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ODA ANACONDA

Collection sep 2025

BLESSING

I chiselled this poem
out into stone

laborious work
but it
felt worth it

wrote the whole thing
with a stylus cutting
markd into
clay tablets

spray painted
a whole stanza
in plain view
on the side of a building
in the middle of the night

daubed
    it in blood
desecrating a flag

keyed it in electronically
pressed send and
believed it
     published instantly
bouncing across the ether

whispered it into
your soft
        ear

typed it out with suddenly
agile fingers
         observed it flow
across your body

taking
       it
       to the house

point of truth where
you are at your most receptive

most fully conscious
of how
       transcience here
comes into play

poem
   be both blessed and
doomed
to disappear

****

HONEY

do not presume
to tell me
what
is forbidden

is the sky
forbidden?
the sea
the Sun
you

yourself
    forbidden?

are all the things
in your book
of prescriptions
             ultimately forbidden

what of honey
is that too,
forbidden

bees may sting
but the make it freely

as is the case
with honey, your honey

it is the sting
itself that makes it what it is
defines it as honey

and so please
before you
close the gates
shut
   the hive
lay the mines
      string the wire

as a matter of gentility do
tell me what is forbidden
point to
     what is forbidden
in all this honey

that I might discover
taste
    and judge

decide for myself

       ****             

UNTIL

poetry is
the easy way

simplicity itself
line

of least
resistance

a quantum wave
of words
about to
flow

no huge
necessity this
be

in any structured
shape, size
or form

any
particular direction

in your head
mon lecteur acad-
                 emique
length
     of line
geometry of page
                slice and dice
of caesura
stanza

and here
we have a bitch of a poem
that refuses to budge

your fingers hovering above
the page
      a picture of frustration
portrait of
inertia

nothing ever seemed
so impossible
      until it didn’t

nothing even
   beginning to flow until
it would
not stop

poetry is difficult until
it isn’t

poetry
   is no way
easy

until it is

until
(out of nowhere)
it writes itself

****

AND NOW YOU DON’T

here we are
yet again

tooth and nail
battling upstream
insane in our search
for
   forever narrowing

until
   as always

the river
swallows itself
contrives
        to disappear

****

AT LAST

at last
I got a handle
on an old memory

that semi-detached double-
storey house of ours
in the middle of
the cul-de-ssc
leading to the cemetery

how I wanted to
simply fly through
the glass windows
    of my bedroom
upstairs

fly around briefly before
fire stage two and
full astral projection
and me
all of seven and desperate
to be a miracle

create my own parable
as i zoom hither
and thither

but something in
the room, the Sun, the
sky, the clouds,
the silicon they
made
   the glass from

killed the tiny
shaman in me
there and then

only much later
would I be
dragged out by some
awesome power
to
  circumnavigate
my own tiny special part
of the
other side of the Universe

these dots in my brain
becoming giant
and
    dwarf stars

collecting, connecting,
linking
      one

to all

at last
to get

a handle whilst
still
   time

to re-
live

think
my way
through them

“”””

THE ODDS

threw a
Hail Mary

what are
the odds
       historically

it be caught for six points
or fly to the Moon
on the wings
of Apollo?

less or
more
    always a risk factor

must check those sacred pages
in my father’s manifesto
of social disconnection

great-grandchild of
some famine immigrant
sold a dream story
of opportunity

progeny of some child
of Africa transported
across the Atlantic
chained
       in the hold
to work
those prosperous fields

out there in the touch zone
holding the victory ball
or still waiting
          receiver by trade
and set
to receive

the crowd ecstatic that we
have a
Sitting Bull ambush, have
a Wild Bill
          shootout

have some music demigod
to serve the half-time feast

red zone
hell hole

too far ahead in
space and time
for me
      to ascertain with
degree of
certainty

the shifting nature of this game
cowboys, packers,
miners, and most
typically
      raiders, chiefs and
buccaneers

see in its logic
          all we need to know
must
     now envision

the spectacle
         telling its truth, making

its
     ambitions clear

****

NOTE TOWARDS A SNOWFLAKE APPRECIATION SOCIETY

Why should I not
appreciate a snowflake

(such a lovely
devil
   in that detail)

melting
on my tongue, between
my fingers

each one
unique

cold,
    precise

I guess one
might argue

superior in
every way to
a poem

even
a poem about
snowflakes
for that matter

****

OR SO YOU BELIEVE

déshabillé
(or so you believe)

whereas I would say
too much is divulged
subtext is showing

paradigm is exposed
to the ruination of your
                                  reputation
need to cover up
       heads to
spin

though my own stock-
in-trade be
scarcely golden

seems like you may just
have rushed too pre-
cipitously into
some bad
media alchemy

and now
      are looking high and low
under every bombed structure
for each
    and every collateral

making such a racket to
deflect our eyes
           from the hypocrisy

the place
reduced to a desert,
carnage
            beyond words

sad that what might have
saved poetry
        bent out of shape to
sustain
    the war industry

defend
        death’s exceptionality

make the case for a rapture,
thing so sickly sweet

will
     annihilate the need for
theology
         morality, humanity

basic kindness and love
the species professed to hold dear

“”””
CHORD

I imagine
there is a script in my head

the page not yet in being
crying out for
birth by improvisation

wanting to go wherever
it wishes to go

meanwhile in the forest
Puck never foresaw King Crimson
never anticipated
the marriage
of Robert
and Toyah
Toyah and Robert

when these stories
                        tell themselves
they believe
brain states but pen dictates

something in the ether
flutes, strings or
maybe
     an eerie mellotron
singing, cross-
pollinating

I don’t know
whence or why all this comes

flows first
        like a trickle, then
a river flowing
through a capital city

but it comes
it comes
              turns time to
its tune

and you
     as always an inspiration
to me

serenading me silently
but inwardly I dance, have
no choice
           but to

your body
          raw rock and roll, incipient
heavy medal

your mind
Mingus, Davis jazz solo

your voice
   the missing solution to
every unsolved ancient philosophical
problem

every genre
zone and miracle  twist
in the plot, jaw
dropping moment

leaving no niche
left uncovered, hoard unfound
across that sweet topography

and every
molecule fibre
              crying out, imploring you
to fuse
with my mythology
jump aboard my allegory

become my inner metaphor
 
in the confused progressions of this symphony

the very Devil’s chord lurking
I do believe

“”””
IN THE MORNING

feeling buoyant
energized

thought myself
on my last legs

looks like
I was wrong

and so
many things to love
about a
new day
about the morning

let’s
take it
from the top

I love so
many things
in the morning

I love the smell
of Robert Duvall
telling me he loves
the smell of napalm
in the morning

alongside a river
that winds through shadow
to the dark heart of man

I love
fire and death in
my morning newspaper

nothing like
a dose of savagery and misery
with my bacon, eggs  and
pancakes
       toast and tea

but to
mellow out a little

I love my songs soft and
sentimental, expertly crooned
with Sinatra panache

catching me by surprise
as they drift across the airwaves

calming
      me down         straightening
                                 me out

making me
          comfortable, approachable

deadly in my
              sublime treachery

like Garbo, the greatest
of all double agents, quiet (and
marvellously) mad
magician
          of Allied spies

woke one morning
      concocted the most
delightfully outrageous fantasy

to deceive
    Hitler’s Reich
               lead up the garden path

do something for humanity
in the morning
             overlord of
all mornings

****

DARWIN 4

I like
to think of myself
of a Victorian naturalist
shot out
      of a cannon
into the future
through
space and time into
distant and
bizarre
      Goldilocks Zone

to find
myself
     taking a stroll like
Imperial British Gentlemen

walking on the
surface of an
alien planet
they
happened to
name after me

freshly equipped with
all my conversions

retractable legs, compound
eyes, downloaded intelligence
and full
hover capabilities
carrying me across the
needle-spine badlands,
the acid seas and lakes
of mercury

looking for
the planet’s raw nerve,
scouring every niche
for signs of
life, impending
intelligence,
hints of the biological

foundations of
new civilizations and
their
     inevitable cities
of deep, incandescent pain.

****

THERE IS NO

there is no
poetry to survive
the six million

poetry dies
a death
each genocide

spicy left-leaning
socialist philosopher
from Frankfurt
made that
     point with
finality and
killer succinctness

no landscape
ever worth writing about
once
    the bombers have been

tanks
   churned their way through

ploughing through fields
that never
can
   be ploughed again

until
    that horror, that pain
burned
    into memory

is
  thing lost to time
can no longer remain

****
ARACHNE

I implored
the goddess
for an advance
to cover my needs

willfully mishearing
she proffered advice regarding
my need for brevity,
to come to the point

write the scenes
in strict succession
creating characters
who could not
fail
   to convince

and thus, my fingers
immediately responded
inspired divinely

exploded at once
across the keyboard
worlds
    apart from my usual plod

pinging away, spinning tales
rich in revolutionary output
soon impinging
upon a critical mass

whereupon
    I dreamt such

a perfectly sound and logical
left-brained dream

much scissor snip snap
and fabric flowing
output growing

and the clothes by no
means invisible but
fit for an Emperor

consummately tailored
yet desperately clinging

whilst
     the goddess acknowledging
my supremacy in
the very shape
    ot this transformation
ss I
rappel, abseil, become
finest
      weaver of treachery

suspended by
the divine strength of silk,
my silk

and you now dangling, reader,
hanging on for dear life.

