consciousness – poems 2 die for

OCEAN

we put

our heads
together

the outside of my brain
pooling its content

with the
outside of yours

so much outside
so much inside

beginnings

of an ocean

WHOLLY FORGET

optical illusion

delusion
allusion

noise in every act of communication
guitar feedback
reaching
crescendo

and now you tell me
I am twisted like a Mobius
pretzel

me is that strain of
consciousness
that gets
filtered out

so many roles just
one actor

best in concentrating
of this taxing script

the other roles be
the ones to wholly forget

WAS SLEEPING

WAS SLEEPING
(AT THE TIME)

my consciousness
your consciousness

was sleeping
whilst someone something
kept turning
off and on the tap
of consciousness

giving me the in out
impression
I am living my life
in a stop motion universe
wonderfully animated

too hard in this strobe like
flicker
to catch hold of a semblance
of corporeal identity, gravity,
divinity

submit to
all that is commonly agreed
to be
the holes in
best philosophy

holding the friendly
hand rail
tight as I might

at the
same time fretting
at the presencs of everything
exceeding my capacity

linear trajectory here of
minimal relevance
to what
lived
at this frequency

RIPPLE

LIVESTREAM

I was
a walking stream
of consciousness

a stream of consciousness
walking with a cobra-headed
hard red-wood stick

treating myself to
a slow circumnavigation
of the heart of the farm

on YouTube meanwhile
much screaming & pontificating
about red lines being crossed
and slippery slope
to no tomorrow

tactical nukes even
as we speak ready for
testing
being wheeled into position

men in their Strangelove
think tanks think
it’s just
a game of brinkmanship
serious
high-stakes bluffing

and me in my Cassandra moment
thinking about the pressing
of that button
to remove the surprise
from smugness in person

it’s wonderful, what
it can do, what platform
it affords for
all career launching

a prestigious degree wreathed
in ivy league ivy

how in such hands, how
safer than safe their
algorithm would
wish us to feel.

CLOCK THIS

I glare
across the board
at you

my need
for victory
my need for redemption

though not
necessarily
a queen
sacrifice

there is in chess
almost always
a really
good move

perhaps even
a best move, a
brilliant move
hiding behind it

submerged in the patterninf
and yet in plain view

clock ticking while
I rack my brain
to find
my moment
of mastery

the beauty of the pieces
finely carved, exquisitely
molded

expanding the brain
Star Child style
to
the edge of consciousness.

MAKE

FRESH FRUIT

On the farm
I wonder

about the ideology
of a tree

the entire tree:
roots, leaves, branches

cannot
escape asking myself
what haiku currently
courses
through the flowers

Of course
    this is (dear reader, I
do recognise) a
category
   mistake
of the first order, and will
no doubt, none too late,
be brought
   to my attention amidst
much
wild snarling

and thus forgive me
my contextualizing in a poem
how much theory
pervades
everything (truly
it is in
its nature
to be an invasive species)

and Fall and Autumn and
all those mellow feelings
much
written about

some ode or other
that leaf to dead leaf
is
remembered

all the wherefores and whys
as to how
this system getting greener
came
not just
to be but
into conscious being

ruthless and polite both
stuck in a rut this day whilst
supposed
of infinite variety

and my voice
estranged, coming back

to me alien

as if
freshly arrived, in awe of
all capacity to
shift the
word of perspective

see things differently.

ALIVE

ALIVE

you can
only know
in the darkness

cannot think
anything
in the light

try to get
a minus from
a positive

only the thought
of pure
subtraction

can multiply itself
alive

DREAD

your brain
is the
Event Horizon

your brain
is
Mulholland Drive

is
the Overlook Hotel

I sit outside
the House of Leaves
waiting
for the door
to open

for something upstairs
to shuffle out
of stupor

switch on a light
show that
there is
at least a flicker

prove that
it is a Cartesian proof
of conscious existence

the thought that I own
this intensity of dread