1, poem, poetry, – Page 12

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

PARTY

mad hatter dude
is throwing a party
crimson locks
under scarlet hat
being
less than mag-
unanimous in
every
discussion
(all of them
shading into
existential struggle)

things
getting bad since
not a shred
of Alice
Virgo acumen
at the table as yet

lumps of uranium
lumps of
lead

the tea in the pot
hitting a
level of sweetness
already heading
beyond dangerous

things
transforming across
this fantasy landscape
(your fault
reader, with
your alien chemistry and
catalyst fabulous)

and opium from the East
fresh from funding
colonial wars

there in this Wonderland
everywhere if
you
do know
where to look for it

cool for
quietening infants, deadening
assegaai wounds

heightening the pleasures of
your every
textual addiction

here in
this archetypal monarchy
where
power

parties day
and night, awake
asleep

speaks
in a dialect of allegory
that feels like
quintessence of
dreamworld
and simply sounds so strange

GENERATIONAL TRANSFORMATIONS

when I first
heard you were
in those files

I thought I must
have misheard
your name
being mentioned – –
how the Hell
could it have
turned up
there, Wow! WTF,
I mean
there but for the grace
of God, how
can it be
go figure!

unless
it was just a typo

or a mess up
in the transformational
generative grammar
as it maps
the deep structure into
the surface syntax

garbling everything we
near universally agreed
you (dear emeritus
professor)

felt in your heart
of hearts,
did most radically think and believe

JESTER

I suppose you would argue
from your position
of superiority
that it still counts
as camouflage
yet boots or jacket
forged from this skin
would hardly set the pace
in Milan
or Paris

too much commedia del arte
it would reek of
to flaunt
such “jester leather”

and yet, in our version
of this seminal tale, this
is, indeed the serpent’s livery

which I might hazard
an explanation, which being,
life pre-
lapsarian
bound to be at
this point quite immune
to selection, evolution
and need for decisive tactical
advantage
in the species survival race

yes
at this stage
dressed to jest
as jester
than ambush
as ambush predator

though theology may see
clear ambush here

this
trickster of tricksters
first stand-
up comedian
sidling up, telling a few jokes.
spinning a few yarns
getting
    our first Mother, first
Father,
   convulsed with laughter,
linguisticaly impressed, to
much
   forget themselves

gorge themselves on fruit
whose prohibitedness was
and was to
remain forever, technically safe
and yet for so
many
completely banned,
its consumption unforgivable

worse than eating the fruit
it has always been claimed they did

that giving the knowledge
of good
and evil

this simply giving us
the, revelation of
our own
absurdity
paralleling, mirroring
the cosmos in its sense
that
there is only absurdity
all is absurdity

opening up our species
to the horrors of
comedy
and laughter itself.

HOW THIS STORY ENDS

you beg to be told
how this story ends
and if has devised
characters, roles
for you all

meanwhile much industry
pens glide, scratch
the surface, keys clunk,
go virtouso,
get depressed

the story presenting
difficulties, problems
with plot progression,
creating
space for obligations,
consequences, causes, choices

but you (as
I did promise)
slotted in there
somewhere
at least for a scene,
perhaps a quick death

before which, I swear,
there for you a rich
gamut of experiences

the touch of
lips against your mouth
and there
in that very instant,
rain on your skin

heart
in your chest – – heaving,
beating,

whether or not
the Earth notices, world
cares to read,

or (between you and me)
would like to give a damn

WITH SHARP EARS

why is there no silence?

who duffed when
the instructions coming
down from the top
could not have been
clearer
regarding redacting
everything, turning
everything invisible,
burying, covering up

who allowed Captain
Nemo to become
my childhood hero
without
    lecturing me
on his, origins,
   explaining the true
history of
India
   and the geopolitics of
the time

making the Nautilus aa much
a weapon as a refuge and
vehicle for
scientific investigation?

and me reading the passage
detailing Nemo’s terrible act
of revenge
on the poor passing troopship

not seeing
the obvious

all those drowning desperate
soldiers

sinking to the bottom of
the ocean in
their
red uniforms

for what
other colour could they
conceivably be?

silence down there too
where the
Nautilus speaks
listens with
sharp ears

HONEYMOON

on my honeymoon.
but there
ain’t
no Moon

something to do
with gravitational pull

been
slipping away from us
steadily
and now it’s
gone left us
completely

pointed this
out to my new bride
but she gone
disappeared too

somewhere out there
along the moonless blacked out
strip of Vegas

TO THE CONTRARY

Hell is overcrowded
full of paupers
who never
made the grade

on the other hand, Heaven
is a place offering
great returns on investment
a glorious theme park
with no
end to the rides

the former great lords
of our sad planet
happy
to find themselves
drafted onto the board
joyous to
assist in
the governance

and who
dare
challenge this, gainsay
their credentials?

at
the very last poll
an overwhelming majority
did swear they
deserved this

had
earned all their glory

even if it were
a trifle underpowered
a tad overcooked.

AS THE SUN GOES DOWN

if you not
elite

had better be
fleet
of feet

rhyme faster
than rabbit Marshall Bruce Mathers

as credits roll
and the Sun goes down

DEAD RECKONING

just a flash
a photon of
light

could be a
wave could
be a
particle

my eyes
not exactly twin
slits
so why
should I give a fuck
if every
experiment goes paradox

flicker
in the void
not even

to even be
that would be
blown out
of all proportion

and no night
spent with you to
posit
as my salvation

unless my sense
of true dead reckoning
is thing
absolutely wrong
or only valid
between the hours
on weekdays
nine to
five
or when the temperature sticks
at absolute zero

and truth be told
much red wine in my system
I however it is
construed, whatever
angle
is taken

I have been waiting all along
in my most
chaotic of configurations
perhaps when
you do
hourglass it

from the light this candle
beginning of time
should
time have a beginning
if it
make any sense at all