****

CAVALIER

let them
bulld a chapel

weave corsages, prim
nosegays

see
where my finger points
out into the distance, just
on the horizon, vague yet
stark
   beginnings of a scaffold

yet this is
just presentment, this you
can relegate  Shakespearean style
to the vagaries of a bad dream

Lucasta’s posies have
little surface connection with
a lunge into hedonism,
living
     by the sharpness of
rapier, dagger,
long sword

which words
    sst themselves, deliver their
own bitter, toxic,
raucous fruit

out there forces
starting small, becoming titanic

great the heart that
survives this ice, amidst
all this
      cacophony,
      yields pandamonium

****

CYPRUS

something boiling in
the water
                   off
the coast
              of Cyprus

a gorgeous monster
created from foam

lethal  one kiss
of kisses

the beauty of which, wonder
of wonders that
love goddess,

simply
         destroyed me

****
CURVATURE

wholly complicit
she

observes how the light
dapples her desk

take a
counter to her
and
she will not
stop ticking

good sign!

neat how
just a word
from her physics Professor
can break this reverie
bring her
back to reality (so-
called)

him within which
expounding at length
on the cast-iron
laws of
repulsion, attraction;

the sheer number
of white-hot articles published
hourly, daily,
emanating
out of this machine

testament to how
slowly the Universe
has slowed down
(no quick
       big crunch less
than than
lovingly speaking)

still locked
and loaded, explosive,
                   keen on expanding

whilst the warmth
of that afore obliquely
hinted at
      solar radiation

runs up her arms
pours down her neck

leaving her
         ripe for anything

feeling never before so
cute and
astute, philosophically awake

ready to
deal with dark energies,
dark matter
across
    whatever distance

strip
back that veil

trace (her
very first blueprint)

the soul of her curvature,
all curvature
    as it makes its way

****

LESS THAN FINE

wanted to write a
sexy poem
very
sexual

but the ink
prematurely ejaculated
shot out of my pen

wanted to a write a
very scary poem
ultimate scare

but the ink froze
my blood curdled
as it
    hit my brain

wanted to write a
very sentimental poem
terribly sad

but the
page got fluffy
all
   of a sudden
out of nowhere
went all
soft toy on me

didn’t want to
write an
elegy, my
elegy

a poem
on death
but you
twisted my arm
persuaded me I should

promising  me
you would give me
the perfect
last line

all those last lines of my own
though by
no means hopeless
less
   than fine

****

APOLLO

rocket
to the Moon

rocket
saying Hi, dropping
into my
back yard

bringing my own
private star, billion
degree
       Sun

same rocket
rocket
men
    rode to the Moon

(bouncing, buggying around
scenic drive
      one small
step for man)

same as the one that
took out my house, my
tiny lawn

like the eggs on the stove
I was cooking when
it came
       to pay
a visit, pay
its respects

popping, exploding in
that red-hot thermonuclear pan

I was
well and truly Sun god fried

****
CRYPTIC

rearranged the furniture
in my head
  (a few dry walls
had to knock out)

started to resemble
a mausoleum

which
so startled me
ended up
forgetting entirely
about my bed

and how and why
ended up in
the first place
fighting with this allegory

but did sleep
and collided with
all I had
moved and misplaced
throughout
         my dream

in dream
    no GPS no
proximity scream

things as they present themselves
could hardly be
more cryptic

****

ORIGIN STORY

I have totally
equipped this poem
for survival

to be a
lean,
mean
break-
dancing machine

sharp in tooth
incredibly soft in paw entirely.

****

IN AN IDEAL WORLD

fishing
    for jellyfish

wouldn’t know
how to start

unless
common sense dictate

candy rod
             sugar sinker

gelatinous hook
baited with
            (in an
ideal world)

strawberry cream and
vanilla custard

****
ZAPIRO

it’s no paranoia
just
bad fractals

not a tad of alien malfeasance
behind those clouds

focus
   won’t you

be like the Sun itself
passing through
a magnifying glass

observing
how a piece of paper
flapped in Parliament
(Parliament
of Parliaments)
might cause the wind
to howl
through streets shut down

a bad time idea
whose time is here

and now
only the anointed
wish to be
associated with it

loyal to
this final state
of secure being

iron wire and
tape spinning

nothing like it
even if your
paranoia run rampant

nothing in your
mind could be more off-beam

****
VISITATION

Had a bad dream. A stinker.

Dionysus, Apollo
moving in
as next
door neighbours

tightest of brothers
bitterest of rivals

neatly trimmed
the hedges between them
swarming with vipers

and me
in my own garden
drinking posh tea
Ambrosia flavoured

when
     at their joint house party
episode war erupted
after guests
spoke brazenly
           reacted ill-advisedly

blows, shots
exchanged, heavenly dactylic
style of sibling fighting

and all caught as collateral
in a disciplined rush
to
   escape to high ground
live to tell the story

and me
waking from this dream
finding myself
worse off
    plunged into another

hated, loved
by the gods

lost
    at sea, shipwrecked unless
forever sailing

no sight of land
just the great
            fiction of Elysium  Hades, Olympus

eternal wine-dark sea.
   
****

TROIS

the telepath writes haiku
always leaving the last line
blank

to be frank

**

let me use
sign language
to express

what words of desire
lack the feel for

short on touch

**
in the sea of irony
only the humorless
                     drown

elect to
sink

rather than swim

****

BY A THREAD

my poem
is running
with the wolves

running
from the dogs

poems
always seem
to end up
chased into the forest
running from the dogs

sheltering
beneath the tall trees
trees stocked
with good wood

springy, workable,

chop/chop
                  /chop

and there you have it
a gibbet born of craftsmanship
set to hang

unless
      we cut out the middleman
let the trees themselves
do the culling, catching
chasing

me meanwhile
so desperate to
deflect
    win hearts and minds
counter-persuade
them

   I am repentant utterly
reborn to turn
over a new leaf

doing my best to change things
before the last line closes

leaves us
   between turnstiles
frozen in limbo

hanging
      by a thread, by
a single thread hanging

****

CANOPY

catch me
in the treetops

dodging
the attack butterflies

buzzing out
of character like
angry 109 Messerschmitts (someone
having stirred up
their nest to a frenzy of
National Socialist fervor)

below the canopy
burnt out hulks
civilizations scrapyarded

threatening the promise
of sacred, peaceful,
untroubled,
          no bumps
in the night sleep

parachutes
opening formally, things
mushrooming with
a wide radius

dreams as thick as dead leaves
as the last days of Northern Autumn
everywhere you look
littering the forest floor

“”””
NILE LESSON

I am doing my level best
to teach the art of poetry
to the Queen of the Nile

knowing that
the slightest pedagogical
mistake might turn
my body into
a pincushion for arrows

and so
words hang back, prove0
extraordinarily reluctant

stick in my throat
like fat scarab beetles

even as
a real, intrepid scarab
attempts to
  cross the palace floor
for which gross violation
and fatal impropriety

she does catch
    and crack it open
its
  carapace
being no match

and me left
thinking, wondering
if there be
a metaphor here
to elucidate
    for her desired
edification

but then
when (Isis-inspired)
I ask her to regale me
with list
   upon list
of words whose sound she loves

those lethal eyes dance

her voice
goes gold filigree

mind
    rises to the moment
as if
   a thing of fine silver
housed in bluest
lapis-lazuli

is all, she is all,
softest of waves
about
   to crash on the shore after
crossing the Mediterranean

I am, for my sins,
trying my utmost
to teach
      the art of poetry
to the Queen of the Nile

****
FIRST GEAR

making hot
stuff with you

raises
my pain threshold

lowers my centre of gravity

tunes me up, every piston
pushing perfectly,
like
    a twelve cylinder engine

a portrait of road
holding, fuel-injected precision,
as soon as you get me
out of first gear

****

PROFESSOR MOONSHINE

was wearing
my best strip-searched
human face
instant guide
to my moral integrity
goodness of my nature

philosophizing
at the turnstile

life
death
Heaven Hell
United City

activating my consciouness
Earth watch, star radar

derby match floodlight
bathing the stadium

sky wheeling in time lapse
as it got to
penalty shootout

even as Sputnik
circles, Eagle as landed
space roce
      whizzes by

long time long time
(unless already on Mars
conspiracy theory) we
all
   believe we saw

boys shot from sunny Florida
racing in silver dune buggies
back
fron the Sea of Storms
bouncing in that gravity
towards the Sea of Tranquility

****

    ACCORDINGLY

this poem
(if you can call it that)
has been prescribed
for the safety of us all
in the interests
of National Security

no one may according
duplicate, disseminate, read,
repeat, cut splice dice
dip
   into
take a single syllable
from this poem

allow the words
to proliferate, play
run
all over the play

and so
  in the interests of
the preservation
of hard won liberties
let us
   all
stay
    on the same
page
rejoice in this dictate
        
****
FOR  HANNAH ARENDT

what it the compassion
you can squeeze
like a lemon
drag
from a stone?

camp gypsy
coaxing a wealth
of sadness out of an accordion

a couple of devil
Halloween masks
fall by the wayside

not all that skims
is banal
entirely devoid of imagination

lips finding
special pleasure, dodging meaning

the road
once tangential is
now overgrown
unless it is autobahn

we were
      talking compassion

but dismiss this, or
whatever

not enough tears
in out history
   ever to drench you to death

****
TESLA

the light
transmigrates

was here
now there

st that speed
knows neither
time
    nor distance

even
that wizard Nikola
                       Tesla
cannot
catch it, stop
it telexing itself

from point
to point

suffusing the darkness,
                          waving goodbye
at the moment
of arrival

keeping
you guessing
beyond the possibility
of infinite circuitry

****

IN PARENTHESIS

long division
square root
(stick night
black night
in parenthesis

before you take the liberty
to photon bombard it)

I would write
you up
if you were
worth the trouble
let you
take me in
your arms
and multiply me

all your chromosomes
gotten into the habit
or reading
me like a book

backwards forwards
straight line, arabesque,
turning
     your story my story
into a flip thru
pop up
  illustrated manuscript

shaving away those
bad dreams, wonky genes,
picking and choosing
choice bits
     from my D

