APART
(for Gary Stevenson)
let’s play chess
or set each other
some mathematical problems
take a logical approach
whilst the world falls
to pieces
billions of pieces
some of the pieces
truth be told, however,
now having
accumulated a
most gigantic size
perhaps we might
consider them in
their own right planets
greater
by far, than
our own little
Earth that just broke apart
YES YANIS
“the surreal colonizing the real”
Yanis Varoufakis
Columbus would have made it
if he had not traded
his ships in for jet skis
and surf boards
would have made it
to the Pacific
if he had not
stopped off in DC
to watch the
Army Navy game
his progress tracked
by GPS satellite, with
constant updates on
FOX, CNN and
alternate media
(outside Columbia and
MIT braves from
the seven nations having
set up
protest encampments)
Zadie so worried
whether her hypothetical
Zionist student would
not be bound
to feel aggrieved, suffer
horrific identity collapse
if hole in your vessel
easy to find a plug in DC
use a member of the house
the Hatter would tell Christopher
as the tenor got weirder
and the teapots all ran out
tea enough
still perhaps
after a previous party
floating in the harbour, but
for a great teapot at
this time of writing, a
wanderer did inform him,
you might
have to consult Boeing and
the military
industrial complex
Ah, the logic, the methodology,
suffice it to say, pure area 51
pure Man Ray,
pure
little girl without arms
bullet
through her head this
tale of Wonderland
is not about
you came to these shores and did
not expect to find palaces
did not expect to
encounter castles
golden dubloons maybe,
perhaps
a golden gate bridge
but not a landscape of
golf course and tenement
and cloud
saturated with capital
dodging those Lakota arrowheads
they said that
here there
would be no King
everybody would be a king
as
many kings on deck
as playing cards
Christopher somehow now
up in the Rockies inside
the Overlook Hotel
ghostly overseer Stanley
whispering in his ear
an adage that
colonization is
the heart
of the horror
colonization
the name
of the original sin
Yes, Yanis
still waiting for the cartoon
version of what I scribbled
down here
have commissioned Salvador Dali
have pleaded with Picasso
RETURN
I rent a
flower
by the
hour
get my fill
before
petals fade, colour
drains
loss
of shape
take it back
before
expiration
get good money
for time
not
exhausted
refund in
my pocket as
eternal
return.
INVESTMENT
(poem for Gary Stevenson)
I smile at you Gary
from the bottom of my pram
though I’m
not sure you would
bet on me
find me
a good investment
I think you
smile back
(though what do I know
about trust
and the people and
the world
out there that
awaits me)
you seem
a good soul, generous
smart, a good enough human
as humans would
appear
to go, not yet
done a risk analysis, calculated
the percentages
my future out there
moving past, looking in
pram, ship of state, all
the same to me now, feel
the germ
of an Odysseus (what
seas
to navigate?)
are you Achilles, Charybdis,
one of the Sirens,
figure of myth, truth and
shadow Homer of my future, just
stopping by for a
quick, blind, taste
of the future,
sublimely
quiet peep in.
FLOW I came because of cash flow problems, ended up on the river which must have had a sacred meaning once despite being the colour of stewed tea but we all had a nice lunch — correction, everyone had a sensational lunch but me taking a turn for the worse tottering off to the tiny aft toilet (adding to the discoloration of the waters no doubt) Oh life, against the current, can be a harshly blended mixture. And me here because of matters of terminally negative cash flow not so everwhere: here houses big as colleges whose manicured gardens sweep down in lush green to the river’s edge and here is one strikes my fancy as an African replica of the Palace at Versailles lost in wonder for a moment of breathtaking economic speculation (Marx on the Moselle) but then time to go home the boat turned around. Post-lunch the workshop am here to facilitate running softly downhill.
DAB HAND
if a hand, or perhaps
a whole arm (left
or right)
appeared out of nowhere
for a friendly shake
would you shun all
contact? would
you comply
for ghostly, spectral hands
are not
what they were
are
by no means as
friendly as
their original intent
no means as transparent,
trustworthy
free of malice by
accident
malice by
demonic purpose
set to realize the darkest
unconscious dreams,
fantasies and
nightmares
of that wonderfully charitable
circumspect
and spiritually endearing
soul
of Man
poems 2 die for