COLUMBINE

COLUMBINE

we came across
a fallen city

at its heart
there was
a labyrinth

and at
the heart of this
labyrinth
there was a demon

very little of
this culture,
this society remains
not enough to
give a reasonable
picture of
what they were like
the people
who lived here

except we are
pretty sure
we can infer
they were
extremely militaristic

and, perhaps
in the fear that
the shadow of
their conquests
engendered

conducted
savage sacrifices
of the youth
who perhaps tried
in vain to suggest
more peaceful ways

SWEPT AWAY

SWEPT AWAY
.
do not presume
the stones to be silent

or that
they will stay so

do not think
that, seemingly inert,
they have nothing to say

here
where there was war

you can safely assumed
so much
has changed
very little remains

where mythology tells us
we aspired to be gods
in the titanic,
epic nature
of the slaughter
and struggle

Ah, yes,
the slaughter:

we shall
have to bury that

last echoes, nothing
left
  one might call
brash or
resounding

time ticking out
so time to
gaze
   out into the darkness

be swept up
     physically, emotionally,

if not both
then one, or the other,

get
swept away. Swept away.

HIBERNATING

HIBERNATING

hibernating
on the farm

closing my eyes
to all the missiles
and bombs

do not think
there is the nightmare
to match this

as inexorably, inevitably
it gets ratcheted up
to an extinction exchange

and the world ending
and me deep sleeping

and the Universe
going its own way
doing its own thing
for physics only
knows how
many odd billion years

dream
themselves away

CLOUDLESS

CLOUDLESS

a cloudless sky
stopped my scarlet red
Citroen
  to open the farm gate

cannot pretend to
understand the physics of
colour or
   indeed, the physics
of sky
you lost me as soon
as you spoke of wave-lengths
and light diffusion

but here we are (or at least, here
I am, your presence with me
somewhere
  between metaphor and
simple rhetorical gesture)

here we are
as if shielded from
the Universe (which is
the case exactly) virtue of
us being
    (no clouds
to distract me) right
at the epicentre of
a surrounding sphere, looking
out from
inside the skin, the translucent
skin
   of a beautiful blue ball

expanded to a size, a height,
that just works for us perfectly

reminding me
        as this time of ultra
advanced return
of feudalism
              of the music
of the spheres

with all that economy
with all that cosmology

nothing in a million years here close to
      that darkest conclusion

that things beyond this
blue bubble

moving away from us so fast
they are
beyond
all
   Doppler red-
shift
     beyond very
                  speed of light

and
so

back down
       to Earth as always
for
sheer preservation
of sanity, not

        let all this here
overwhelm me

wanting
those clouds back

wanting not to imagine myself
inside the skin
of anything

wanting
to just go
       where it is all heading
commit
to that glow

   light speed beyond
but (blessing of
relatvity) with it

one
    feels

                just
floating

moving in one’s mind
from
      incarnation to
incarnation

no desire
     to be laboured by

understand
the physics at all

WEREN’T WE?

WEREN’T WE?

weren’t we
supposed to hold
up the mirror
to human nature

not let it fall
splinter, shatter

crash and burn, break
into a billion tiny
diamond-bright pieces

jagged shards, blood
soaked, blood
painted, bloody

never to be fixed
never
       to be returned
never reclaimed
never restored

all those bits of light
dancing in the Sun grotesquely

hold
up the mirror
to human nature

who the fuck, nowhere
near his right mind
came up
     with that idea

(go not pass go
        leave the planet
sail steadfast, venture into the cosmos
               cross
the galaxy

not, never
in a trillion lifetimes

nothing out there
     to mirror what
we
   might well be)

weren’t we?

RECALLING MR POPE

RECALLING MR POPE

sound
echoing sense

but what if there
is no sense

rule of your nonsense
Mr Pope
     descending into
the entropy
of brute power

I decline
to add

for why say anything
when gets so grossly filtered

crushed by the imposition
superimposition
of hideous, ruling
mythology

under which stone rubble
words die, asphyxiate
cannot breathe

DRY

DRY

there is no everyday
there is no ssme street

everything has
been disconnected

there is no
same old

go home
pretend that home
is still as you
have always known it
nothing
    has fallen into ruin
nothing has been resprayed

watch all the cheap
global disaster extinction
level event
    end of the planet movies

you can get your hands on
an election is coming

you will need
to drink the drinks’ cabinet dry

ONCE AND FOR ALL

ONCE AND FOR ALL

was talking to you
but then
you evaporated
tried to speak
more loudly
but it was
to no avail

but what is space
anyway
but a construct
of gravity
when we are hurtling
in our group
of forty galaxies
towards some
great attractor
billions of light years
away in space

hundreds of kilometres
a second
how do you even
start to
wrap your mind around it
but for relativity
such a speed would
be impossible
to comprehend

and
the fabric of the Universe
expanding above light speed
about to strip
the stars
away from us
and all else

this and more
I get from skimming through
all those YouTube channels
finding an
alternate politics
to chart how deeply runs
the establishment lie

pictures of the war, of
slavering holy savagery

mind-bending theories
of our origin, identity
and destination

disasters to
end the planet
once and for all

I was going off and this
when they decided it
was right
and proper

a political necessity
to turn you
and your world
to ash and rubble

an insane vision
that somehow,
for my sins, I do not share

FANCY

FANCY

we have (all of us)
our very own fancy
for apocalypse

projecting on the world
our own thirst and fear
of ending (Oh what a strange
species we
are indeed!)

yes, what thrill is the final
scene
     if you perform it alone
stage empty, auditorium deserted,

is there not supposed to
be resonance, sweet slash
bittersweet connection

and then there are
those most philosophical
of warriors, most warlike
of philosophers

there music too, will shake
you like no other
between such highs and lows

to which, if that we not enough,
we must add the crime
of psychoanalysis

one in particular
Leo-sign showman

reading from a single patient
the brutal future history of
nation
       and a species
it did decide it had done with

no schadenfreude here
     just special kind of
go

when the revelation that
we are not gods
we aspire to be
gets us plunging into
final destruction

tumbling
of power
         from its throne

and power with its exit clause,
its played-through endgames

knows
      (knows all too well
all too well)

always space for
last laugh

           throw of those
diabolically secret dice

at the death         at the death

yes, that gotterdammerung word
nutshells that best

SUPER BOWL POEM


SUPER BOWL POEM

woke up
in time to hold off
on the SuperBowl result

worst fears confirmed when
I summoned up courage
to check

    yep Brock loves God
but Brock loves
Patrick Mahomes

(does not seem
to care much about
Head Coach Kyle Shanahan)

and at this
        juncture, out of the blue,
an unruly host of
archetypes made their move
wanted to stick
         around a bit, get
the lie
   of the land in the process
of passing through me

a mad mosaic it was
for a while

      many shapes and
sizes, manners and
demeanours

     jostling up against each other
(Brownian motion)
          excanging, debating,
doing their
dialectic dance, analysis
synthesis
no homogenizing

and there I was in a carnivalesque dream

chatting to the players in
St Francis’ kingdom
of those elevated
                    high above
the realms
of material wealth

peering into the abyss that
a philosopher cum psychologist
had laid
      before me

a tablet broken with the
entire script jagged

and there on the road
a burnt out humvee

and there in the docks
a rusting destroyer

archetypes at home within
settling
     for a game of solitaire

and me
thinking, wondering,
      who does have a
prophetic bone in this
my body

is winning everything?
    and if it is not

will there ever
indeed

      be an end to war?