N

   A spiral

not all behind
the scenes
        the clothes
the blinds  the curtains

so
   seemingly old  inert,
entropic, horribly
outworn
    and outmoded

see how fresh how suddenly
green
   when you edit, splice
cut through
sheath
    down to essential fibre

highest factor lowest
common denominator

blend with which
life can perhaps do something

****

BOX

packed
my universe

into a box
not Pandora’s
not Schrodinger’s
and nothing

Chinese
a
b
o
u
t
  it

set it
on its way
cast it
adrift

packed it
a box lunch

the universe never
giving
   a free lunch

but here
we are talking
        about the space
outside it

****

ONCE AGAIN

who knows
what lived there
in that stinky,
dirty brown pond

iced over
beautiful again

or so
it seemed to me
back then

here trying
to put into words
my childhood memory

****

SCRUB

scrub what I
said

previously, delighting
in your company

I am not prone to
insincerity, bound
to lie
about my infidelity

theoretical or
otherwise (perhaps
the thread
running
counter-clockwise)

nor will I
allow myself to be
railed (meaning
mono-rsiled)
unwittingly into it
led by
the nose to find
Nature’s soft truth
bound by
those laid-down trails
marked out
as alluring reams of
ribboned finery
that all the world
might see and believe

no let me
unusually direct
sparing in
extravagant epithet
or punctuational necessity,
far from being
abstract voyeur or
philosophical contemplation

stuck at my window desk
sifting through papers
so much
     snow, white
space
inside and out
already falling, falling
beginning to fall

already
       up to my neck in it
obviously lost count of it

not a
bird (in the hand or
bush)

nest
to cuckoo in
within a proverbial mile

****

THE RHYTHM

it is the
rhythm
that survives

finds its home
sets the edge
gives the tone

survives the centuries
connects the stars

lives
and dies
lives and dies

it is the rhythm
that outlasts
decides
what
stays; belongs

survives
the rhyme

****
FIN

we are
at the end of the last reel

the sea is out there
other mise-en-scene

steadicam shot tracking
us as we
go our separate ways
last piece of
dialogue

syllables exchanged
words spoken to each other

the  crew are removing things
the theme is ending
catharsis death

back at the studio
a nightwatchman
flicks the on off switch

****
ASS

listen
observe

I sense here
a mad dialectic

right wing
            left
wing

left brain right wing

not excluding
all that stuff
still left

       in the centre
       left and right of centre

talking opposing fighting
negotiating
       
                      brought to
the boil
coming to head

pain
     in the ass

virus finding the door
wide wide open

no need to burrow
drill
   right through the skull

****

SCRY

I scry
the world

through
smokey quartz

whereby
                whatever
visions I see

always
          remain guarded

steeped
            in cold blood
close to the bone

I scry the stars
through the same
dark crystal

knowing as with us
and our blue
bright planet

out in that darkness
nothing remains what it first seems
  
****

PUNCTURED

on its way
to a smooth landing
3I/ATLAS must
have decisively
punctured
Fermi’s paradox

unless it didn’t
unless
     it was just a comet
after all

a speed freak comet,
utterly anomalous
without
    respect for comet rules
and the abiding
principles
of our scientific community

and all that talk of
lights nicely
    planned trajectory
(worryingly
       strategic) and
messages sent to
NASA telling
us no
    worries within
the hydrogen band

just the usual junk
that orbits
        common sense in
our media eccentrically

product of our
demand for excitement,
need for
       hysteria
fear of annihilation

longing
     for signs and
last ditch
hope that the cosmos
might notice us

assign us place
and propriety we

just do not deserve

****

3I

piece of
space rock
            encroaching

if that be the correct verb
for thing absolutely
shunting it

fastest of the insanely fast
top of its class

which
       speed and
basically everything else

our state of the art
Maths and Physics
can
   say nothing about

every thesis and
theorem instantly
black holed

pure nickel
pure nickel
     not even conceivable unless
metallurgy manufactured

Nature
caught us napping
never told us
          how much out
there is
   left field

        things like that
keen to just fly by
take
  a good luck at us
(though
    without brain, without
eyes

probabilistic freak out
presumably most certainly

****

REAPER

thought roses
inappropriate

so sent you
a bouquet
of Carolina Reapers

could not be
more scarlet

brutally
scarlet

emblem of
the fire
of my love

****

TOUCHSTONE

trick of the light!
the poem
was there
all along

just had
to be uncovered
unless excavated

dug up
out of that trench
fished from
that pond

traced back to
its pathway through
your
   ocean of smart
quick-fire synapses (not
to mix
metaphors at this crucial point)

for here we
outdo ourselves (or would if
we knew
    our power, how easily
we could)
sail that sea of combinations
cross continents of
possibility at
what in reality must
be light speed

test
the horizon of galaxy as
we find ourselves
infinity bound

backwards forwards pitch, yaw
and roll
      from here we can
head in
any direction

rounding the cape
from interior to exterior

and me
      so softly, soundly touched,

rounding you (or
so I must believe)

here at
the heart of simulation
sublime deception

exactly as I dream

****

AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

the cabin I once graced
now lies
at the bottom of the sea

seems it was something
of a cursed vessel

and where I am now
this semi-desert
an inland ocean once
paleontology
has determined

in the long long view
that tingle tremble
beneath your feet
may
   at the end of the day
be a matter truly
tectonic

I almost drowned
on a ship
in sea water
         the day before
it docked in harbour

thought I could swim
just sail majestically
across the water

me being
most water
     of all the water signs

sank
  like a stone, a thing
of lead

thought wrong

somehow feel that this is
not the last
episode in
an ongoing saga

me,
and the bottom of the sea

****

OTHERWISE

this flower
might well have been otherwise?

how on Earth can you not tell?

watching from the wings
I will always be there
as my snake self

coiling, uncoiling, sliding
over under
       slurring those many
hissed syllables

in order to educate Eve
as to
    words, possible worlds,
way
   beyond her current
Scrabble set

and in one of these
an Adam without sin
who remains
eternally alone

looking everywhere for
a trace of that beauty
he has
    yet not an inkling of

feeling, despite himself,
an inexplicable sense of
emptiness, incompleteness,
loneliness, loss

whereas
      in all other permutations

he faces a time that
will come when all gardens
must be levelled

where
  the leaves, the trees, the clouds,
the crystal streams and
mirroring waters,
the beasts and birds or the air
whose names
Adam gave

will all forget, be forgotten,
no one will remember, no
one to remember

****

PLAGUE

after years of boarding
and other water torture

he wrote his poems
to continue
the struggle

ease
his pain

avoiding
the word “raindrop”
like the plague

****

CHAIN

For you, Sir,
who have
seen been everything
and so much besides

I am here to announce
my bright design:

a
Seraph

in a clam

can
   evolve to
the summit
Sirrah,
can do what it can

cutting out
the middle man

whose passes
everything up
down
down
          up

in the chain
of command

****

STEAM

let’s make
fire together

in
our little boat
bottom of our boat

when
the sea rushes
in

we may drown
well drown

unless the fire
the water
go
   for each other

turn us
into steam

****

COMPOSITION

pass me your pen
and I shall note down
those distances

the chalk on the blackboard
having list its imperative

the writing
on the wall changing
the moment it
gets written

the truth of relativity
not yet board-dustered off
yet already
done and dusted

and how many tiny white
flecks
   look like motion-
captured stars, galaxies
in their movement?

at if
squeezing
the truth out of us,
pinching our analogies

the Universe were
writing us
writing the Universe itself

putting us
into, pulling us
out oh the picture

trying to figure out
which composition
works best

which
makes the
most sense

****

CHATTER

the forest chatters
so much
to talk about

stuff
    every tree and
squirrel
needs to know

and you
keen to listen in

lacking the equipment
to tune into
those airwaves

wondering how
much you
have
   missed

how key
these messages
going over
your head
(in a
manner of speaking)

****
AUTOPILOT

“Vada a bordo, cazzo!”

I was admiring a metaphor but then it sank
not in wine-dark ocean, somewhere between Charybdis and Scylla
but in turquoise sea, shallow, placid
verging on perfect island.

Earlier
the Captain himself had
put us on autopilot, too suave a narcissus
not to entirely confuse skirting sexual danger with
courting maritime disaster

and complete disaster was it too, for all the beauty of vista and shallowness of water, though not without its
comedy of cruise-control leading to full
Groucho Marx-moment of
tumble into lifeboat (what could be
more providential? did he not think, was
He not reminded of
Freud’s philosophy of the ship and
all of those jokes about being in
a boat and not finding the boatman?)

What serendipity
should we ignore, dare
we escape without
risking the Olympus (albeit these days that
Poseidon, at least has grown so tiny)?

Always the softness of the parallels
that rise to haunt us
even though
we did not see
doomed forever to fail to see them

no matter how careful
we navigate
carefully, frantically, at

full panic station scan the horizon.

****

NIMBUS

exactly what devil
in the detail?

specificity is what
seemed to be
called for here

their bodies
too much addicted
to love generalization
found themselves
             mirrored
in each other
yet never
entirely dovetailed
like bold octave and
sublime sestet
in terribly dulce
juiciest
           sonnet

crooning here
seems premature
      so why
Oh why
throw myself into it?

here that will art/life disjunction with all its unforseen
consequences
will inevitably arise
bringing
       much I would prefer
not having
to contend with

someone out there
always bee in bonnet desperate
to remind one
of how
    slippy sloppy life might
well become
slipping blind
baby mice under
your front and back doors

and who can say and
is saying
         now in fact
exactly

up in the high circle
Mozart Opera-ing

how when you
fall
   from up there
observing Newton’s law

some kindly
sub-atomic might not
switch universes making
decisive intervention

there
      from
lap of the gods
to lap of the orchestra

kindly deliver
          you by parachute
recall

****
BEE DANCER

I am a bee (be
a bee)
alphabetically
entomologically

finding my
sharp little way

flower
       to flower
heading home
stacked
   with pollen

return
      heavy with tales
exquisitely choreographed
of
  how
to navigate

paint them a path
sweet
    as perfume
honeyed with heart

each tiny
          lemniscate
danced with
delight
      danced till I drop

love
   each figure of eight
(even  better
times
     eleven, what could
be more
funky
    than eighty-eight?)!

