JUNGLE GYM

JUNGLE GYM

I ate my jungle oats
you are your jungle oats
you ate my jungle oats
I ate your jungle oats

we ate our own and
each other’s jungle oats

not at the watering hole
but in bed together

you telling me that aliens
came to this planet Janet
tens of thousands of
years ago
    as is recorded on
scroll and parchment
to build the pyramids
and screw
      our woman

the former with sonic resonance
and photon matter creation
technology

           maybe, safe to say,
pretty much
the latter too

and you trying to tell
me that
    Noah’s Ark was actually
a saucer-shaped vehicle
(like alien craft on the cover
of an
Amazing Stories 50s Sci-Fi
magazine)

nothing more lewd or leering
than one of those aliens
desperate for
    the feeling of humanoid
tits and shit

and me making all sorts
of irreverent and disgusting
sexual puns
        during the entirety of
her discourse

obviously not the kind of
civilized fore and interplay
that would lead
      with neat evolutionary
procreative logic

to our own little
trans-linguistic
         conjugation

and most
intimate and
         nearest thing

to
cosmic encounter of
way more
   than three-dimensional kind

EQUATION

EQUATION

energy
is mass

and space
and time
are
money

me
I wasted my
time
studying
philosophy
writing poetry

so can tell
your what’s-the-
matter
    moment is
pure
   postmodern
spiritual existential

ennui of life in a
post material age

nobody
     offers a phosopher
a penny for
his
    a shilling for
her thoughts

or to speak
the value or meaning
of anything these
days

just nowhere
     for the human
mind to expand

and all
     that wasted
storage               space

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

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