SOFTLY
(for Emily
Maitlis)
speak softly
when talking
truth to
power
walk
circuitously
and carry a small
yet not
too insignificant stick
above all
addressing
the voice that
must
never
be addressed
don’t go for it
call
sign
Maverick
like a
shrieking naval jet
on a strafing run
however much
after-action satisfaction
however
much top dollar
sheer
redemptive fun
TO SEED
I swim
in the hot sea
the sharks
making
a cup
of tea
the dolphins
having a siesta
and the octopus
(whose name is Alice)
has
contrived a garden
that is
itself an
eighth wonder
shells and pearls
fragments of coral
and
sea cucumbers
something so
Imperial in all
her
propensities
(expanding to Empire
the germ
of an
idea).
ROSE?
is that
a rose
or is it
a bullet hole?
red rose
red rose
so many of them
slaughtered in the snow
days of
York and
Lancaster
tried to stitch those
wounds together
but blood still leaking
through that tapestry
carnage
somehow still
in your
poetry
freeze
framed you thought
for all
of history
not forever displaced
from theme to theme
BROKEN
poetry is sublime
code
bought you a nut-
cracker best
to crack it
heard the thunder, saw
the lightning created
by yout exertions
thpught if this
be the reaction
of what we call Nature
tag
as the cosmos
and if sweet Lennon-
McCartney lyrics be
the end
of civilization
what would the lightshow be
like
in store for us
if we were to collide the
exposed
God particles of the cosmos
(beyond
hypothetically)
in order to create singularities
deep underground?
PROFESSOR SUGAR CUBE
wanted to
dissolve all boundaries
between
self and cosmos, writer
and word
sucked that juice out
instantly
on the road to
strangest territory
such a dark, dark terminal
sweetness
and multiple many-track
dimensions trapped within the
confines
of that cube
.
MR DARWIN
the observation
became conjecture,
became hypothesis, became
theory, became
scientific truth
(most
assured of
truths)
but it was
when it became
metaphor that the world burned
burned
in the interests
of survival of the fittest
when extended into our
realm of analogy
a monstrous fitness
giving itself license to brutally contrive
rewrite the world
slaughter half
the species
in name of room to maneuver
space to
be
fresh habitat to colonize
build that new fantastic civilization
some of us always dreamt of
the rest, our worst
nightmare fear
this on the supreme strength
of the
shape of a scale
length of a
feather
NOT YET DAMAGED
was born unto
you
a son
eyes brown
hair (then) fair
the whole
not yet damaged
beyond
repair
in case
you hadn’t noticed
in case you
didn’t care
on way or another
HUMONGOUS
human look
humongous
through
alien eyes
(forget any
cosmic romance
with sweet tentacled
creature)
the bodies we
born with
not
for light-
speed optimized
what spring and
bounce born with
gravity level-best to
be levelling
so here we be stuck
all can do
is wave as they pass
us
any cosmic, astral travellers
then
best write it off, crazy
to believe
when everything in
our Universe premised
on
plausible denial
COLD JOE
Joe
you are old
you are old
your brain
is cold
seems you need
something
thermonuclear
to give
it a spark
get it working.
MACHINE
“The autonomous logico-fantastic machine is something I like insofar as (and if) it serves some real need: the need to enlarge the sphere of what we can imagine, and to introduce into our limited range of choices “absolute rejection” by means of a world thought out in all its details according to other values and other relationships.” Italo Calvino
you must have
read this poem yesterday
or maybe you are
planning
to read it
tomorrow
stop me before
I ramble on erroneously:
you may well
have read the poem
today
already
perhaps
you are ahead of me
just how it is
how this machine works:
nature of the game
it could be stone-cold fact
that you
are always ahead of me
maybe you read it
when I was undressed
might have told me
I would have dressed
smartly for you
or gone all Lagerfeld
dressed
to kill
but what use seduction
when I may
well
be dead already?
what use
putting pedal to the metal
linguistically speaking
upping the ante
so that
my words
might touch you well?
you read this poem tomorrow
you read this poem
how things at
that moment dictated
everything
and
short of signalling every cue
or clue
nothing I could do
poems 2 die for