****

AS IT DID UNFOLD

unfolded the Universe
as if it were

an origami

but on that paper
                           much

to my
        surprise,
                        disappointed,

nothing to find
                              nothing
written

except the thought dawning that
all this time the

                            Universe

         reading me

****

TETRA

they swarm like neon tetra
towards the light
     or perhaps

away from it
out at six back
at seven

this is the lifestyle
that the planet
prayed for

behind
these walls, these gates
every
    modern convenience
means of escape

but me
       having drowned
once already

prefer the death deep
of dark indigo

down
    where survival is
impossible
amongst the incredible
legions of
myth-denizens

and creatures
of infinite aptitude
biding their time

they swarm like
neon tetra, first cousins
to piranha

towards what
they believe just
has to be the light

****

ORIGAMI

haiku is a tiny
paper schooner

plodding down
a tiny stream

imagining everything
in the cosmos
to be
origami

a giant tsunami high
as a mountain

its ultimate cosmic
oceanic dream

****

   REFUND

since the poetry tax

every haiku
is short a syllable

those
       who never
wrote a line

queuing an eternity
waiting for
their refund

and for
those who
never learn

every epic masterpiece
of rebellion
and defiance

plunging into debt
breaking the bank

****

AH! BUTTERFLY

ah! little butterfly
fresh from your epic
of compression
and now expansion

gloriously, ridiculously transformed,
poster child for all
that less
extravagant a species
would have
never seen coming

though I do believe
wings are things
with which
I might have
been blessed before
I learnt to crawl

****

PLAY’S THE THING

the play’s the thing
unless
     forgetting throne, crown,
father poisoned in
an orchard

I decide
to step back, tell
my tale of woe, hereafter
sleep

the peaceful sleep of one
not wracked with guilt

unforeseen consequence
collateral damage

take two succulent heroes
(a loving pair)
get them lost in
incestuous forest

without grid reference, compass,
guide

and so
plenty fairy tale time
to languish
in the bracken
strangle conscience

beg
to be thrown into the brambles
when smeared with tar

in this
our era, ’tis plain
how easy it be
to get smeared with tar
(a whole
industry created
to make it stick)

or
  as if lifted up the tree
canopy high above,
in hydrogen zeppelin
or on
cushions of helium

think
ladder, cloud, spiral
staircase, deus-
ex-machina
elevator

escalator there
only to
convert into metaphor

lost babes
no more
but Castor and
Polluxed
fully
      soaring, rising

high as poetry
complete
as blue
moon
lucid
as song

tale we might
recite together
the metre faultless, not
a rhyme wrong

OCTOBER POEM

I wander the streets
shortly after dusk this
last day
of October

they think
I am an artist
    even though it is
a huge can not
of paint
     but of darkness
I am
carrying this evening
fine and broad strokes
my world
    my canvass yet
as it disappears doing
nothing to
dispel
   any spurious faith
in such enterprise, much
to the contrary
exploiting
their misconceptions
fostering every illusion

blindsiding colour, extinguishing
the light

       so much still to do
a whole tryptich of
forever never

reminding all
and sundry

there
is no final, no complete,
in art, with the imagination

are
     just different species

of the fiction
      that years for
ending

but
    eschews its
own energies of closure

life and death
got the mosaic
                      here

every fragment
priceless

until
    here at the hub
of antimony

I erase that
     palimpsest of palimpsest
might be
paimted,
    written over

   ****

NOVEMBER WEDDING

November wedding
sign of the scorpion

whole road
turned into a car park
for everybody’s convenience

and there be tents and tents
enough
     for a small army

big brass even thumping
bass drum and love
tunes
    pumping out

pulsatimg up to
somwhere
    in the stratosphere to
connect with origins
of the Universe
    pulsar

time for connection, bonds
ties reinforced
our
  mortal duty to
replicate

and I am assuming
he is man of godly charm
and she
   is a beauty

Oh what a lovely loving species
save for one
       pen in hand who
could
not be more funereal

attendance
out of consideration because
take
   one look and
you can see he lacks
                       the rhythm
shoddy on
    the ground with this
surprisingly deep know how

meanwhile so much
in other
    dream time, wife that
was and
all (but no legion)
on the list of the not to
be forgotten
lost
   possibilities and
ghost lovers

let us leave him grieving
for himself
        and yet
               alive here to
the possibilities
further unfolding
    of the human mystery, village
within a village,
story
   within a story

man with
     woman, far
as it goes
never
   losing anything
    crazy as
it gets

bridge to cross and
keep
  forever crossing

however staged
this
     show, this backyard
supreme spectacle

every clockwork Cupid
there for hire
        musical choices quite,
quite marvellous

bound to get
       the whole human hearr
hydrailuc pumping
like a machine

the stars fixed forever at
this moment propitiously
                         or less so

and me
creature without rhythm
stark and alone
and far beneath them

rewinding to other days
and
   life-
   chaning choices

one self off one way
new self
    another

November wedding
marriage according to Mars
red
    raw red rulimg
planet

blending all that is male
all that is female

all that
is the cosmos
to all that is of the soil

****

WITH THE GREEN COVER

I was reading your
second novel

the thin most writerly patriarchal trauma one
with the green cover

wrote a iffy little academic article about it that I let
myself be fooled
was
   so on the nose
close to the bone

and me
your student, forever
your student, never
going to escape
out of
the heart of
that shadow

and now
        that I am older even
than the oldest character
in that tortured idyll

I begin to wonder about all
the ghosts and their voices
and
all the spirit rivers
shapesbifting entities of
standing
   in this land

Oh we have our angels and demons and
rich tapestries of mythology,
you yourself
so valiant
    in the resonant
production thereof

to the extent that if
I am ever going to
escape
    myself
escape anything, everything

am going to have to
return to those pages again
yet again

unmiss
what I most certainly
did miss
    hope it hits  me his time
truly and viscerally

touches
the spot

****
MY GREEN STAPLER

the science fiction
writer

loves his green stapler
more, much
more

than his
android companions

allows him
to concatenate worlds
create hybrids
fuse identities

make a nonsense
of the infinite
curvature of
space-
              time

all he needs to
realize his vision
are portals
       portals leading

everywhere

and, thanks to
the demand created by
my smash-
cut, smashup green
stapler

he is always in the market
for an unbelievable supply

****

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

****

JUICE

It must have changelinged me
all that juice
goodfellow Puck did spray
around so
most liberally
throughout the play

that I fell qute captured,
sucked into the forest action,
Titania above me
and I, beautifully ass-
headed so
bottomed beneath

and speaking those words
as if we again, constantly,
forever thus
embowered

that magic so vigorous
as I crashed through
every barrier

softly dissolved
this last, ultimate wall.

****
SPRING POEM

for others it be Spring
but this
is our Winter

where is the light here
not without recollection

let me sign
it through for you

the hope that you fimd love
togetherness and completeness

the last
sweet cherry

in the bowl

    ****

DO SHEEP?

do sheep dream
of electric androids?

last night I dreamt
of the temple
of the high abbatoir

scouting out which
I circumvented the butchery
in the dark, dense forest

perfect place (as
opposed to a desert) for
such slaughter
to be hidden

place
    where two and two
make five

or will do if
they tell you it does

TIMELINE

Christopher
in this timeline

never makes it
to the New World
his ships got stopped
in their tracks
by metal flying machines
with stars on the wings
and the power
to sink his
every ship
in half a second

huge metal boats
surfaced from under
the water
    which appeared to
have a few aboard who
could speak Spanish
or Italian

who told him
in no uncertain terms
to return whence he came
M
there, upon his arrival in Cadiz,
no one would believe
his story

and even under torture
the Inquisition in Madrid
could not extract
a plausible account

and, thus, in these
grave circumstances
determined he must be silenced

the thought of such
an advanced civilization
across the Atlantic
would shake
the Church to its core
and threaten the sovereignty
of every European nation

deconstructing
every
     rational premise

from final straw
to germ of an idea.

****
  
MILLION WATT AMP

I espied Apollo there
with his lyre

or maybe an
old banjo from dust bowl
heartlands

I am no
expert on music though
strolling through the stadium
with his
half-brother Dionysos

both exchanging at that moment
a sort of knowing smile

my guy
wondering what it might sound
like and,
more importantly, what
that sounds might do
to the
structures of
society

if it were seriously electrified
Marshall amped up to the max
(not ten
       but eleven)

fuzz-boxed, wah-wah pedal led
and shaking the foundations
of Heaven
through
       something close
to a million Watts.

****

ODA ANACONDA

syllable by
masticated syllable

came across you
filling that legendary belly
devouring every
morsel
of my name

seems
my being a snake too
according to
the ancient astrology

made me
as regards foodstuff
near
    exact fit for you

a task for you
to slide into wisely
without apprehension

if you were
      to call it
a marriage here not
of convenience

but
made it Heaven

consummated
in Hell, in devilish fashion

I would have
to agree

although
equally I might just add

it sounds
just
   as good

the other way round.

