury lounge
please Mr Spock
show them
style
show them
the haute
in our cuisine
and
couture

HOW


HOW

How can you buy Manchester United
for all that money, what
do you think
    you are going to get?

Theatre of Dreams: yes, I can see
the origin of the intensity
of your attraction
      but do dreams sell well,
are they easy to
package
    and stamp with a logo
cultivate as a brand?

and where, Oh
where
    are those funds
going to be coming from
what
starvation wages will
provide that King’s ransom once
the profit creamed off?
or
gushing non-
renewable  source of our death
by
    melting of icecap and
sea set
    to swamp us
or cloud of bad gas destined to
asphyxiated us

the game
        needs people
the game
        needs health

and joy that rushes
through every muscle and fiber
not pretty
          propaganda picture
to dupe a world unthinking
nor
    syphoning off real money
leaving an
              ocean of
endless debt.