TALL

TALL

You have to love
irony

there you are laughing
at your crazy distorted image
in the crazy distorting mirror

until someone informs you
there isn’t nothing
crazy distorting
about
that mirror
at all

or you laughing out loud
about the tiny-mindedness
of Swift’s Lilliputians
when from
Jonathan’s perspective
it is
the entire human race
that is
(stretched to
full height)
but six
seven inches tall.

FOOTNOTE

FOOTNOTE

What is
a politician good for?

was baffled by this,
but now
am entirely
flabbergasted

it’s the kind of question
after too many drinks
stuffing down a cheap
curry or
fish and chips

funny question to ask
and we have no better answer
than that given by
the Ancient Greeks

shocked at the disjunction
between political deeds,
political speech,
political ambition

and any
kind of philosophy.

THINGS

THINGS

Things crumbling
imperceptibly changing
and not for the better
all about energy and
closed and
open systems

but bear with me
there is dynamic, much afoot
some strange principle here
amongst all these
swirling particles

and yet
they are not particles
They have only the dream of a particle the whim of a field the thought of a spectacle yes bear with me this is going to be my slowest most considered most laborious poem the one that rambles on and on and on doubling back on itself out Wordsworthing Wordsworth

I guess this is the only type of
poetry genuinely left to write

this is my Solaris Mirror Stalker deep
and dark most Tarkowski of poem

oblique, difficult
conceptually
diffuse obtuse suspicious of words that hide what the carry within them

words that are hollow
resonate with the nothing
they bear within

this is me floating Sub-Zero
this is me looking where no one else has looked not knowing what we’ll be found this isn’t me stripped of human company empathising homing in on the suffering of others the pain of others
speaking dreaming the
dark night darkness we all feel the dream that coldly informs us
there will not be
an awakening

in the centre of the labyrinth
where sonething is there for us to
show (not tell) that
consciousness is meaningless consciousness is nothing consciousness is an accident at
the heart
in the nature of things

the broken
fragmented dark energy
anti-matter

frozen violently expansive imploding heart
of things.

RIGHT AS SHE BLOWS

RIGHT AS SHE BLOWS

Human rights
human rights

you have to squint
through a microscope

to get the gist of where
she is coming from
in her text
on human rights

Oh my humongous Suella
Sulla Braverman Braveheart

you will stand by your principles
fight for them lie
for them
kill and almost
die for
them (not
really, but it rhymes)

and rhyme is good
and euphemism too
and repetition
a zillion times

uncovering the frustrated
inner poet in you
(not that you would
ever stoop to elegy
not
the job of
Home Secretary)

to bewail
lost migrant lives.

POST YOUTUBE

POST YOUTUBE

post YouTube
we live in a differenf Universe
where aliens
fly through our atmosphere
like sardines
in the sea

and there is great conspiracy
to create
the ultimate conspiracy
in theory we know
just how diabolical this can be

so just
sit back, relax
watch on two screens so
you can becoms your
own twin-slit experiment
you may not
know her beyond
her avatar but
you do seem
hopelessly entangled

and if those sweet words
professing love eternal
spiritual
sustenance and
emotional protection

sound
too good to.be true
don’t worry
my child, soon
they will tweak your bestie
rework their
AI
and soon you
will be
squabbling so
intimately human

post YouTube you can
TED talk it through

TOP HAT

TOP HAT

I knew I was in trouble
when
at long last

rabbit refused
to jump out of the hat

ten years ago since last we talked
and you there in Puritan country
proposing outrageous
textual adventures
would test my
erotic imagination
to its limit

we lose people
find them lose
them again

and there are exoplanets out there
barren rock, weird jungle

but not a shred of poetry

but if
you find death in a stone
surely there might be
consciousness
even in a stick

stick
stick figure
stick tree roots of
a civilization transformational
generative language

consciousness leaks into
that microbe rich pond
and soon
sky is the limit

soon your saucer
is landing next door

you preaching to me about
humanity needing
to save itself, such
a selfish, self-destructive species

and me so wanting to
go cosmic with you
sublimate all aggression

rabbit
gone billion necessitating
nuclear
me suddenly so clear
about to
square peg hole
it in that
top hat

RETURN

RETURN

come back Isaac
all is forgiven

don’t want no multiverse
no wave collapse
restore
my comfort zone

force and motion, quantum
probability tells
me you must return

reinstate the old classics
that were
so ball-bearing

sex that is
simple mechanics
no
this way
and that

love that cannot be
entanglement

is there in the calculus:
mass meets acceleration
(what better
golden ratio?)

A DARK IRONY

A DARK IRONY

a dark irony appeared
well, more
than one

filtered up through the floorboards
appeared out of nowhere
fell
from Heaven

but whatever its origin
could not wait
to make mischief
amongst us
do its little work

dividing us from each other
ruthless seperating us
as it
always does

sheep from goats
virtue from
sin

but, above all, those
of the species
with a modicum of
smarts
from
those chosen from
up high
blessed by the sanctity
of all-
knowing power

to take up
their true and rightful place

amongst the
blissfully
ignorant

terminally
stupid

arrayed in such
forbidding shape
(never more solid
more coherent ranks)