satirical – poems 2 die for

FIELD THEORY

FIELD THEORY

a thermonuclear blast
that’s real loadshedding for you

have to
figure out
lightning, atoms,
electromagnetic field
how they connect
what
is the exact interplay
between the four forces

all this at
a University

built
from twigs
and leaves

so much needing
to be re-
invented

not least
ourselves

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

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.

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.

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

FLAMETHROWER

got job as
gardener

put a flamethrower
and (Zyklon-B
out of stick)
gallons of
agent orange
in my hand

can’t believe what
happened to this garden:
not a single rose
red or white to
fight
hack to death over

what the Hell since
my ancestors invaded
has happened
to this place?

Oh they brought you silk
they brought you cotton
brought you
Asian and African wisdom

brought you Rolling Stones
Kinks Zeppelin
and Beatles
(same river
wound its dark way
past our homes)

and now I must massacre
weeds to save
the bowling green surface
recite Prufrock under
the collapsed
gazebo

once walked the streets
with Swift and Pope from
Ashton to
Rusholme

once
       when the youth stuck a
big fuck you
    through lips and nose
deconstructive style
               meaning anarchy baby

death throes felt
       that we all must
             surely see

fuck you-s through

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

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