DOLLDRUM
we have drifted
we have drifted
an accursed mariner
at the till
we have drifted
into a patch of dead sea
our island settling
somewhere
between Shakespeare’s
garden and Eliot’s Wasteland
as droll and dyspeptic
a dolldrum as
ever can be
zombified
from head to toe
the specter that shadows
our humanity
GLOW
walked into the Cafe
fish in the tank
had an unearthly glow
no one else seemed
any the wiser
seems it is
the privilege of being born
twelfth sign
to read this text
devise the code
and see with eyes
pure Old Testament
but as we
enter this establishment
scan, reconnoitre,
see this bunch of executive media
types crunched around a table
talking District 9
or possibility of TV follow up
with talent competition and
fun rides
I could pitch them my talent show
all of them
contestants, nobody survives
and the fish trying to sell me something could it
be a (fish)fingerprint of the gods tale of
Antarctica hiding
Atlantis
love these lost cities when feel lost
in the city, lost in my own mind
should write an alternate history in which
my ex-wife led a revolution sending me
and my kind South
to Antarctica
where
there are alien space bases, lunatic
fringe has it
me and
my kind I do not have a “kind”
milk of
human kindness milk of my galaxy
spiral nebula in my coffee could be Andromeda
hurtling towards us
take billions of years to get here,
Greek mythology certified, sweet extinction on its way
I know
you know
I glow
you glow
twin slit experiment you wave me away
DROOLING
the gargoyles are drooling
at the prospect
of their emancipation
entombed in stone
now they are
to be resurrected,
thrown upon the world
monstrously released
for the demons they were
meant to
protect us all,
the simple faithful
are amongst us, 24/7
and in the current electronic
maelstrom we swirl in
impossible to tell
what
is limbo
what is
Hell
sane to
have given up
on bliss
and joy
and glimpse of Heaven
BUNTING
bunting
misses symbolism
it paints it
national colours
and toothless voice
though it slurps
its consonants
whistles its vowels
swears shouts
roars curses loudest
CAREFUL
be careful
what you
do with
how you read
how you treat
this poem
avoid all risk of
contamination
shield
with tin foil
or with
concrete shell
containing
a lead-
lined box
the energy at the heart
of this poem
simply following
Einstein’s
equation
could split your
every atom
radiate
the Hell out of
you
INTEGRITY
you are a voice
you proclaim it
to be so
standing before an
empty canvas
staring
into space
I read the guide
it tells me
the title of
this piece
is, if I read
it right, “Whatever”
I would like to smirk
but fear aesthetes
might stone me
missed that semester course
on dead surrealism
was spending
much of that time
feeling and
looking vacant
imagining a world where
there was no Spanish Civil War
ergo
no International Brigade
no Picasso Guernica
maybe the Universe sometimes
takes poetic license
could it be
that we are all long-passed
and this is all a De Chirico,
Dali-esque forever recycled
state
of dreaming?
who knows how to
find the truth, get
to the bottom
of this matter
what is it with truth
anyway?
always looks
feels so suspect
as is the case with all these
either-or binaries
damned if you do
damned if you don’t
see you added your own little
postscript to that non-painting
destroying
its artistic integrity
Sent from my iPhone
CONSTELLATION
assuming the feral position
in the loadshed dark
on my bed
with a dying cat
my
beautiful dying cat
I cannot wait for two
weeks to pass and I hit
what just has to be
my final birthday
don’t give me
rebirth
I would be
kicking and screaming against
the very thought
of consciousness
possibility
of coming back
not to be u grateful
not to disrespect life, that
sacred most
magical
of things
but thanks but
no thanks
leave me be for that trillion years
until the Universe is a dead weight
of iron and
burnt out coal
and the last civilizations who had
their faith who had their dream
are
long long gone
maybe
like us they had their astrology
astronomy cosmology
their genius mettle.
born under
the constellation
which loosely
translates as the dying cat
TELEGRAM
I got the telegram
from Bergman’s gloomy
chess player
before I could
chisel any kind of epitaph
even a self-effacing joke one
the chisel was blunt anyway
and I have no skill
in this matter
and my Latin
and French are so weak
no hope there of going out
with an epigram
strident
or mellifluous
no, I guess
they need to find
a better home for
such fine
unmarked stone.
BRIEFING
I gave a briefing
to the creatures
from Wonderland
lest they wrongly
assume our
Alice-rational world
be opposite
in the extreme
for disappearing cats
and talking caterpillars
might here
be a real rarity
we do have
skies full of zinging
tic tacs
bouncing around
at Mach Twenty-three
yes things interdimensional
or extraterrestrial
craft manned and drone
with who
knows what superior
artificial intelligence and
advanced personnel
technologies which
make us look
like we barely out
of the Stone Age
I wonder what
fantastic, Wonderlands rich
in characters
these brilliant beings
and their magical technologies
are not
able to create to
amuse their
ancient selves.
OPAL
her soul
be an opal
every shift and
change does she
then scry
Oh this landscape changes
as crazily but not quite with
the speed
of kaleidoscope patterns
every
mirror playing its part
in this mandala
of a mosaic
And I watch through smoky glass
or crystal
to save my eyes from the
ferocity of eclipse
things so clear once, but
now we guess that clarity
came at the price of
intransigence, the need
for that which
could not
survive exposure
to be parked, obscured,
in some
instances simply hidden
once we
gave ourselves the licence
to call out such practice, challenge
those assumption,
mock and ridicule and
turn the overwrought symbolism
into brute carnival
once we loved
that licence, rebelled in it
but
as she says
as she says
we are not
allowed to read the world this way, see
what we did see
the fiction is
steeped in the so-called
refinement of all Technicolor
poems 2 die for