chaos – poems 2 die for

GARDEN

hurry up
final brushstrokes
finish that portrait

write
that chapter
conclude your
epilogue

they say
shock and awe
sturm und drang
they are
going to
decapitate the State
it will be a quick campaign
over in hours

I am neither tactician
nor strategist
but I would beg to
disagree (always
overthink things
a curse that genetics
handed down to me)

but for you
I would give time
infinite time if
I had the power
and I feel
you might have
requested it

for what
in all you do
does the soul
not require?

when
our music is all
discordance, dissonant
chaos symphony

and me
in this chaos space
so at odds
with your careful
subtle
cultivations of tranquility

you
with your precise
place to stand, viewpoints
and perspectives

place outside
this poem
space of refuge
green sanctuary

everywhere
nothing but sweet
sanity – – lesson, message
example
for the world

but have you now
quietly captured
in my mind’s eye
(and apologies for
the trickery that
did allow
me to intrude)

watching you
at work
patient, careful, loving
every moment
knowing
the secrets of the soil
how to make things flourish

painstaking, just a half a degree shy of perfection (yet
on the right side)

a teacher too, but I observe
in awe
a lesson here, not
for me uniquely

but out there, right there
place of deserts and gardens
where
life could
not be more sacred

bodies of bombed schoolgirls
lined up in rows across
the sand
over four score (to give
it a Biblical number
a collateral quota)

faces covered (saving us
the trauma of
God’s maimed body,
disfigured image)

transparent truth
warning to
take care
with what you
make of God’s image

image you
carry into war

with prayers
for annihilation, banner
in blood-soaked hands

hurry
with your garden

last hope
we all have

GARBLE

I stutter
I garble
something

leaves my mouth
dies on the air
not quite mine

and now
millennia later
Jacques D
turns me
upside down
says I
should have
written it down
(focusing
on metaphor,
eschewing rhyme)

and,
following that cue exactly,
what was once there garbled
finds form
function structure even
as
dances across the page

and now
internalized, compartmentalized,
I live inside
a structure, penned in
by these
four walls, a
structure of structures

infinitely layered, anything
but solid in
the old
classical sense

though it will
always surely appear so

story of
our entire take on everything
modus vivendi
with the Universe

fairy
tale and fable
treatise, principia, tractatus,

tall
and charming
tale alike
of what we are, always were,
never shalt be, how
we do and
where
we
came from

stardust rotting
under burial soil

so hapless, helpless, truly
marvellous, utterly outstanding,

as yet again
I garble as I try to
do it justice, go for balance
in expression

wrong and misconstrued
despite (because of) every
total global consensus

and here
      you have whispered it,
captured it
   sealed it in a nutshell
more perfectly than all that I
by very name
and definition
             could ever get
within
striking distance
          ever dying just short
of having achieved

JUST MAYBE

maybe
if was just
bad juju

maybe you ran
into an electronic storm

your SUV cartwheeling
from zero to eighty
in two
point seconds

one day
we should sit down
put our
heads together
talk
about it

that is if the Fates
let you live
your soul
neither ascending
or descending
to
place of absolute rest
in a mind-
blowing shower

of hideous,
deadly,
fundamental sparks

BUTTERFLY

TOYLAND

let me be abstract
let ne be
hypothetical

let me
not worry abouf ereor
let alome, Sin,
let me have the
algorithms not
to put a foot wrong

to vontinue of my given
track without regret,
remorseless but effortlessly

and when i come to
you in ths night
all exchange and interplay
a sturdy versitiliyy
aa per
every bell and whustle

by the numbers snuggle and
cuddle do all the fore
abd after
back and forward, prelude
and post

being in it for the long run
until we bust
a spring, spring
                  a leak
as
    is the case when
every little life
       scrioted by truth and
Scheme of perfection

finds, andxis ground down
in the forever coils of
the eternal
nemesis

which
goes by one name alone,
which nsme being love

the disastrr dreamt of
by every toy or machine

SNAKE AND LADDER

my tongue
endeavouring to
acquaint itself
with you

ladders and snakes
snakes
and ladders

your nipples seem
to have
something to say
a point
to make

tell me
to look here
there

this way
that way

ask me
if I can turn you
into a butterfly

can turn you
into a million butterflies

which, if
they should co-ordinate
find their rhythm
best
fractal pattern

a truly stupendous storm
must needs create

SILLY ME

silly me
how silly could
I be!

all the ills
of the world
I do allow
to make
me
sickly

so please
do not simply
condemn

if in this
fall
from grace
I do

maybe
vomit up the odd
poem
or two

perhaps
quite hideous

possibly
outright
sublime

silly not to factor
all that is genius into
the chaos
of big picture

MEASURE

measure that phrase
see what we might
distil from it

Oh the essence of that cadence
is elixir, to put it
plebian plainly
is music
to my ears

has a French know not what
syllabic ring to it

is pleasant of feel and
to the touch in exquisite extreme

would that I could write so:
be creature of delicate
supplement, careful balance

even as the world is shifting:
places where already breakneck
is even out-accelerating

and the page
the page

things seismic there, the text
spiking, falling, big fear is
cannot but
be flat-
lining somewhat shortly

as for the stage
much staggering incomprehension in respect
of beneath the boards all
tectonic plates

strike at the need to measure
but by then, of course,
too late too late

SEED TO STORM

SEED TO STORM

seed to
perfect storm

let us
consider
that dynamic

explosive this energy
in the million
volt zig-
zag of its release

Nazaré
Teahupoo

surf that water mountain
until it crashes into
a swirl
of demented foam

when the world breaks for us
against us

when storm
supercharges our
lives

go with that flow
at ultra velocities

       plug yourself in
what
      else can you
                   are you

supposed to do?

seed to
perfect storm

storm to perfect seed

ON BOARD

ON BOARD

you made your god
into a god of chaos

chaos
that proceeds orderly

methodically
has lists

moves street
by street
wiping out, missing
nothing
could not be
more thorough

having learnt from
its horrific encounters
with the
demons of the past

terrible demons that
cast a monstrous forever
shadow

hook, line
and sinker

precise depths of that evil
turned
rational

taken on board