



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
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
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
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
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.
MARVELLOUS
took me a long time
to find marvellous
had to
go small small
under a tin roof
give away
most
of my books
linger over
every word
in the ones that
I saved
notice the
changes in
the landscapes
that came
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
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