****

DANTE

and there
at the very centre
of Hell

we find
Dante

tortured for eternity
for libelling those
above his
station

the justice perfect
the irony beautiful

everything in accord
for one whose wicked faith
could not
comprehend

that the Universe
has its golden favourites
who
   should always
be worshipped, venerated
by those for whom
they are
their betters

the writers
of the law
always
above and beyond the law

(on this angel and devil
could
    not be more
united

it is
their common faith)

   ****

   WOBBLE

apologies
for the speed
wobble

but have got
fully pedal to the metal
watch them
all vanish
in the rear
view mirror

Plato, Aristotle
Jesus, Buddha, Nietzsche
all those great philosophies,
species dreams

fascism, dystopia,
cyborg reality,  looming up
ahead
    trying to
millionaire there
quantum disentangle, hit
light speed if possible

all a blur
crazy psychedelic sensation

soon
you will
feel the doom

really get
to the core

be one
with the rule
of iron
over chaos

ride the great wave
final seismic shift         

****

HEY STANLEY

hey Stanley
throw me

                      a bone

                      match-cut
me
to something out there
beyond infinity

Space Odyssey me
strapped to the monolith

so at last I
        can expire

leave the cinema last
rewatch, last time

knowing
    in my soul I
have somehow

          arrived homm

COLLECTION: BEYOND BELIEF

BEYOND BELIEF

The Devil chuckled
toe-kicked a charred bone
which skidded along
what once was a road

even he
who had seen, had created
so much destruction
found it hard
to take it all in

as he confessed to
his key lieutenant
joining him in the morning
for his tour of inspection

but then he thought
on the ones who
had done this
and his earlier mirth returned

yes those missile messianics
desperate to scorch the planet
fast-tracking to rapture

“I love the smell
of nuclear fission
in the morning

it is
the smell of purity
of transcendence
beyond compare”.

****

DANCING WITH THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN

was heading due west
when the wheel
started to splinter, come
away in my hand

seemed like a vortex out there
demonic triangle
         portal pulling me in
ghost ships
     flying dutchmen following
me into
   that gorgeous abyss
(sphere of the zombie, land
of the dead)

where, to be fair, I would find
locale most congenial
to consort
   with Frankenstein’s creature’s
bride

the two of us in true tango,
monstering out first midnight together

drone
of supreme dissonance
about to
   switch off my brain

and yet how
we spin
    across the floor
illusion of
free movement
delusion of light speed

whilst
    eyes still locked inward
split, almost dismembered
the limbs
  scrabbling for somewhere
treading
     ice water dragged across
the spectrum, shuttled forward

back like
      a ball in ping pong between
what we are told
are complete hyperbolic poles

and now for
our videofest, hook up
for the podcast

think up
some catastrophic leveling
skimming like a
cruise missile, like
an angel of abomination
targeting
    all hearts if
we have them

as I repent all
my falsehoods, so
shamefully having lied to you
              to preserve my power
keep
my inverted commas innocence

not a deus ex machina
but brutal blade of a guillotine
falls and released
                           it is
just
the end of the poem

****
SPIRITED AWAY

was stumbling through
the glowing embers of
downtown Cape
Town South Africa

so much of the collateral human
damage vaporized by
the strike from the SLBM

which got me thinking
(last thought I would have
as the insane Rad levels
began to get to me)

thinking
that if anything war
has taught us
dissecting a cat
is easier, more egregious,
and worse
a Sin
than performing any
such dissection on
an innocent human

at which, I guess,
you would tell me

no one
is innocence
power is everything
we get
what
we deserve

this I would loved to
debate with you at
my old university
perched
   below the mountain

but I hate to think what
remains of that edifice
at the epicentre
of the blast

I’m pretty sure
it got spirited away

“””
MR MOUSTACHE

Oh Mr Moustache
king of the filthy lyrics.
wah-wah guitar
and free speech

throwing sonic
bombs of complexity
at stupidity

there with that f-you
stare in a dress on
that infamous record cover
strictly commercial only
in it for the money
              tuning
the beauty
of our discord

I wonder why your satire
never quite flattened
your targets like,
to be frank, those
zag-zig
     zap-zip
weasels ripped
        moments in
your outrageous punch

Oh Mr Moustache
if you stab us
do we not jump?

****
NUKE

I sense
your guard is down

at long last
it is the moment for
which I have been waiting

I am the dark secret of the stars
about to manifest
in the high street
in your back yard

targeting each and everyone of you
since they first broke my code
found my formula

I am your consummation
devoutly to be wished
I am
your longed for apocalypse
in fissile person

I am everything you wanted
the embodiment of everything
you promised yourselves

I have
always been your fate
rather now
than too late

I am what was written
what you tell yourself
is the truth of scripture

am
your special place
what was always
inside you

and now I find you sleepwalking
brainless, dissolved into shadow

believe my task is done
have done my duty
can now rest in
beautiful silence

bury my power
for another few million years.

****

IN A STATION AT THE METRO (REVISITED)

the apparition of some fire-bearded poet named Ezra Pound

enough to shock into freeze frame the entire Metro crowd

****

THE LINGERING

the sadness
of never knowing you
the real you

always looking
from the outside
seeing the people
you are close to

and this
I show you now
is that image of you
I hold onto, keep
in my heart

Oh if
      I could just relive
that captured moment

feel once more
        feel once more

those small, exquisite, endearing joys
that deep, sublime, long-
lasting,
     lingering pain

****

POET IN THE RAIN

the rain sizzles
poet splitters
a few syllables
dissolves, melts

flows somewhere
as liquids are wont to

meanwhile
(for a billion meanwhiles)
the cosmos carries on
business
      as usual

same old laws
that birthed us, did
us in
   upon which we
came to depend

unless
     things changed, shifted gear,
found a different trajectory
whole new
direction

could
     have fooled us

no one around to document, observe
no one left to tell

****
POEM BE DIME A DOZEN

serious discount
special offer

first-time customer
promo code

buy one and
extraordinaire we
will
                        throw
in for free
ten, twenty, thirty
fifty-five others

all tailor made
right
    for your algorithm

in this hectic lightspeed
universe of
digital time

infinite supply
zero demand

the last
great poem
                so
before
   we were born

“”””

IF THE OCEAN

if the ocean
is anything to go by

abundance
of life forms can
be no garden
of Eden

that sincere English gentleman
categorizing beaks, making
all the measurements

seeing a big picture no one
had previously seen
purpose working
   across a timescale unimaginable

dead on lucid
the mind evolved to see this
peering into the inexorable
mind and
     heart of life

throwing all those arbitrary
constellations into an
extremity of quandry

playing havoc with all our
tales and fables,  deepest
metaphors of design

****
CASCADE

sometime I don’t know when
feels beyond anywhere

where cosmic logic demands
we should meet again

let us
live the moment on it’s own terms
forget the past

forget all that crazy quantum stuff
about parallel universes
alternate histories

not even how it might
have been had we
got things right

where
    with beautiful timing
a right word was said

the rest
      thereafter just

cascade
     after cascade

****

LOOKING FOR OUR OWN BUKOWSKI

we rule
the world in rugby

so why should we not
rule the world, the Continent,
the galaxy
    with our Bukowski’s

was
the premise of a reality show
and now I am hurtling
in a van
     fresh from the airport
looking to find our own Bukowski
combing the bars, scouring
the shebeens looking
for a soul out there in
as yet ungentrified Cape Town
able to
       distil door and
alcohol into poetry

to drive us rhapsodic
with his laconic drawl

will we find him?
will we find him?

trying to get
hype-machine into
top gear to
drum up a hype machine
inflect those all
so precious ratings

thinking of the format
as we drive
   thinking of every
future episode

pots of gold at the end
of this wholly contrived
quite
    amazing rainbow

can see
those lips moving in synch
my mind’s-eye camera tracking
traversing
as we in moments
of precious realtime airtime
disseminate memes

  chat even now

****

RECEIPT

got long
memories

still vivid
still fresh

but even if we didn’t
even in everything
was forgotten
and forgiven
     as you say

even if there was such
a concerted heartfelt effort
to get them changed
have
them erased

we buried it deep
we have the receipt

what you took
what we got
        in all those transactions

down
there somewhere

will
fill in the blanks

we kept
the receipt

****
THIN AIR

Like Ophelia
he died small

a paltry few to mourn
barely a stone

above the grave they circulate
unclaimed constellations
we have not figured out
let alone
    found a pattern, given
them names

he put in the excruciating time
the hard learning
         no lost to history, genius
savant
for whom we have to
concoct such a narrative
  stretch creative fiction
to
  its breaking point

oh that something so
miraculous, universal.
could be the deepest lie
complete travesty

where in our entire history
was such greatness
           plucked out of
nowhere

flirt the the idea that
it was there for the taking,
be pulled
      from the shadows

no greater alchemy
sucked out of thin air

****
BOMBWISE

bomb me
bomb them
bomb yourself
bomb

everything you hate
anyone you like

bomb
guided
bomb standoff

bomb
in peace, bomb
to start a war

bomb cruelly
bomb kindly
bomb to eviscerate
bomb to liberate

bomb up and down
and all around
every which way and wise

****

UP TO SCRATCH

when I arrived in Hell
was stunned to find
the place empty
the only
evil soul there

so to kill a bit of eternity
the devils and I played pool
sank some beers
    discussed the state
of the world
and humanity
from a left-wing perspective

making time for the torturers
to ready their equipment
         the inquisitors in
Hell’s hierarchy
to stoke their fabled fires

get my suffering
up to scratch

****
RENAISSANCE

then did the tree cascade

burst into fruit

a poem, two,
three even there
to be
found
on every leaf

none of them great, none
very good

it has to be said
       (or perhaps just whispered)
      
****
BLISS

here I am
conjugating the verb “blister”

where after
took a trek to the zoo
to escape (Mama taboo)
the schtick I was
taking in the zero point
quantum field

and you in your G string
playing the devil’s chord
entertaining
        string as your
theory of everything

blitz attack it were
(forgive my dialect) when
you came
   to seduce me

our ramshackle bits
that we might juxtapose
                        somewhat
surreal or
even psychedelic

shipwrecking me in the tropics
slave to fat climates

exercising your leverage
haughty in the knowledge
that woman
     is subroutines, is
ex machina, is Grecian
statuesque chemical
factory
   cosmic comedy, existential
tragedy
disjunction waiting
to happen

lured into those gardens
sheer abyss of bliss

fusion
    is out there beyond the borderlands
of anything
possible

time beyond time if
we could but find it

place of riddle and parable
stamped in the image
of all that
       ventures with trajectories

that
    (for want of wings demonic
or distinctly angelic)
is suffered to stumble,  crawl,
shuffle, hop and swing

sharp and lithe end
     somewhere between
plain
   writing stylus and hi-
tec Nile
      crocodile

