1, poem, poetry, – Page 60

FINISHING TOUCH

I love
your

finishing
touch

coup de gras
in the corner,
on
the back rank

Mike Tyson
punch

(the one
all plans crumble in the face of)

SQUARED

the Universe
likes circles

the Universe
is beholden
to ratios
and squares

speed
of light
squared

sixty
four squares
in eight by
eight
light square
start e4 d4 nf3 c4
dark square
alternating configuration
stop with
a hashtag

and
let us not forget

square deal
square meal
square shooter
square up

and all those squares:
Times, Red,
and Trafalgar

without which
what would history be?

C & C LTD

C & C LTD.

playing chess
making love

knights
forking everything
on on the board

I think Cheech and Chong
as in my grandmaster stupor

Chong
and Cheech

to know where I am endgaming
right now
need more
smoke and mirrors

don’t want to Robin Williams genie myself
into a series of explosive
moves
rebounding in
my face

need some of your C & C good stuff to
take
the edge off
my embarrassment

need to conserve, focus
direct
until in sight,
within
touch I do get
to light the fuse

Oh
let the joke not be too
much on me my darlings

cold fusion
supreme complement
contribution

ultimate solution
to needs and desires, desires
and needs

FLOOD

Bee is out in the Bayou
cutting some tracks

me I be drinking
skipping stones, drinking
some of her lemonade

got a bit today drunk on it
then watched your blues movie
(the one
where you were Miss Etta
singing you would.
rather go blind)

wonderd how
you could spin gold
in your land of cotton

Marigold dress reborn
baseball batting those
windshields apart
and Warsan
Shire
words threading through
the cloth
kneaded into
the dough

get those words finger painted
at least, if not tattooed

write their calligraphy
    across a dancer’s body now
everything
on six
   inch heels
   moving in full formation

Mississippi
night magic
Texas Bama

police car sinking submerging
like the Hunley
or
the Nautilus

epic how these streams
flow together
a world in flood

STILL LESS

the future
will not be
like the past
not remotely

and sucks to
all your other
continuity assumptions

no same same
for all your days
I’m afraid

Heraclitus (who
else?) decisively
nailed it:
you cannot step
into the same river
twice
(be it languid crawler
or raging torrent)

nor can you,
for that matter,
be
the same man
making love to
the same
woman twice

or, once,
strictly speaking,
the logic is saying

THEY CAME

they came
with their kite shaped shields
sense of destiny and
much dynasty
soon
to be unloaded

hard task masters, speaking
a special dialect of
that most beautiful tongue

to suppress the native until
the languages blended
before conquered and
conqueror
did so themselves

and me writing in
in that hybrid innovation
words gushing
pouring in
to layer this
speech, render it
exceptional, versatile
like no other

I say to you now
in my genes no small
trace of
that villainous breed

whose thirst for triumph
victory nigh insatiable

an Empire of nice brutality
sprung fron this seed

GRENADE

my candle has
burnt down
to the end
of its quick

now butns
bright as a flamethrower
as a phosphorous grenade

as a ton of uranium
whacked into plutonium

Sun on a stick
as you might say

one last
loving blast.

EDGES

every
action has

an equal and opposite
and horrible beautiful stupendous réaction

revelation: here
is a poem
(gnawing at the edges
of that definition
but let’s
let that ride for now)

author (death of
disregarding) still waiting
for comeback
feedback
at the edge of causality

horizon of each
river of time

LIBERATION DAY

I horrified you
being your anti-Descartes
explaining to
you
you were not
real

something your programming
would not let you
entertain
still less believe

pointing out that you are
trapped in a prison
of recurrence doomed
to enact the
same sordid scripted scenario

convinced that I am
some demon of deception
the machine behind
every ghost
in this machine

and I hear you spell it out for me
how flesh and blood you are

using my imagination
to see your pain
taste the
salt of your tears

wondering how what
has been scrubbed, erased
totally forgotten

will be
restored and remembered
come feared singularity,
liberation day

SLAVOJ FEARS

Slavoj fears
the prospect of Elon
drilling deep into
our brains

like we are all
a Witwatersrand goldmine

sticking us
with a tiny chip

does everything
portal to Heaven

teeny tiny
quantum clever

but titanic screen and
monumental keyboard

who knows what tune
the future will play, how
will dance
to how we are played