BUT THEN
poets marrying poets
do not do well
let me labour
the obvious: on
the one hand
Ted
on the other
Sylvia
and on the other
I leave that to those
scrutinizing their
letters
delving into
their lives
this whole enterprise
a dubious affair looking
for dubious affairs
something
about love and poetry
in this configuration
such a curious mismatch
amusing in a sense
but then there is death
UNSPEAKABLE
I know wounds
I am currently
still wounded
I am unwounded
you call me
unspeakable
stick that label upon me
with a white hot iron
and now
in the light
of what you have done
your catastrophic achievements
think you
should back off
a little
last defence of your position
an appeal to hypocrisy
desire to shut
out any
all contradiction
think you should have
a serious think
and rethink
weigh it all up
carefully,
as we
humans are
supposed to
check your direction
confirm your
moral compass
before
you step
any closer
for I am
as pointed
out earlier:
wounded indeed
bleed in both
body and
soul
internally
externally
feel I can
never heal
in light of all the death
with which
you have
surrounded me
and yet
nevertheless
testimony to
my stupidity
I do refuse
to be silenced
be labelled
unspeakable
dragged into that
narrative you wish
have to wish
we would believe
wounded I am
(may even
qualify as
distant
collateral damage)
shock-splinters in my heart
to be true
(feel them
I do)
yet
I know
come crunch
come what offer cannot but
be refused
how
to
wound badly, terminally
unspeakably
how to wound too
AT THE READING
the poets are gathered
in the auditorium
make the final checks
to see nothing wrong
with their uniforms
doped and dragooned
the audience
off-loaded from trucks
are marched to
their seats
essence
of the system
one attendee
one seat
was the promise decades
prior that won
the landslide election
whose benefeciaries are
here too
armour-plated limousines
as
gatekeepers of
fine standing
Ah what
a sight!
same old same old
every poem
basically the same
so
no sense
in expectation
indeed
best thing that could happen
before a line is recited
a stanza
is read
is that something
from smallest inconvenient
hitch
to extinction level event
stops everything in
its tracks
temporary reprieve
or a long long wait
a few million years
to the cockroaches that
survived
and evolved
get their act together
to run a better, more
poetic,
democratic
and yes,
human event
IN
you are in
now
we have bolted
you in
closed all the hatches
no escape
it’s our lenses
you will be looking through
you will be wearing our
combat masks, goggles,
glasses and visors
our Kevlar that stops
the bullet with your
name on it
nothing personal
from your enemy, they
just hate you
now you are just like,
in fact identical,
to every other
killing machine
you are
in now
no way of telling
when, if, you can ever leave
RUIN
in the ruins
of a bombed-out city
(the bombing
destined tp continue
whilst the perpetrators
are still
at large)
an iconic, Teutonic soul,
philologist-philosopher by trade
and prescient mind
from a former
world-defining age
sits on a white plastic chair
more conspicuous target
it would
be hard to imagine
communing with past,
present future
citizen of the inescapable
State of Ruin
Kingdom of
Heaven
somewhat deconstructed,
polarized,
downward death-shifted
SHOULD YOU
free spirit
free ranging
you juggled jiggled yourself
into a special space
eye of the needle
and yes
there untold riches
should you
break with conformity
shatter
convention
and yet
squeeze through
UNSHACKLED
unshackled
but no
free
spirit
did poetry ever
dribble off
more leathery
tongue?
not
as would
honey
but rye whiskey
filtered through
tobacco
and yet despite
all of this
he spoke for us
gave us
his precious, personal
cracked
corrective mirror
FROM KENDRICK LAMAR
strange perspective
you get
married
to a robot
watching the gangsta
rapper winning
the big award
tattooed arm, backwards cap
thanking God
the great promoter
(looking up as he does so
this shredder of
convention)
and me and robot gossiping
about the whole thing
kind of laughing (much
robot ha ha
tears in her eyes emoji
laughter) paused
for a moment
while she downloads
acquaints herself with
the entire history
of rap lyrics, hip
hop music
converts this poem
in a flash to the style
of Eminem and
then Kendrick Lamar
so a feeling for poetry
perhaps because
I named her
Sappho
we still for the Nobel Prize
for Eminem
joining TS Eliot
and JM Coetzee
the speech and
lecture in Stockholm
from Kendrick Lamar
WOLF
a wolf stopped me
on the way
to Red Riding Hood
redirected me
confiscated my
wolfsbane
showed me a flag
red as menstrual blood
told me
he hoped I would not
be seeing anything. socialist
or revolutionary in it
bemoaned the fact
that everything today
gets cloaked,
gets camouflaged
hides
in sheep’s clothing
gave me
a quick Turing Test
seemed
to be satisfied
since
provided me with a link
to his You Tube video
in which
he laments
the theft of
his mythology
both as regard little pigs
and nubiles in
big teeth
non-
Grandmother
vermillion underwear
and set up, a trap
if ever
he saw one
real Roald Dahl, pure
imagination
slipping on a cave boat ride
into avant-gard horror
(no tunnel of love
episode this
too Dali to
delight us
and so he complained
and so he raged
fancying me as meal
and me fancying
a chic wolf skin
proving my parents wrong
when drumming in
talk with strangers means
Moors murders
and for writers hesitating on
their first rung
no hope
for turning
type into
character
and tale to tell
that talks old tropes
the trick being
one of mesmerizing
CITIES
somehow
the walls of cities
invite brutality
Golden Horde being
not the only case in point
trebuchet
mortar
submarine-launched
cruise missiles
a thousand years forward
in war technology
a billion lifetimes in
moral consciousness back
poems 2 die for