1, poem, poetry, – Page 64

FLESH OF THE FAITH

some buffoon
they call and
who calls
himself
a philosopher
slipping between
jokes
and profundity
fires away

name of the game
dance
    of truth, not
so easy to work out
the steps
   world and self what
they want to say
for themselves
despite themselves
so damn intricate
so hard to
    pin down when
in this labyrinth every
level brings
fresh layer
of deception

and why
must he always
touch
his nose?

is that some
kind of tic, sign of
secret brotherhood or
silent spiritual homage
to H and L and
M his
forebears and yes,
masters

meanwhile I am continuing
this badly scripted
life story
my tale of desire
full of
twists and turns but
no story to speak
of itself

an iron wall
dystopian stuff with
digital chip on
the shoulder, chip
in the brain patriarchal
body guards
stretching between my
heart and its object
wherever that
object, whenever it
should
come into being

that the motor, engine of
everything should
be loss
and distance, incompleteness
and sadness

great for Slovenian
thinker, South African poet,
though
    getting it down in all
its harrowing
complexity
      could be an industry
might
not
    keep your warm at night
(flesh
    of the faith to
deeply
    hold on to) may
not even pay the rent at all

TO SEED

BULLET PITCH

INSTEAD

was looking
for the bucket

but the bucket
was over
my head

needed to spell
the word
ignoramus

but
being a sort
of poetry
thingy

spelt
an entire thesaurus
instead

ROOM

stet
Heraclitus you are wrong
this man
cannot step
into that bed
river mibd a river

back up a bit
let’s forget media res
simply
start at
the beginning

virtual particles abounding
no hope of
even one
actually actualizing

promise of this moment
never to be realized
come and gone

so many wave fronts
from bed to couch and
back again
washing over me

you
by now
sleeping serenely
me maybe
astral travelling
as far as I can tell

room to
expand, manoeuvre

room
for doubt

here we
make love, don’t
make love

roll two lovely snake eyes
so you may guess
which
forked path

possibilities, probablities,
green light
for go, red
for full stop

in this little ecosystem, tiny
echochamber things
horribly resonant

yes
roll those bones
roll
with
the flow

tick the will
they won’t they
take what’s
in the box

you know
whose doomed cat
is waiting
in that box

the whole nature of
connection, entanglement

now
premised on our moment

and what other, kinder worlds
have decided for themselves
have themselves
found out

let them
film the morning after
still through a lens
of blessed
enchantment

Pan panning with magical
camera across
the mystical space
that will
always
be
her bedroom

for the record (record of
flautist playing
the firsf
time I ever saw
her face)

nothing
to see here

CONVERGED

all points converging
here
to be converted

or maybe
being in the South
everything
is separating
and

I’m just
looking upside down

doing the TS tarot
hanged man thing

worm
looking up at me
must think me
a skygod down
for day
of revelation

need to do the eeh-aah Doppler
taste
test to

get our highest quality
low down

meanwhile the world
is locked in court case

jury
back inside for this

SEVER

cathedrals soar
mines delve

need t
satisfy our quota
of earthly stockpile
celestial metal

water air earth fire
what soon will
be your soul’s sword
forging
in the flames

when the blade gleams
in arc of
night combat

stars will be caught
their eternal beams severed

MAGIC MIRROR

magic mirror
on the wall

is not
this mirror
at all
at all

in this mirror curse
of Other is more subtle
than ranting
Malificent or

Dorian Gray
beautiful tainted (rapturously
so)

Oh this is
life’s work

work here slow,
brush
stroke after
brush stroke

every revisit a sense of
shift
of movement of
time’s accumulation

time
having
such a good eye, such
a fine touch

pixel after pixel
we move from promise,
to potential
   to sharp revelation
(the shadow
   that was ever could
not now
    be more clear)

something
in those final
subtle touches

translation into speech
that tells the whole story

something flesh not
marble
bone not bronze
soon to here appear

SWEET

ordinarily
poem is sweet

but here
there are
dark places
and terrible spaces

and so
tread lightly
as you
consider yourself warned

and what
is “sweet” anyway
how to
best define it

as I am drawn to you
as bee
to pollen, wasp
to honey

such a sight you
are beautifully polarized

nothing looked
ever better
to these compound eyes

SHARK

thought
it was a
shark

but it
was a devil’s thorn
easy
mistake
to make

this desert once
an ocean
a million
years back

wonder though
with a
shark’s ferocity
(almost as
fierce as your Zulu,
Mongol or Viking)

why there is
no such thing
as a “devil shark”
their names:
Tiger and
Great White and Nurse
and Zambezi

far too
kind and respectful if
you were to ask me