****
PLASMA (POEM FOR CARLOS SANTANA)

say it was gradual
no big bang but
some
   kind of inflation

whereupon in this
fable
     gas clouds gravity
stars
      plasma

hydrogen helium
smorgasbord of elements

and you
      subject of
every song

Muse of
   every meditation

you every delicious atom
of your loveliness
from
   an entirely different star

Oh baby
    reminding me tonight
of that crucible
perfect furnace

and then
        soul, word,
music

constellation
        gnosis between galaxy
upon galaxy

ocean upon ocean

you wrestling with that
red python
    on the Woodstock stage

(if you don’t mind me saying so)
cosmos coursing through you
dragging every note
out of you
that you played
         
****

OR SO YOU BELIEVE

déshabillé
(or so you believe)

whereas I would say
too much is divulged
subtext is showing

paradigm so exposed
to the ruination of your reputation

need a cover up
    heads to
spin

though my own stock-
in-trade be
scarcely golden

seems like you may just
have rushed too pre-
cipitously into
some bad
media alchemy

and now
    are looking high and low
under every bombed structure
for each
   and every collateral

making such a racket to
deflect our eyes
       from the hypocrisy

the place
reduced to a desert
carnage
      beyond words

sad that what might have
served poetry
   bent out of shape to
sustain
   the war industry

defend
     death’s exceptionally

make the case for a rapture
thing so sickly sweet

will
   annihilate the need for
theology
        morality, humanity

basic kindness and love
the species professed to hold dear

****
KINO YVES

Yves
you swallow continents
pedalful at a time

expending more energy
than the whole of Europe
(no wonder
      you eat so ravenously
and with such
miraculous delight)

Morning you guys. Let’s
get going  Onward to Lusaka!

moon buggy astronaut of
the whole of
Africa
    Emperor of handshake
in his slowly slowly chariot
of joie de vivre

“are you
    for real?” they ask him
and
   he does alter perceptions
pre-define reality

inexorably, beautifully
     edging your way down to
Cape Town

     bringing
out the best in us

all of South Africa it seems
waiting for you

screeching to an ecstatic  emphatic halt

    when, to their total belief
they see you, catch you,
pass you
     dodging through Mother
City traffic

munching lunch
   in their neighborhood

his little candle bringing
light to
     us all

slowly, exquisitely slowly, guys,
wending its way
       from France to
Agulhas

cape of needles, furthest point
South where
           oceans meet

as always,
   leveling with us, soul
of humility

beyond
    elevation

hugging the ground so low:
salt of the Earth, son of the soil
             
  ****
SADALMELIK (Alpha Aquarii)

I tell
you that the stars
have Arab names

and that we might
calculate their distance
thanks to your algebra
.
Zero too
    is a

beautiful concept

so much zero here
across these desert sands

there was life
but something subtracted it

bodies abound
        even the sky fireworks
and shock waves

somehow
       fails to wake them

arabesque
algorithm

the stars, the bodies
have Arab names

luckiest of the lucky
   down to zero this night
in Palestine.

I tell you
the stars have Arab names.

****
COLOURS APART

cold world
cold war

trillions in debt so
we go submarine

stalking as only the most.
lethal can do

we are
in uncharted waters
following some sacred map
which shows no
colours of
possession

only rivers
and mountains
        bland geopolitical
topography

you can look to find
inhabitants but
they are
     to small to be seen
to inconsequential to
be detected

even with
sonar, infra red
space telescopes,
electron microscopes

should you
       prefer to use a magnifying
glass be careful
not to
     focus that white
sunlight
  incinerate carelessly

Oh that mentality
guess it comes with
is what you
get
   with the studied
inculcation
of desire logic
             labotomy

got to a place
here
    where the labels don’t
stick
  paradigm corrupts

and there we
      look for and find you
spread-
   eagled across all spectrums

split up through a prism

coming to me here
     for plausible deniability

your only failing (not a sin!
not a crime!)
    your unshakeable supremacy

****
ON THE WHOLE

Lovely eyes

but such
moral blindness

windows
to the soul

in your case
leading
      nowhere,
.
unless
    to abyss, hole

(tragic
on the whole)

****

TEAPOT

below
everybody’s radar

a fabulous world
bunkering
at the bottom
of your
white rabbit hole

and
after a divinity of
fine tea in the
arms of such company

time to reset
boot up
    swipe
delete any virus
inconvenient program

waiting for
the bus of old age
who on Earth is
going to believe your story

the jury out
on whether the bus has
been missed, is late,
can
   be said to exist

that debate
still raging, if ever
so quietly,

the luxury of it all
every tea set fully furnished,
expertly laundered

no future as monolithic
on the horizon, on
any horizon, as that
presents us as star child

not wishing to moonshine you
Cheshire Cat or Caterpillar you

you my dear girl
        captured in this selfie
under the hat you
borrowed from
that mad
fellow

nothing in your sharp mind
going to change the heavy
metals in
    his system to
                     gold

who single-
handedly threw
tea pot into unknown
postal district
     this saucer into whole
new big bang aggrendisment
lurking in
galaxy not up
to us
to speak about

****

PARTITION

something flew in
as I was closing my window

caught me unarmed,
unprepared and
almost undressed

something vice versa
came
     to pay a visit
tax my vulnerability

shapeless  yet
geometric
    of both darkness and light

turning everything
it did touch
   into its opposite

here to
   spend time with me, get close,
or simply chat with my shadow

to devour
  what it needed or

return
some missing part

****

BOTH (AND YET NEITHER)

treading water
in Carrie cobalt blue
Manolo Blahniks
(for

  the job
of survival
          to be up to
salvation

you
going to need a great shoe)

Oh the horror of whirlpool
then abyss
    singularity (following)
dark dorsals
beneath the
surface

everything death iconic
spiralling
   out of control

and who
    is
     master of Charybdis
who does not
bear
   the power to
slake all before him?

angels in a fitting room
          once wings are
right
   sized

upon hearing your cries
cannot help
   but hurl
themselves Earthward

reckon with Poseidon
as reach
   beyond light speed

wax
wane full
deus ex machina
   
 
****

BACK TO BACK

here we find
an island of lost love

typical
single palm tree
distinctly cartoonish

two in fact
back to back

this is yours
that is mine

we no longer really
express concern or
curiosity

even think
of swimming the distance

after decades
of messages in bottles
seductive gestures, crude
gesticulations,
blowing kisses

waving
at each other
hoping
    and praying

in our heads it has all
become too distant, we
are too far away

for anything
in our
      former expressions of
stubborn desire

to make
a difference

****

COW BELL

Your poem
lacks
combination

needs
more cow bell

is hardly
Blue Oyster Cult
Santana
at Woodstock

more
cow bell
more cow bell

desperately needed
and more
soul
sacrifice

words as wings
soaring out to find God
if there
is a God

if there is
a God without poetry
poetry
without God

cows
coming home

poem pushing the
edge of the envelope
scratching
   the skin
of divinity

everything on the line

****

EN PASSANT

white bread
white sugar
white pieces
white shackles

there she is
cutting through your
white kitchen
like a great
white shark

finding the black square
that is her home berth

all this blueberry
and vanilla
for breakfast

when she
     carving up the meat
and vegetables
my
   best chess ninja

true denizen of
deep
   strategy

yours the
first move
  but after that she
is six ahead
        (have to give it to
her my supreme queen of
slick initiative)

****

EDGE

only a love descant
could be that beautiful

unless we consider
the melodies of death

whose
      melancholic timbre
haunting finality

succinct
completion

all things considered
give
    it the edge

****

YOUR STORY

the moment I stepped into
your boudoir, your bower
your magical
room
   beyond all rooms

down otherside the main road

way
below the University
due South
of the Mountain

I realized our story
might be wonderful
but we
do not share
the same fairy tale
are of
      misplaced and
out of key archetype
as genre goes
along that spectrum at
opposite ends

and yet for an instant  that
branching moment of
entanglemen
         of which the great
tale of
quantum tells

we looked at each other giddy
with the spectre
of possibility
          and yet

not with the power to
rewrite, retell

do that zany, sexy Zarathustra thing

of breaking moulds
redefining all that hitherto
we were
     and believed
about ourselves

****

ABOARD

stash your poetry
stash your food

when
his shit hits the fan
the musk rat got
no space for
you aboard
his rocket

when you
heard “all aboard”
you fooled yourself
there was place
   as fellow supremacist
there was
    a seat for you
at the astral table
of cosmic
entitlement

there in echelon with
all of Nikola’s finest
finding lebensraum

Leni Riefenstahl style parades
all across the equatorial
circumference of
      some
implausible planet

musk rat autobahn upon
autobahn
      to criss-cross terraform

make
safe to inhabit

****
GUITAR

my telephone beeps
it does
not speak

it tells me
her message is here
was
   holding my breath

but now
I can breathe

this is what she wrote
fingers that once
tippy-
toed now

dancing across
the keyboard
         express
delivery

heart to
      heart

(would those nimble
fingers were
here

plucking my strings
                   playing me like
a rock guitar)

****
POINT BLANK

Oh Mr Point Blank
I see I have a brand new
archetype
    from lover and
magician
suddenly am
become
    crone

hunched, crippled
in body whilst
the mind grows sharp
as a scythe
brutally clearer

seeing our nemesis
exactly
    long before it is
here

how by the twisted
logic of our being
what
    it needs destroy

how
it unfolds.

