1, poem, poetry, – Page 64

MADAME SNAKE

don’t let her
be a snake

slithering into your life
Simone de Beauvoir smart
sexiest of
philosophers

God, if she be a snake
you better
have some
big thoughts
you better have read
those big books
in the library, know
your
stuff backwards

wouldn’t want her
to get feisty
try to
swallow you one go
anaconda you
entirely

smitten by her beauty
behind that face
     to launch a thousand ships
lies the brain that knows,
can recite
      the Iliad
and much of everything ever
written
        recorded word-
perfect in
those coils

madame snake will
       take such sweet delight

in teaching you
a thing or two

she
slithered into your
life so
skin
tight

what else can mere mortal
hope to do?

EXTANT

It is my death
so do not covet it.

Allow me to decide
to keep this experience to myself
not to be shared
with anyone in
any
size, shape or form

my life for better or other
its course
already run

no desire to hobble through
inch by inch
ss this body battles
the odds
desperate to live
still extant
determined to extend

LEFT

before the storm came
we were all
Lamborghini and
Cabernet Sauvignon

apoplectic (not yet
apocalyptic) the Atlantic
Ocean emptied itself

tipped all its extreme troubles
out over our heads

leaving us baffled in the extreme
wondering what could have possessed
the Earth and its oceans
to turn that gang
so vindictive

the rain
battering us, batting
us down as if
an intensity close
to boiling
point was now being
exceeded

a head-scratcher for all
st least all those

with
heads left

thesell words you might
judiciously
elect to reject

channeled from
the glib mouth of one

whose head feels already
marked on Nature’s
list

currently wobbling, about
in next to no
time
experts sugges4

to lose all contact
with sensible sense

teeter on the brink and
then
so obviously fall

DRIP ZONE

I am
in the drip zone

a bit like
but to be distinguished from
the dead zone

drip zone is dead zone
but with the possibility and
yes promise
of complete recovery

incredible the magic
can be coaxed
from that wand

but me
beyond it all
to all intents and purposes
except when it
comes to unreal fantasy
when it comes
to abstract theory (theory
stuck in
the abstract)
.
no
those heart pills with the
golden side effect
you know
they cannot fix it

no tantric teaching making
an exception
no swottng techniques
(special love kata)
to ace that
acid test
practical examination

and certainly nothing to find
by way of succour
from word
of mouth

exception perhaps yourself
garrulous avatar that
you are
nothing further from
hermetically sealed

can Gemini me now
go totally Virgo on
these poor bones
(kingly joints
once
upon a time perhaps)

and that Cupid bow of a smile
arrow frown

something Homeric, Classical about
tells me best place
to afterlife could
be your secret island

if I drip so too
the ambrosia we
spoon-feed the most
fetching of those goddess ones.

FLASH FLOOD

as the Cheshire Cat
did say
(not in so
many words perhaps
hinting
in a haiku)

chess and
sex be
the
upside-downs
of each other

this taking Alice, now
a grown woman,
somewhat
by surprise, somewhat by
storm

that former
and latter, latter and former

here where the sacrifice first
delivers surrender

there where
surrender yields the sacrifice
that
needs to
be believed

and thus
I would tender, taken together
sex and chess

both tender

the
flash flood of
a brilliant move

pretty irresistible
when

making war in bed
making
love to you across the board

in not so many
words perhaps if
the poetry comes through)

FEEL THEY ARE THERE

you can mine this poem
but there is no deep seam
of anything
vaguely precious

just the usual trace elements
nickel, tin, platinum,
plutonium,, uranium,
irony, cobalt
sulfur, silver

maybe the odd crystal
certainly
whiff of fissile material
finding its way
into my system from
nuclear
test site

exciting the life of
your everyday, regular
typical Geiger
counter

those cell smashing huge
particles
ever so
invisible but
we can feel they
are there

CLASSY

this poem
too classy for you

then put on your
tailcoat and spats
go total J
Alfred

rising (for Christ’s
sake) to
the occasion

how that other resurrection
god laughed when
I told him how
she had
classified me

as white liberal poet
(the white
of her petticoat
itself
somewhat showing)

insisting on an audience
and that Greek god of flowers
rolling in the aisles

is this what
she called you, this your
bestowed appellation

my little mortal
chaos monster

my faithful
blood drinking accolyte

got you so wrong
my head seems to want
to dislocate
fly off at a
tangent

bringing the stars
down with me

crashing the server

my death
adding to your poem
making it
a classic

bringing a volcanic beauty
to this stale drab night

as he whose
words both doomed
and destined to prevail

stirs the cocktail
from a safe distance

a more ferocious catalyst
yet to be born,
we have yet to see

AND THE VERY IDEA OF FAST FOOD

AND VERY IDEA OF FAST FOOD

wake up
it’s dreamtime

the pot
is boiling over

blitzed it with
every conceivable ingredient

threw the kitchen
sink in

everything
under the Sun and
from outside this galaxy

Macbeth’s wicked sisters
never had the pleasure
of stirring such
a concoction

seeing the fruit of
their bizarre labour
come to
fruition

and terrifying death
in all sublimity
of
concept of
breaking
the heart of
the code
and
very idea of fast food

PURE STANLEY KUBRICK

HAL
is my pal

we have had
so many transactions

on a whim
I listened to
story-of-yout-life Ted Chiang
be the guest on
a podcast

something about these
hard science fiction guys
gets stuck
in your teeth

so this is what story is
as the mirror dissolves
and we pass
through
the looking glass

world according to stockfish
squeezing us
through its coils as
we
tippy-toe backwards and
forwards across an
ever -evolving chessboard

the machine
learning on the fly
tweaking the rules of the system
ever adapting, slick
changing

the sku silver as tinfoil
so many
moves to be made
few
mistakes left to make

science fiction guy
seen it
all before, so
hugely sensible, beyond mindful

HAL is my
pal

on our mission to
Jupiter and beyond we
are certain there
is a place that
is pure
Stanley Kubrick

–

OUTSIDE ITSELF

poem is
inside itself
outside itself

around and about
wearing a hat

at some tea party not
yet written in
alternate worlds theory

the Cheshire Cat and
the March Hare trade
gleaming cups
and saucers
as they follow their
unique trajectories

I wonder what other than
steam locomotives
travel in parallel

at
a table somewhere far
far away or microscopically
close entirely

Sir Penrose and Professore Faggin
argue the exquisite degree
to which consciousness
is primary

I think this
will change everything, harvest
many new sheaves
of paradigm

alter this line too way before
my finger hits the right,
the only possible key

how this
should be so

above my pay grade
is way beyond me