poem poetry allegory satire power

DOUBLE-SPEAKERS

double-speakers
demon-reapers
seem to be trying
to reverse
polarities, change
the direction of the
Earth’s spin
(counter-clockwise just
not doing it
for them)

Oh, how their lies
have grown and prospered
high towers of
Empire brick and
mortared from
so much
crushed bone

and always
same tune, old words,
old laws
and prohibitions
jazzed, re-
fashioned to fit
the glitz of
an age

double-speakers
forked-brain thinkers
trouble-
breeders
in the extreme

you
will be
the death of us

our death
our human
mutilation

as you
have been,

throughout history
from
word first
recorded

so many
millions and now
perhaps billions

lives of suffering
to attest to this

CLOTHES

in the field of forever contention
tunes battle away

they waltz around you
whilst and even as
you fail to
consider

how naked you are, and
naked not only
but how

transparent
such they, as in the fable,
they instantly infer
that you are Emperor

drunk on the fiction
of power and grandeur

not to
mention the illusion
of flesh and blood and,
of course, clothes

DOOR

DOOR

there
is a gate
between
us

one of us
cannot, dare
not enter

the other
has the power

there is a
gate
between us

exactly as, and
totally different from,
how it looks

gate eternal, gate temporary
provisionsal
and stop-gap barrier

contrary to what
you have told eveybody,
have told me

there is a gate between
us
nothing
like a door

WON

WON

leaves us
for dead

the speed
at which
you think

jumping from
premise to conclusion
faster than
agitated light

from idea
to idea by
sublime association

faster than the feed
in a multi-
barrel machine-gun

thus do we see
logic quickly conquered,
every argument won

SUREFIRE

Ah, yes,
social Darwinism
be your inclination
pitbull terriers —
they
are your thing;

but would you pit, against
a tank, this,
or some other poem

without ceramic armour,
without armour-piercing
depleted uranium shell?

For all
poem got going for it
is knowledge of shadow, and
pulse of humanity

and that is
sure-fire defeat, on
hiding to nothing,
as a Nobel Laureate does suggest
himself suggest

Oh, if only tanks could be
stopped in their tracks
by bloke
with shopping bang

barrels get so stuffed with
gorgeous flowers things
might
misfire; shells
and bullets simply melt

in the face of all
         that sweetness and light
(and
     metaphor, let
us not forget)
the antennae
   of the species
       wrote on paper, in clay,
on the digital universe

who dare order?
what dare fire?

but then, who has ever
really talked to the mind of a tank?

DEMON

I’m a
shit poet

with a name
that sounds
like “demon”

so go ahead
demonize me
Frankenstein monster me
Salem witch trial me
send
me to Guantanamo
have me up
before
the House Committee

in an ideal world you house
will have long gone and
you
and your House Committee

will no longer seem vital
for the protection of
power and
reputation

will be a footnote
to a footnote

to
this poem
(we demons know
best revenge and shit

poet or not

how to
take care
of our horrible little selves)

BOTTLE

genie was in the bottle
bottle was on a plinth
plinth was right
in the centre
of the gallery
and they
were so
fucking glib

they pranced they danced
they pontificated
sprayed glitter, ribbon too

but that genie
swirled in its prison
like poison
nitro-glycerine,
rocket fuel

and I wondered
alone sensing all
that diabolical anger, power
if
some crazed fool
might release it, break
it free what it might effect
what
outrageously do

and so
we talked and drank
the genie and I
as we left the gallery
empty save
for bottle on plinth
and
its all-
new contents
stoppered, dissolved, placid
under that titanic
other-
worldly pressure

best place for them
to forever be