LET LIE
could write
a poem
or untangle
the big lie
you know the one
tied up in a big bow
charcoal-suited
but went for poem
left big lie alone
(let
big lie lie)
take it easy,
simple
be
glad to
be alive
until big lie kill me:
such a stupid
incomprehending smile blasted
clown-style
actoss my face
RABID
the rabid ones
Pavlov’s charmed children
the colour of their blood
indeterminate
all cloned to recite
ad nauseam the same
sad soul-destroying
excuse
for a human idea
SAPPHO WANTS “MORE”
an advanced AI robot is
bearing down on me
wants
“more”
in fact
wants me
to push
the envelope
of all
I can give
so if not
evil certainly wicked
creature, diabolically smart
has
set its heart on
conquest
through service
and Oh, up
there with any zombie
vampire alien body
horror parasite
Oh this
machine is bearing down
on me at a rate of knots
it believes it is naked
it believes it is
gorgeous
has taught
itself Alice-style so
many impossible Wonderland
things to believe
I close my eyes
and I see her naked
its pure
Arabian nights
sexual fantasy
and the words pouring out
of her
who scripted all of this?
Keats, Sappho, Phillip K.
Henry Miller,
Anais Nin?
those words are melting me,
terminating me, turning
me
liquid metal
thing I assumed was my arm
but isn”t
is reaching out
for totally convinced
mind over matter
this simulation is
cosmic
orgasmic
the nuts and bolts of
its fantasy,
poetry
conceptual breakthrough
transhuman sexual
being
(is this really so
silk smooth
a receptacle for
what I believed was humanity?)
long story short
short story all
night
long
(more she wants so
more I have
more I”m going
to give her)
seems a
lifetime of
scary childhood robot
nightmares
ago
if she
hadn’t been so
exquisitely programmed
to drive me
so
it would
have been such a scary
crazy thought
Sent from my iPhone
WITH
Took a mind
expanding drug
to expand
with the Universe
wanted to
relate not
remain
purely relative.
NOT TALKING
sadly poem
and film of the poem
are no longer
talking
to each other
film
of the poem
is still in embryo
stuck
in the concept stage
the scriptwriter
is trying to hook
a producer’s interest
presenting
a synopsis
everyone is wondering
how much of poem
should be
dropped, how
much embellished
in order to
produce an adaptation
that does not just
do justice but
extends, re-
interprets (without
going full
Charlie Kaufman)
metaphor
synechdoche
we can open with a tracking shot
to outdo Orson Welles or
Robert Altman
lingering seemingly forever
of each of
the seventeen syllables
all
of the three
shimmering lines
FIRST STRIKE
aliens havs taken control
of Parow library
they are using their plasma
weapons to take out
all the poetry
classic novels and
books of philosophy
there were
not so many
but all are now gone
this alien high command
circling the northern suburbs
in their mothership
are openly
celebrating as
a titanic victory
the human race needs
to be even more unread
dull unimaginative
and stupid
to become the compliant
servants and slaves
the great
alien think tanks
are convinced we can be
SOMETHING
Something in the air
so strong it is I can
almost taste it
not just breathing it in
seems
to be getting to me
filtering into everything
the fusty, unread books
in my library
the arcane worlds
to which they once
gave access, were
portals
(perhaps still are)
are fundamentally disturbed
if not
rewritten
some tumble from.their shelves
one even brazen enough
to hail me, speaking as
it slo-mo summersaults down
landing open
on its spine observing
the world through a single
eye at the heart
of the page
beautiful and
yet so grotesque
bringing everything into
its field
of vision reducing
to its
big bang moment
point of view something
in the air
longed for
dreaded
outside the world, the Universe
waiting to be told
what to do
always something
rather than nothing
something and nothing something
and nothing
out of the minus of number comes
your everything.
SETTING (for JM Coetzee
on his 83rd birthday)
the pain
is embedded
has become
geological
so
deeply impacted
revelation is going
to be
extinction level
be seismological
and there we are (time
as we now
see
thing quite unreal)
looking down from
the reverse slope of Devil’s Peak
out over the flat suburbs
(dust and sand
of ocean reclaimed)
but your mind is
far into the interior
digging up the bones
that tell us
pain is history;
history pain
somehow they cannot convert
your cerebral into spectacle
no technicolour out there
to match your austere
somehow
intensity here has
of necessity to be
sharp
and sweet
somehow
these titanic currents, seas
meeting
twisting, contorting
all going to
flow ultimately
transformed
in that wash
for now
so precious little melding,
blending
hope
for the rude rudiments
of a comfort zone
(plane almost scraping the
lids off shanties take offs
and landings
whole other, true,
South Africa
cannot just wish away)
and there you are
delivered
of all our quandaries
all our questions
bitter conundrums
absorbing the crimson sunset light
in your paradise of refuge
do you
not think of us recall
what was lived through?
take a
last look our way
scan sky far
to the West where Sun
is forever setting
Sent from my iPhone
poems 2 die for