satire – Page 2 – poems 2 die for

BAMBINO

“Vivam!” Ovid,
“Metamorphoses”

so, bambino,
you wish to discover
life’s dark secrets
cannot wait until
you mature enough
to mesh in perfectly
with the official orthodox sanctioned
screwed up version

and so
your childhood has been ruined
by sudden advent of
erotic imagination

in my writerly stupidity me
thinking any
imagination in this
corporate dystopia
got to be good

and that
now your English way
better than ever my
French, or indeed
my surreal Latin

now you
the new Henry Miller
on your
way to next
Shakespeare

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?)

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

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

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

ODDS ON

bet you
don’t encounter
too many wobbly
xenomorphs
out there

coming here to conquer
and convert you
teach you
the truth
of their
unbalanced philosophy

so many equivalences between
our worlds and cultures

including our deep
religious faith
in four-
lane highways and
reality
TV the black hole of

consumption we
were created to be

GRACE

by grace of
was saying grace straight
forty days
and forty nights

had to survive the flood
by surfing on my plate

could have
said it as
an epigram
spoken it
as haiku

no
saving grace
as every unsavoury creature

made its way to gorge its
greedy seven-
deadly self

turning our feast
into a mockery

as
bone-headed
as it
graceless gets
and raw
a ritual rhapsody

THE GODS OF FOOTBALL

the gods of football
turned against us

they scripted our defeat
up there, in the stars

No. They didn’t.
I checked with them
and they swore that
they hadn’t bothered to watch
were much
more interested in
the Burrow/Mahomes match up

than teams committing suicide
via the failed execution
of a diabolically bad plan

MUPPET

as Niner fans go
I’m a real muppet
(must be one
to think we would
get
to the Superbowl,
the fourth quarter
of our
last visit
firmly behind us)

so call me a muppet
— go on, trumpet that truth
(truth of
your perspective
as you
limitedly see it)

leave me in my cuddly
muppet comfort zone
believing my eyes
and the logic
of analysis

so many fans here bandying
it around
at every opportunity:
muppet muppet muppet

were that they
could have such charm,
wit and
be that
cuddlesome
(or meet
a muppet of
power that might
tear
off their heads)