BARBARIAN

BARBARIAN
  
self
and other

guy in tweed
explaining the magistrate’s
dilemmas of
Lacanian proportions

in that book
by that other guy, who
taught me
   I believe, if
I remember correctly

(so much forgotten about
that younger figure
             so much baggage
had to discard
stuff
     ingrown I had
to excise)

and here I am
trying to come up with
a smart arse question
that
   I hope will
stump the lot of them
their on the
limits of institutional discourse
challenging those linuts
even as
I appear to treat
them with regard

inside outside
         wasn’t always so
clung to orthodoxy for
security when
could barely
string two words together

self and
    other

no AK or RPG but
instinctively feel
am
   now barbarian

shadow made real
apotheosis of
         what once feared

am indeed I believe
     far less question than
a kind
   of solution

EVENTUALLY

EVENTUALLY

We eventually
invited you
to our party

felt
we had to
      eventually

and lo
   and behold:

eventually
you came: pitched up
in the last of
your great ships, now
an
   old just bucket
barely held together
in need
   of patching

patching holes pretty much
the theme of the day
theme
    of the new
decade

hopefully into the next
century

saw you
     at the party behaving

pretty much, well almost,
like homo sapiens

was not
       always so

state of the ship such
                     a revelation
Oh

    how we partied

sight
for sore eyes.

We invited you to our party.

You came, eventually.

Truth be told, though you
may well choose not to believe us

we always

      kept your seat
at the table,
           take your right place