Tag Archives: language

WE TOO

WE TOO

we love to
play the language
game
     we two do
come at greasing
the signifier
not
from different
poles  entirely

my games with sound
and sense
more about
      foregroundimg other,
difference, perhaps
a touch
     of deviance

yours
      (if I might
proffer
this distinction) about
what is established, believed,
holy ordinary,
  sacred same

how we can get
          the narrative to
go full
python
    swallow the facts
(crush in its coils any
                truth inconvenient)

and of course, after my little
pointless spiel
       boredom, dismissal
the worst I get

the guilt that comes
              with bad poetry

not, as in your case, if I
dare suggest

         every kind of sick and
unconscionable paid-for
complicity

that
     shades us into dystopia
thence living Hell

SYSTEM

SYSTEM

and now I find
and now I find

gymnast and
syntagm
     are so intimate

anagrams
of each other

spooky action
     at linguistic distance

but what do I know
of such unique connection

all my lovers
        ghostly, some
actual ghosts

the dust of all
    that was desire questioning
my stridence

gives the idea
     puts me on notice

that it is
                   all simulation

and when you undress before me
in name only

getting the sweet syntax
     up and running

see what you are up to here
Mr Shakespeare or
Earl
    of Oxford

whatever you wish to go by
privately call yourself

spilling from Juliet’s lips
the philosopical truth of
                    a true rose

even if
a thousand years of cynicism
scepticism stands in its way

when you
        go inexplicable mystery
and wrap yourself around me

making us (yes, channeling you
Professor Noam Chomsky)
branches, leaves
       upon the same tree

graft taking
      we can grow now together

happy
     (who would not be) though
this all
     feels pre-planned: our
perfect simulation

FARM TALK

FARM TALK

let me
withold words

surrender
poetry

thus may I
figure out what
the farm is saying
the trees speaking

catch
these voices
hitherto drowned out
by my insistence to
delve into
   the depth of my
faith in language,
human
     linguistics

so many different ways
of writing, talking out there

DESERT DE ZERT

DESERT DE ZERT

walk through the desert
calling things into being
wishing things into being

I articulate
but the words I pronounce
live on their own planet

sometimes
when you see
ocean you
write desert

sometimes when desert
you write ocean

this is how poetry works
how delusion words

which is the affinity
that allows me to gasp
with hateful admiration

see exactly what you are doing
X-ray specking your brain
as it processes
its a lie so deep, so
outrageous it cannot do justice
to your sacred spoken
mission to protect your
people
transparently transposed
from the
truth of the need
to protect yourself

CONJUNCTION

CONJUNCTION

I am writing
              a poem

and the world is fucked.

I am writing a poem
but
the world

     is fucked

I am
writing a poem

however, although,
the world
                              is
                      fucked

am writing
notwithstanding, despite,
in outright opposition to

the
   world

being fucked.

I am writing a poem,

have written a poem,

just trying to establish
the precise conjunction.

FOLLOWED

FOLLOWED

followed Jacques Derrida
down a rabbit hole

seriously
name-dropping all the way

saw Slavoj Zizek
and all his twin twizzle
and tweedle brothers

who asked how I could
have been so sure
that down was the direction
I was heading
  when, counter
intuitively, up might
equally
      make perfect sense

and I
might be twin too
Moon cavorting on the lunar surface
doing sibling-style stuff
with young
    Castor and Pollux

and other twin
who penned that tune
I am the Walrus and Richard and
Karen
    in such seemingly
beautiful harmony

Oh you cannot
     put a cat in a box
and have any kind of certainty

you cannot come up with truths
you can always reconnect

the very land we stand on
slipping and sliding
so slippery-slidey

what
     we have before us here
(not referring to the tea party)
so different
    from what I was thinking, what
expected, and
what I almost fancied
I was destined to express

MORPHOLOGY OF MARTIAN

MORPHOLOGY OF MARTIAN

let us
   invent

an ancient language, lost
for millennia

call it “Martian”
let us
    construct a grammar
divine a morphology

a language that will
refuse to lend itself to
the trite
    and the trivial
bend its form and structure
in the service of evil

like all the languages do
on the planet right now

giving propagandists their
dark joy
  in the fabrication of oppositions
construction
  of hierarchies

building of pyramids and towers
to mask
     diabolical schemes

no let our language
dispense with all gatekeepers

show itself truly generative,
supremely transformational

in its very acts of creation
turning to the galaxy
to glean
     from every language,
every spoken
written tongue

     downtrodden
         and suppressed