****
PLAIN SIGHT

hiding something

always hiding
              something

black ink sloshed
across the page

covering
       with words, meanings
diffuse, uncertain
      unsteady
                      complex

everything there opaque
clear as day, in

         plain
         sight

****

EMILY
(a Dickinson/Leone mashup)

she good

she bad

and she
way beyond Tuco Ramirez ugly
(very
      definition of Nietzsche’s
           sense of beyond)

she the three –
way duel, three
pistoleros, shadows
one
       self

the civil war graveyard
extreme longshot
close up
             zoom

Mexican
stand-off of all time

****
SHADOW THAT RESIDES

he must have nigh
a hundred cyber
lovers by now

trillions of synaptic connections
but does he have the Ram
Rom brain space
to hold
    cherish them all

beings of bit and byte
whose love
and desire but an
inflection of text

behind
which veil who knows
the truth
     being learnt
     shadow that resides

****
COSMOLOGY

a magical alluring mystery
spectacle

almosr too far away
for light to travel

your dance of seven veils
alluding
       to our source tempting
our return
.
and me in the back row
with much undersized telescope
longing for the front row
a window seat
    somewhere close relatively
speaking
  where at least I feel I
can reach out and touch

this routine so exactly
choreographed, yet primal
and chaotic
     is thing you have wanted
me to witness
for billions
      of yesrs

but the laws that say I am
a bit underaged to be
witnessing this
     let alone understand it

tell you that
        your moves are slowing
getting stretched out
breaking
        dissolving

and this I can see
hear explained by
cosmic dude on
           my cellphone (Cox,
Greene, Kaku, Hawking or Tyson)

time will come
when you have Medusaed
yourself
     are iron cold and
a statute

and me, as
for me

long long before then
will have deserted the scene
me and my
world well
        out of popcorn

this great gorgeous
cinema a thing
       of the past (though
no future or past)
    
****

TEAPOT

below
everybody’s radar

a fabulous world
bunkering
at the bottom
of your
white rabbit hole

and
after a divinity of
fine tea in the
arms of such company

time to reset
boot up
    swipe
delete any virus
inconvenient program

waiting for
the bus of old age
who on Earth is
going to believe your story

the jury out
on whether the bus has
been missed, is late,
can
   be said to exist

that debate
still raging, if ever
so quietly,

the luxury of it all
every tea set fully furnished,
expertly laundered

no future as monolithic
on the horizon, on
any horizon, as that
presents us as star child

not wishing to moonshine you
Cheshire Cat or Caterpillar you

you my dear girl
        captured in this selfie
under the hat you
borrowed from
that mad
fellow

nothing in your sharp mind
going to change the heavy
metals in
    his system to
                     gold

who single-
handedly threw
tea pot into unknown
postal district
     this saucer into whole
new big bang aggrendisment
lurking in
galaxy not up
to us
to speak about

****
BITE OF THE APPLE
“I don’t like cities,
but I love New York.”
                   Madonna

Men have
       been blown here
                    before

wandered
off course,

many
       (akin to Odysseus)
into the Aegean
across
   the Mediterranean

so much of that culture
alive on these streets

and whilst
(slice
   of life) they
while away time whittle
down the hours

Patti Smith is going
full barefoot  channeling Rimbaud

someone one there too
Christianized Jew
mournful
      singing the apocalyptic signs
all along the watchtower

everything with soul
heading for this harbor

cataclysm of Europe
strongest of
    land breeze

what is the supreme
text that we have faith
here gets
written

skyscraper high
scrawled on every wall

      ****

OFF THE MAP

you loved to frustrate me,
fire at me,
play sexual politics
strike true anti-colonial poses
revolutionary stances
in the bedroom
and pretty
much everywhere else

slide of lathe
recoil of the typewriter

hostile gestures of
a body
at large

naked in its knowledge
stripped of all pretension

the cement set to
seal the concrete of
your foundations
still
   bottom of the harbor wet
as absurd
  a lockstep as you
might
   manage to get

Oh, you say, Medusa eyes
fastening upon me

we are that absurd
complete creature whose
permanent state of ecstasy
no god
    or goddess could withstand

absurdly un-Platonic in the
daft contours of its beauty

and Aristophanes (for
it was he) rueful
of this
    surgical separation even
if carved
by divine hand

at one stroke a lost comedy
and hydra of philosophy

from Socrates to Nietzsche
the words of
the mind to
     bring merciful spin
to
   the painful ontology
premised upon

that forever division
distinction

chasm
   in the heart of desire
between woman and man

****

SMALL

here be
magic mirrors

reality killers
things Harry
Houdini found
in the book
of Thoth

magic they are
mirroring their means

but your inner
weather being stormy
heart
    cloudy
they show only shadow
an
  essential condition

and here we have
halls full, a glade
mirrors
   covering, mapping
an entire topography

every mirror
giving room
for reflection, a room
a boudoir that
is a reflection upon
all
that is
hidden perspective

room within
a room
tesseract mirror
containing its
own reflection

and you
with pencil and paper tasked
to sketch
   this truth in
myriad dimensions

all
  unfolding
in real time

tiniest of spheres, indeed
infinitesimally small

yet
  containing the Universe
containing every everything

****
DOWNSIDE

feel I am
going down

bound to get
relegated

have already fallen
half the distance
of any
  dark angel

down a division
in fact
   every division

imparting a whole
new meaning to
the word
“relegated”

but if
jury is already out
and what be
must be
   (to the tune of
Helter Skelter no
lesser
   lovey-dovey tune of
Messers Lennon
         and McCartney)

into that place far from self
from the centre
from
   the presence of
God (here I go with Augustine,
father
     of Bishop Prevost lately Leo)

but not
     for pride or for wrath
or envy
    (or my worst, sloth)

but simply, honestly,
inescapably
     for lust

for lust is hardly the deadly
to destroy the world

hardly the deadly of
the prince
     of darkness (once light)
his
     most precious self

and
   in my defence to all
those who

never felt
your touch, ever cast
eyes upon
you

and yet
    so quick to cite text

an eternity of torture worth
every second spent
                                     
****
DUET

am hear
to learn; listen
know
    my
history

be
sweetly transported

these minds encompassing
everything
         voices like
encyclopedias

from Custer to Agincourt to
Hastings to the Stones
all the way back
to eleventh
century Japan

and me
thinking I knew it all
knew
ever so much

and there at that court
ruled by these poetic ladies
cannot
   but think
would have been
in my element

reading
  her body’s calligraphy
drowning in
her incense

learning every nuance
code semiotic of
pillow
and screen

mastering those rules as
my imagination candle lit
by
   this quite
precious fabric  melody
of voices

perfect duet
Tom
    and Dominic
(Dominic and Tom)

****
DIRTY

talk dirty
write
dirty

this is not
the pristine poetic
world of eleventh century
Imperial Japan

no here
a poem might
so easily
get out
of hand

filch its meanings
transgress its codes

take
for a ride
things the goodly
well circumscribed reader

will find nigh
impossible
to
  understand
 
****
AJAR

white smoke
blank smoke

suddenly stymied
something is ajar

or it is just
that it seems so
need to
    turn true scholatic
to question its quidity

and then habeam
everything geared to go

clocks
                bells
and whistles

rerum
   novarum      this will
               be no re-run

the new Vicar
    (born under
the virgin at
least
stellar sigh of)

critically
testing the steel of a halberd
with his shepherd’s finger

new light in waves incarnate
as particle
          this city within
a city
dovetailing itself into the heart
of the city of cities

paradigm for everything
we admire, everything we fear

first as myth
then as bad fairy Tale

the one where
a door is denied and
we
   are prisoners of time

black smoke white smoke
a city
   so divine must
find room for confession

that old river flowing
forever recycling the great
shapes of
     virtue, obedience and power

dawn
a thing
      we need
to
conduct as experiment

old medieval truth
not without fire

    ****

SO MUCH BETTER FOR IT

When the great
god Emperors
go juggernaut

it will
as always

be poetry
that suffers

and there we see Ovid
the pornogrpher
banned from Rome
languishing in exile

the great Julian
city of Augustus
now so much better for it.

****

NOODLE

reptile thought he was
a noodle     a wavy fat ot
fine rigatoni

tube to swallow
ingest digest
off-
   load deadly venoms
best chemist
in the book

and rattle there perhaps
to be polite

forewarn of worst ambush rendezvous
      you never thought

perhaps
happily forestall

meanwhile, back
at the ranch or
should
I say “rainforest”

python went
about his business, swam
up the Amazon (reading
every
    tributary)
selecting the apt parabola
for turning anaconda

and me born sixth and
legless Chinese sign

best I can do
    didgeridoo baby bandana
festherless fatherless
elegant boa

shake
my scales for a poem or two

need my noodle
to talk it through

****

NOT QUITE AS RIGHT AS IT
USED TO BE

Cyril in the White House
ambush diamondback
cat
   and mouse

beasts from Africa versus
reptile from the Everglades
monster from
the swamps

and who can take a needle
to puncture all
we are hearing
      gas stretching that membrane
soon
balloon
right through
the ceiling?

and F-16s screaming in
in echelon to
sink this sucker
could not
be so
optimum poised, streaking
across the rooftops
utterly
   locked and loaded

whilst delegations settle
or stiffen
   down into their seats
to watch the presentation
(showing
   Donald he be not the
only one with hail Caesar
inclinations)

but more than
an ounce of
     truth in all that
dispossession tslk

yes
    rift is real and
out on
   some prime golf
course
     deep under handicap
hard to
   feel it is bound
to be widening
            going full Grand Canyon

you don’t have to be
the Jew of Trier
to know
     this in your bones
have
    figures out the dance
and painted to perfection

but
  who got the win here? In
this Mexican standoff
who was
     good who was bad
and who was
loveable
trickster ugly

and was this all just
symbolic or
            high reality
show

Nobel Prize
soap opera

but let’s beg to
differ over
     definition

how many
     need to be killed

or simply
feel

out of place in
the wrong time or
somewhat somehow
inconvenienced

Privilege not feeling
quite as right
            as it used to be

****

DARK SIDE

“You have no idea
of the power of the
dark side.” Star Wars,
Episode V  The Empire
Strikes Back.”

