HUGO

HUGO

He wore his
Hugo award around his neck
to show to the world
(all worlds, possible
worlds)
his profound imagination

so much cross-pollination
in this stupendous endeavour

it is perhaps best to imagine
an entire new biosphere
suddenly sprung into existence
genres feeding genres
begetting subgenres

Frankenstein children of a
barrier crossing, boundary
breaking father
at the heart of which that
forever philosophical
distinction
between self and text, self and
world, text
and world, which
might not even
be distinctions at all

and there he is
to be found, by nature, if
not always

hand in hand
with some gorgeous alien
or spectacularly equipped
android woman

or chatting away in the low oxygen
toxic atmosphere cloud space
of some seedy
Los Angeles bar
talking to Philip K Dick clones
and replicant versions
of Bukowski
the poet

each with unsettling flash-backs
and incomplete memory
luckily, in the not yet
wholesome availability of
science fiction style
psychotropics
and psychotics

enough raw rough and ready
brain-killing grain alcohol
to go
(sweet irony of the adverb) splendidly
around.

GREEN

GREEN

the rains

       the rain
       the rain
        the rain

have given
the grass, the trees,
the plants

a lush edge

the green fingers of
the gods responsible
for green

        have grown
greenier

and me
                      on the margins

liminal
as usual

       feeling both oddly alien
and strangely at home

LIVE AND LEARNER

LIVE AND LEARNER

found a book
of dark poetry
under my bed

got me
musing

all that dark stuff
now in my head
verses
    riven
with ravens

maybe that
with metaphor
has something to do
tenor, vehicle
      more explosive
than Lego

(used poem as a Molotov
fuse once
    knocked out a
Tiger tank)

maybe on
second, third,
thousandth and
last thought

if you
have a bed
should look
under
it too.

book could be there
scheming, calling
                    for you

SALVE

SALVE

salve aqua
you are the original solvent

it was raining that day when
I figured death
might indeed not have dominion

empathy
entropy
        thermodynamics
and the drama
of the self

down in the crypt-like stacks
of the University library
rain pouring down
(a natural watershed here
on the backslope of this mountain)
here to
      read
        (daily intellectual
spiritual pilgrimage)
lose my head
  in the clouds

or deep into
the Upanishads,
ancient Hindu scriptures

which talk
            the soul’s talk
talk of
        journey and
perpetual migration

trying to
          wrap my mind around
                                    trying
to wrap around
my young
            mind

the rain falling, gushing down
salve aqua
      every single droplet
its
own entire cosmos

LIKE IT

LIKE IT

I like it when
even
   in full flow
(the joy
of flow)
you catch exactly
how your
mind works
how it all works

have your
self-reflexive
meta moment

finish the poem
with its special twist

and the Universe
(whether it is
              real or
simulation)
smiles and
           welcomes you
to postmodernity.

PERFECT

PERFECT

your sarcasm
perfect

you poem:
who dare call it so
each word
a detour, a question
no matter
how tight
how close to your chest

coming from a place
where stuff gets chiselled
when quibbling of legality
behoves
a perfect storm

but perfect joy is the trope
that I am here
to be in the market for

perfect joy, perfect bliss
things that start not with
pressure fronts
on massive collision course

but simple,
deepish parable
and perhaps a kiss

that fall from grace that be
your righteous sarcasm

can
take a pause moment
to accept incomplete

FOLLOWED

FOLLOWED

followed Jacques Derrida
down a rabbit hole

seriously
name-dropping all the way

saw Slavoj Zizek
and all his twin twizzle
and tweedle brothers

who asked how I could
have been so sure
that down was the direction
I was heading
  when, counter
intuitively, up might
equally
      make perfect sense

and I
might be twin too
Moon cavorting on the lunar surface
doing sibling-style stuff
with young
    Castor and Pollux

and other twin
who penned that tune
I am the Walrus and Richard and
Karen
    in such seemingly
beautiful harmony

Oh you cannot
     put a cat in a box
and have any kind of certainty

you cannot come up with truths
you can always reconnect

the very land we stand on
slipping and sliding
so slippery-slidey

what
     we have before us here
(not referring to the tea party)
so different
    from what I was thinking, what
expected, and
what I almost fancied
I was destined to express

THAT WILLIAM BLAKE CHARACTER

THAT WILLIAM BLAKE CHARACTER

saw that William
Blake character
on social media

disagreed about the war
had a few sharp words

fresh from this exchange
looked him up
found
   not a word on Wikipedia
save a reference to a character
in a Jim Jarmusch film

which seriously flustered me
for I had got this notion
into my head
   about this far from prototypical
radical
      early nineteenth century
English Romantic poet

but seems it is all a myth, a false flag,
huge disinformation

which 
     stands to reason,
for if there were really
a Songs of Innocence and
a Songs of Experience

think how
different the world would be

HEAVEN OF THE UNREAL

HEAVEN OF THE UNREAL

somehow I have ended up
in the Heaven
of the not real

I do
apologize

do mythologie

am unsure at this point
whether I be many
or am alone

every choice
so critical
    slight preferences
of tone and shade
altering how
the Universe should appear

so much nuance at this point
infinite possibilities

and yet so
     austere

feel
     so abject       so incomplete.