Category Archives: AI art included

CUT AND DRIED

CUT AND DRIED

thing about chess
is it’s

cut
and dried

you take my bishop
I bomb
    your hospital

there may be pawns down there
lying on gurneys
lurking
    in tunnels

one run
    through to
the perimeter
               and beyond

we could be facing
a brace of Queens

vying to sacrifice for
the triumph of their King

victpry
    defeat

        so strategic this battle
to an altogether special
                                  level
of native
       human genius

nothing in this benighted
                                   world

so cut and dried

HOSPITAL

HOSPITAL

went to a bombed out hospital
got projected
onto a screen

saw it there
       shadow of my
brutality

lucky
      for me
                not terminal
fatal

in fact
a most civilized thing
   

PECULIAR

PECULIAR

I am human being
a peculiar species of alien

my value
    as creature, as individual
varies

between tuppence for
basic bagful of
chemical contituents
and millions for
anyone unlawfully
injuring
     or slandering me

and here I am
steeped in the species wisdom
of a few
    thousand years

willing to share
       before you summon
the strength

to
sweep my off
     your doorstep,
                     stick me
in a
hold with cargo
  
on the backseat
of a plane

thanking me for my visit
that I

peculiar as it all
                   now sounds

do
            not return again.

EVERYWHERE

EVERYWHERE

I turn into
a statue

I pop up everywhere.
Timebound, my punctuality
is whenever
you least expect me.

I converse with vipers;
chat to elapids

see me in a debate here
with file snake, puffadder
and cobra

no time for niceties of argument
these guys,
    low on rhetorical nuance
on tactical subtlety

jump right to their conclusion
flying in the face of counter-
premise
     or inconvenient fact

and yet, something in me
herpetological too,
in awe of their
sublime
           beauty

agog
at their wisdom

                         shedding
my skin.

SWAN SONG

SWAN SONG

was singing the multiverse
thinking of travelling under
an alien ocean
in Nemo’s submarine

light years from our home planet
travelling metres deep
twenty thousand leagues
         under that sea

the pressure getting to me
rivets popping

no one
   able to make sense of my
song
        as it rises from alien
depths to cultivated surface

finding the ears
     of beings like me except
they have
     neither space, nor time

for outlandish things

DE IRA DEI

DE IRA DEI

there is much anger
in the weather

much outright hostility that
the sky wishes
to vent

but not
the sky alone

for the sea is rising
flailing away with new found
muscularity

and the power beneath
of the molten hot core
of the Earth itself
can melt human
steel in microseconds
completely evaporate

beginning to stir, as we
catch its displeasure with
every quickening
seismic
notice that
there will be
extreme steps

ANTS

ANTS

enough of your antics
you
so-called politicians
most partisan of people

let the ants decide
the future of our planet

so many many
more of them
and one
creature
one vote
is that not what
democracy is supposed
to be
all about

the thing elites fear, historically
from Plato to
Nero and Caligula
and every
evil regime of brothers

no ants they got a matriarchy
and I’m sure their Queen
will be cool
with whatever saves
the day
averts the death of
our shared
blue
planet
(Janet)

before it goes like Venus
goes like Mars
atmosphere like
black lagoon
or none at all
full rocky horror

so no more fiddling
identity cards, restricted polls
delimitation, boundaries,
every
outright illegal attempt
to gerrymander the system

give the ants the vote
give it to
every creature

can’t
do worse than we
have done

no time for legal
linguistic quibbles

time we
turned partisan
into
“partisant”

(show this world, this Universe
what this species

is all about
narcissistically thought
to be
a Divine image)