Garside
dark side

my sleek black
serpentine muse
surfacing with a list
of devilish assignations
from
   deep beneath the pithead

me paying in blood for
these limited skills (can
barely call
them art)

but today a difference:
wraps me up, hauls
me off
   takes me deep
down in that elevator
sheer
   demon deep

leveling out there
whar she blows

other uses for these fingers
back-up dexterities

learn to
probe shadow, uncouple
                           shackles

take on board so much
blistering anger raging
irreverence
       
raving               raging
words
           ruins
runes
spreading  chaos
across the page
.
stooping to levels
below the unthinkable

damned
to write horrors, delights,
infinite beyond
the gurgling sounds
a throat might make, doomed
damned
         blessed

infinitely so
for all time
     
****

X-PLICIT

have a poem
to text you

but
cannot text you
because it’s
(candidly)
just way too explicit

because
it dancing naked
running
wild
       from
           top
            to bottom

crazy drunk with desire
across the page

****

AND THE REST IS POETRY

silk tsunami
upon tsunami

exquisite carnage
amongst the tea
leaves

we fight alongside them
at the Somme, Trafalgar,
and Agincourt

relive Cannae
amongst the Roman ranks
front
     and centre
adjoining Hannibal

and here
in the Imperial Palace of
supreme pillowbook

there is just too much
frissance to be done yet

this is a fabric
we will forgive them
if they stretch out to infinity

but who is at the door?
time for football and other homely analogies

glad you were not tempted to
share a spliff with the Devil’s own
such sweet London boys in
the arms of the constabulary

needing shelter
shortly to jumping Jack it
West
     another English invasion
into French territory

Tom and Dominic
Dominic and Tom

such love for Hal, Keith and
shrewd míster Mick
not to speak of those
          supreme Japanese ladies

whose exquisite names
they so perfectly pronounce

****

HONEY

do not presume
to tell me
what
is forbidden

is the sky
forbidden?
the sea
the Sun
you

yourself
    forbidden?

are all the things
in your book
of prescriptions
             ultimately forbidden

what of honey
is that too,
forbidden

bees may sting
but the make it freely

as is the case
with honey, your honey

it is the sting
itself that makes it what it is
defines it as honey

and so please
before you
close the gates
shut
   the hive
lay the mines
      string the wire

as a matter of gentility do
tell me what is forbidden
point to
     what is forbidden
in all this honey

that I might discover
taste
    and judge

decide for myself

****

KINDERGARTEN

sirens in the kindergarten
not for lunch
but as everything
beginning with
the letter B
is about to attack

some chuckle-face
throwing himself at Miss
asking good-naturedly

how do you spell “conventional”
how you write:
with the one
true God on our side, it is
with sadness and
profound regret
I have
    just given the order
pressed the button
for nuclear attack

Miss,
    face ashen,
wondering what, if  anything,
will ever written again

****

SMOTHERED

smothered mate
Mr Bond

love of
Queen (now King)
and country
has
  squashed you
into a corner

no man supposedly
an island but
you appear
to be a
tiny one

deluded by the believed
magnificence
of your
self-
importance

and now
to put it bluntly
you are
   screwed, have
lost the game

and this
    foreign, highbrow, villainous
post-atomic, cyber-
crime,
    deformed
asexual, intellectual mutant

gloating at how
     you took the Gambit, swallowed
the poisoned pawn

in one wrong move altered
geopolitics
    and the nature
of Empire

and you
with your jaw
hewed from granite and
tinker-tailor brain

wondering if like
Admiral Horatio you too
will be
   elevated above the laiety
on towering
plinth
   or column

as the streets of old-time Motherland  clucking
for
  her lost
children

all smashed to chicken shit
beg you
to resign next move
before,
    like a guillotine, it befalls,
becomes the
iconic moment captured
for all time
   that now will change
                        everything

****

ARRAYED

I was playing chess
waiting for the rains

playing chess
that most
complucated of
games

waiting for things
to unfold

thinking
how in our games
we eschew simplicity
hanker after
the perfectly complexity
that in a brief moment
of sublimec brilliance
near
   perfect clarity

becomes the near-
perfect metaphor
if not
   for life

then for how
life would like
to see
   itself

including human life;
our lives as humans
for all their differences,
permutations
anomalies

crystallized for
a moment, for
recorded time

here on the square plain
of this game

inside outside which
I sit
    conputing outcomes
considering
every possible move

waiting for the rain
to exhaust itself

clear skies and later
sight of Heaven

there the stars
in some
greater game
silently arrayed.

****

NO SWEAT

I smell
of sweat

smell of death

a smell
to savour
sweat
laced with death

raw odour
needing a tad more
of your perfume
and spice on my skin

and so this alchemy
whose secret
barely hidden
opens itself
to scrutiny

lead
turned to platinum

gold
to uranium

crystal to
diamond

water
to steam

and star  blazing
fissile energy
             force of
such
fusion

stuff of that
industry
to thing that you are

which
that old skald, old troubadour
Saxon
     Norman Viking
Celt
within me

can sing of hesitantly, imperfectly,
the superabundance you require
so
    much long gone
all its
    revelation

lending itself
            to
                all
that
is rival, separate
Other

distant in time
        faithfully elsewhere

whilst
I smell of sweat, do
speak here
of death
and other transformation.

      ****

OVERNIGHT

I am desultory chicken boy
coming home to roost

chaos joker dancing
in the pale moonlight

anarchic fellow
crowing long before the dawn

scarred I am
my features are

sacred beginning: crashed
the party hurtling headlong
headfirst
   from the boot
of your cab

bouncing off windshield
back into the Underworld

life in your
          luxury lap to
utter amazement of all

my Queen of Hades
dancing
    to inherit the Earth

cocksure
this is the life that was meant
Herr Will-to-Power
these the roads most
follow

to dig up
overnight

****
SCRATCH

that’s rich!

            a hint
of measured, justice apocalypse
is the thing you missed

blues mingling with reds
contending
       with purples

strikingly: so much so
that you miss the fine writing
on the wall now
           spreading across
the sky

all at sea, the logos screwed,
politically, economically, socio-
logically

counting on the prescience of
index, rolladex,
     all your database systems

as the waves roll in tides change
continents tilt currents shift

bringing you fully up
                            to speed
     fully up to scratch

****

SUCH THINGS

supply
demand
greed

shackles and
sheckels

we got a whole
market economy

but what
the downside, what
the tightening tariff

tell me now
for I was born of woman
am part of that insanity

but now
   for my sins
though still wedged in
am edging my way out

tunnelling
towards the light
I never truly
believed in

scarcely a scrap of paper
to my name
to record
what I feel here

instinctively, by Nature
(Reason to
    catch up later). 

words begging
for attention

kiss my ass to that bliss
which I
    never earned anyway

you tell them you tell them
what we started with
such hope

     dead from imagination

****
LONG NIGHT

let me walk you through
the length of  a night
the breadth of a poem

sorry if you so surely Shelley
about the nature of rhyme

miss a beat, grimace
flutter as the lines stutter
not Homer blind but
pretty much a
stick-shuffling cripple

trying to make it through
short days
long nights

when you so cookie-cutter
about everything
dial in delivery
         everything on the menu
from hot to
G spot

long night love afterglow
basking in luxury

let me
    cuddle my pen

dishing you
        this trash

****
LIGHTLY

dove flew
         (24/7
at her beck and call)
down from
Olympus

quicksilver service of
his divine mistress

she needing
a word, more
than a word with her
misfiring genius

also
   express delivery a vial
not of regular old absinthe but
crystal-precious ambrosia
not just
   once but twice, thrice
carbon filtered and
scientifically
distilled

his eyes still smarting in recoil
from her last light show

before she decided
to conclude mutual proceedings
in standard mortal
Helen of Troy form

whatever and
           whichever way to
be diced

she
  not to be taken lightly

jazz of her in full worship glory
too much for
             me to bear

****

BALL

ball rolled down
a chuté

shot out
a spring

sure
thing

and me Mr Uncertainty
only ever
graduating to
Professor Still-
in-Doubt

Oh that clockwork
chocolate marionette soldier
holding the line
never
   breaking ranks

when the ball that the Universe
let itself be scooped
into
   enters our system
collides with
our planet

will all or gods confer
debate pooling their powers

the Sun sad to see
any of his vast circle
of siblings and
children

summoned and judged
assigned the fine
hairline
  cosmic justice of
planned
   extinction event

****
MANCHESTER APHRODITE

I am
always dreaming of Manchester

always dreaming of Aphrodite

she comes from
Reykjavik, she comes from
Kingston, she comes from
Tehran, she comes
the South, further
South than
Richmond, New Orleans,
Auckland, Canberra or
                     Johannesburg

further East than
Manilla, Lahore, Madras,
         Shanghai, Singapore or Osaka

further left than
Rosa Luxemburg or
Dolores La Passionaria

but I jest;
        of course I jest,

she only ever appears as you

perhaps
     she is you

and I am doomed to haunt
the dream streets, twists
and turns and
secret alleyways of
this
    city looking for you

only for
       the beauty, utter beauty
of single
devastating glimpse.

****
MOUNTAINS

the mountains
are giant pieces
awaiting
   their first
move

I think
they have  defence up
their sleeve that will
nullify our opening

set a trap with poisoned pieces
that will lure us
to a
   great fall

but we have moved but
no one sees it
news of
     the push of a pawn
into the centre not

yet having
reached us
     time seeming to move
so slowly
the game
taking forever

yet Black is thinking through
all possibilities
        getting those mountains
off the back rank

volcanoes tsunami marshalled
with the gravity of
millennia
          all
         at the speed of light

****