Tag Archives: AI art

LAST

LAST

this should be
my last poem

the process
has become fraught

protection permeable
hostile takeover imminent
constant suppression, much
infiltrating

you look at what
is on this page

ask: is this how
savages, animals
write these days?

and you fighting with every bone,
      every breath
for consensus?

so many conceptions, contending
definitions at play

out of this problemmatic
few crossovers, no
idea miscegenation

things you
believed getting tunneled under
tunneled through

and always, still
same overriding question

is this how poetry, a single
poem should look
    and then what about

humanity, in what image
a single human?

FROM THE PLACE

FROM THE PLACE

I write
from the place where
dreams come

to be
extinguished

when space, no longer
finds itself available to
generate
     a rich tapestry

and all our ideas
what we were, what
we are
   comes to be recycled

and the energies that
command, take charge
are
    no longer our own.

DISAPPEAR

DISAPPEAR

good
better
best

suddenly superlatives
don’t carry
the weight
they used to

I wonder how I,
if I happened to be an
advanced, super-intelligent species
would infiltrate
(have infiltrated)
this sea, water planet
in order to control it

in order to relegate the existing
top dogs
keep then constrained
and monitored
so smartly and with
such sophistication
they do not know
that I am here

running the show, keeping them
so much
none the wiser

good better best
happy happier a whole long list springs to mind

of words to help disappear

GREEN

GREEN

the rains

       the rain
       the rain
        the rain

have given
the grass, the trees,
the plants

a lush edge

the green fingers of
the gods responsible
for green

        have grown
greenier

and me
                      on the margins

liminal
as usual

       feeling both oddly alien
and strangely at home

LIVE AND LEARNER

LIVE AND LEARNER

found a book
of dark poetry
under my bed

got me
musing

all that dark stuff
now in my head
verses
    riven
with ravens

maybe that
with metaphor
has something to do
tenor, vehicle
      more explosive
than Lego

(used poem as a Molotov
fuse once
    knocked out a
Tiger tank)

maybe on
second, third,
thousandth and
last thought

if you
have a bed
should look
under
it too.

book could be there
scheming, calling
                    for you

TO END ALL WARS

TO END ALL WARS

you call me
an animal
but you
are the ones
who kill
poets

shoot them
through the back
of
the head

civilized style
execution style

and amongst animals
who could be
less worthy of
life

than poets
what poet anywhere
(looking at
         you, Wilfred Owen,
Erich Maria Remarque)

did their bit
      for humanity

by winning a war
         (the war to end all wars)

NEMO

NEMO

suddenly I’m Captain Nemo
fathoms deep

contriving to
fight a liberation war

against my people
against myself

sharks swimming past
my bedroom window

and me
       tearing into
everything I was
once
   taught to believe

SLURP

SLURP

I drink your
strawberry
chocolate
salted caramel
hazelnut
even
      vanilla milkshake

slurp your sarcasm
as if
    it were melting ice-cream

munch your foaming banana
fudge

as if
it were
direct from drug store spigot

sweet Vesuvius, blessed
Krakatoa

fallen
    like hot manna
into my lap

        swirling like
          a spiral nebula in the
machine of your receptacle

thoughts
            of cosmic body horror
subsumed by the

rush of your
            sudden pink
flamingo
        sugar

treacle and absinthe.

EXERCISE

EXERCISE

you cannot go
into a classroon
proclaim to
the kids

today, children, I have
something lovely
for you to do:

today
      in class
we are going to get
creative

have
real fun, drawimg
painting what
      the soldier saw

or sculpt a little diorama
or create a tiny script

and then
     enact it

as a play, or maybe film
the play or maybe

a black and white or
technicolout film

we have
           so much red paint
it’s going to be spectacular

buckets of red paint
for you head
                to toe
to slosh around

an exercise for all of us
to forever remember

death is the scene
            death must

never forget