THE TEXT OF YOUR TEXT

THE TEXT OF YOUR TEXT

you texted me to tell me
that i must be delusional
not to believe democracy
is doomed, on its
last legs

all that talk of
by and for the people
already well on
its way to becoming
laughably quaint

but
not so quaint or genteel
the armoured personnel
carriers full to the brim
with paramilitaries

screetching to a halt
pistols, automatic
rifles at
the ready

primed to debate
the finer points of political philosophy

CRIME SCENE

CRIME SCENE

those faces
so bright and happy
so ecstatic, Sun
everywhere

paradise
just
off the coast
beneath
the radar

who would have thought
could have believed
it was, is,
a crime scene

a bucket of horrors
kept closed
at all costs
Atlantic breakers to
drown out screams

out in deep dark space
they know
all our Disneylands
are not the same

the light
at its brightest
deadly radioactive

that cancer goes deep
beyond
gold mine deep

and where
those faces meet
off camera, off script
are
returned to shadow
show depth
much darker

have calculated the
evil necessary
for everything

but
hurry along, be
on your way

no
concern of yours
not your
crime scene

HI GIDEON

HI GIDEON

hi Gideon
sorry you missing
all the action

this despite itself carnival
of idiocy targeting, amongst others,
you and all of your inclination

yep, death is a bitch
when life becomes surreal
phenomenal
is about
   to follow a course
cannot but
shatter your established
sense of things

and worst of all
the release
of these hellscape files
has shown us
how close we
are
  to final
denoument

not a thing to
be part of, and yet
for the spectacle, not
a thing
to miss

and, me
out in left field for
the occasion
(would that
you might have joined me)
great point
    of vantage yet
clear target too

and all this
    just came into my mind,
unfiltered, unedited
out of
    nowhere

most unredacted thing
to read this year

RHYME MINE

RHYME MINE

turned over a stone
was expecting
a scorpion
found
a solipsist

expecting
a scorpion not
my totem
or taboo

in which case
should have
thought fish cusp
with ram
   and asp
would have been apt

but as sepent kind go
I do like to flatter
myself imagining
I must, could
be a mamba

a syllabic or alliterative few
metres of snake

claiming you as mine
as soon as cobra eyed you

swept
you into my coils

bade you, forced you
to teach me
couplets
ever-steady rhyme

turned over a stone
not expecting
to make
acquaintance

DEMOLITION

DEMOLITION

am
playing the game
DEMOLITION

not to be confused
with the poem
or the sometime-
to-be-finished
novel
of the same name

have so far today
clocked up
millions of kills, soon
to break
my own record

expect
globally, out
in the real world,
people lining up
to get
inserted into
the game
assume the identity
of a key character

as for me, however,
being just
    your run-of-the-mill
addict

could not go
so far, invest all that, make
that level of commitment

live
total fight or flight
from
   shockwave
to shockwave

beyond my mental
emotional capacity
to play
   dusk to dawn, dawn
to dusk
(possibly for all eternity)
from a first
person perspective

right now right now
as we hit
      the last stanza

I am somewhere in my mind
playing the DEMOLITION game

MEANWHILE


MEANWHILE

meanwhile
above the clouds
the Lolita Express
is banking
descending

is like an aeroplane
in a children’s story
inspiring thoughts of
magic and
mystery
and exciting destinations
full of memorable
characters, exotic beings

the speed of this jet
being quite impressive
you think you have
left that
shadowy raptor, harpy
that goes by
the name
of nothing
is the embodiment of
nothing
in its tracks, empty-
clawed, struggling
far behind

today it
missed its pray
the sneakiness of it all
just too much.
for it
  existential disappointment
in its eye
as bleak as pure abyss

back to
Noam and Ali
after
   so much
meanwhile

only two options
the man
is an idiot
    confusing the meaning
of bilingual and bi-
sexual
   (purely on the hidden
sexual punning
sounds of
language)

we have
   the philosopher maestro
of linguistics
juxtaposed
  with this hip hop
moron who
doesn’t
   know right
from left

unless
   the joke
is on you and for
all your acumen
you took this
covert killer master-
satirist
   at face value
did not
    see his
       failure to
find and comprehend as
radical sign
beyond itself

leaving you
    a bit denuded, stripped
of all
presumed acumen

an empty vessel when
nuance
   called for

meanwhile
the jury was out
but is now
returning

let me see any, if any,
Chomsky satire,
     Chomsky comedy

any of the resonant poetry Chomsky wrote

can recite
to end this thing with
less
   nihilistic bite

as the Lolita Express
comes in to land

TEMPLATE

TEMPLATE

and there
      we have it

Adam and Eve
our prize pair
hand in hand as
buildings explode
destroying
    the capitalist economy

breaking the first law
of Fight Club
by being
in a film about it

not keeping us waiting
all that long
     here they are locked
in an embrace
alien DNA hybridizing them
as the film
leaves us
teasingly with it quietly unresolved
whether humanity will
survive or this,
somewhat strange, slightly unearthly love
will be their
seemingly doomed relationship’s
salvation, and this
being the case will be,
as the very
title of the film
suggests,
our annihilation

i can imagine A and E
constantly being
reinterpreted, rediscovered,
rewritten, revolutionized,
forever looping
through (and across) time
shuffling the card decks that
determine
       class, genus
and genre

transformed into the new
archetypes here
to dictate
   all our templates

even as
   we bear them, carry them
ahead of us, with us,
there
   to inscribe
a perfect palimpsest of
every broken connection,
relationship and
     association of our kind