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

OVERKILL

OVERKILL
“Eloquent, oracular;
A volcano heard afar.”
Shelley, The Masque of Anarchy
(poem on the Peterloo Massacre)

Ah, my beauties
here is poetry
where it has always been

first past the post
(postmodern, pissedmodern,
posttruth, postnuclear,
postapocalyptic, post-
whasoever)

play of language: you realize
of a sudden that deep
down in
    your tin heart
you have to prevent it

look at the danger: exhibit A,
very drowned poet

his young pregnant wife
dreamt the future as monster
private parts monster
(as they all are)
scratching at her window
demanding
       life, consciousness,
not exactly Turing tested but

she scared
the life out of us, this
virgin snake did cosmically,
with what
   ex machina she
duly came up with

such overkill
   need to nip it in the bud
radical danger of metaphor
surely
   needs its own -dectomy

the threat of crucifixion
along every highway
and byway
      resurrected again

something the billboards
really need, are crying out
                                   for

real spectacle
        behind them.

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?

WHEN IT KILLS

WHEN IT KILLS

“As with many tragedies, our story opens in a moment of triumph.”

Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

Now we
see

how deep indeed
this story goes

how sure
the colour
in the rose

of itself
in every detail

its thorns
the truth
    of its beauty’s cruelty

the colour
fixed on absolute
when
    it kills.

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

BATTLEFIELD

BATTLEFIELD

butterfly
fluttered over

the battlefield
trench war
combined arms
cyber war

tanks
versus chlldren

butterfly was looking
for someome, anyone
to give some
kind of explanation

but we
        are humanity

we kill in the name of
all we hold dear

incapable of
the art of transormation