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

BELIEF SYSTEM

BELIEF SYSTEM

they fed
me into
a machine

no, sorry,
they fed all
my poems
into a machine

wrote the program
flipped the switches
thing that
cane out
then
was me

which they
Turing tested
nothing
circumvented

still
they remained unsure
reviewed the evidence
posed
fresh questions

which, I fear, am afraid,
left little confidence
in my total coherence

something
left
on the page
I believe

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

ROPES

ROPES

Ah,
what do we
have here

more and more
look at me postings

every moment
in the spectacle of life

you could put
them all together
you would have an album
you would have
a history

something definitive
but,
     call me
old goat
    call me spoilsport
                   misanthrope

but as darkness
gathers and
        they do tighten the
ropes

I fear what I saw
as no change
is every
          kind of  change

same smiling look at me
posture
         look at my face

thought there
            no change

      but seems
the frame, it
                  has darkened
and they have tightened the ropes

MACHINE

MACHINE

sometimes I slip
into a bad
philosophical space

lose it in
my psyche

flirt with
falling off the rails
when it
comes to my own humanity

thinking
   if you other,
you                             alien

no way
   you think, feel like me,
we never
can
   agree

our speech
        never intersect, no
coincidence
      within belief

shame on me
       shame on me

I bleed, I desire, I want
I need

     I fear
and Oh, my God, how
much I fear

and yet as you look
wonder
          what you see

it could well be alien
    I may be just machine

FAIR PROPORTION A

FAIR PROPORTION

they bring the hybrid
to his cell
she needs to talk to him
since species-wise she
has a fair proportion
of his genetic makeup

here she is
for what it’s worth
I agreed to meet her
hard to figure out
exactly what
is human
but one must
presume
it is there

so this is it
this is in me, embodiment
of what I am
capable
   the likeness is
there but everything
about him
seems guarded, hidden
as if he instinctively realizes
all that is terrible in
his capacity
   all that
    can be wrong, go wrong,
and he did terrible wrong

she aaked to talk to him
get answers to questions
she felt she needed
answers to, for her
crucially important

so she could figure out
for herself what is them
what is us

we talk
    She is so insistent in
going over things, knowing details,
minutiae, everything
exactly

I look at him one lsst time
try to see through those eyes
(I do not have human eyes
to me they
      are untrustworthy,
thoroughly upsetting)

I want to tell.him.
he might have, ought to,
have sought forgiveness
for his crimes, these
humsn crimes

senze
    a moment– out of nowhere
of grace
and dignity

so I leave with a wish
that he finds courage and
composure at his execution

having killed so many of
my people, pure and hybrid,

so different and yet
who knows how close
in what is felt inside.

She leaves the cell. We
ask no questions. What
hopes she has, what
reassurance she found
is hers alone. We
should not enquire.













OF THE AGE

OF THE AGE lies live lies survive lies fly all over the place so much destruction in their wake their instinct being to replicate split like mutant cells divide and be careful how you yourself do define for here service to the lie loses the light goes completely blind for shadow has shown too easy it be to mistake the love of a death embrace become the thing we fear we hate the beautiful hypocrite of the age the lie in us so consummate

BETWEEN EXTREMES

BETWEEN EXTREMES get twisted by the cynicism blown away by the naked irony throws me this way and that up and down the human spectrum and yes I can do Socrates can do Atilla can do St Francis and do Genghis Kham in my genes I am both Norman Viking and Catholic martyr every word here part of that inner negotiation solution plotted in the dialectic and reconcilation between extremes between extremes