MASTERPIECE

MASTERPIECE

those meticulous lines
so clear under
the desklamp
in the light,
           a masterpiece
             

nothing at this high level
possibly frazzled,
sublimely repressed

I wonder
how they look
8n the shadow
what happens to
that cross-sectional
perfectly angular shading

when in state of shadow
things leak into each other
diametrically blur

one step away
from the beginnings of
the jagged  the wayward,
the ice-engineered,
the downward spiral

and me
       playing chess against you
crushing you in a few moves
even when my
game is
inadequately considered,
too unpolished, simply linear,
absence of
tactical wizardry in
my pedestrian play

Oh fathers, wish it were the case
that sons
      caught in deadly duels
with them in
the underbelly of
cloud cities (which
some architect had to
dream up
ex nihilo)
knew as they traded
blow for blow
what lay behind
that steel mask

to give you your due
you were the master of
everything out there
in here
that comes in three dimension

new how the tools cut
to your drawn specifications
could make
the thing conceived of
exactly

when it comes to you
and I however
no worse joke
than the one of tooling
to make
the one of match of object
and its conception

how could you have got it
so wrong  fucked up
every single
measurement

and yet
   think me grateful having
been produced this way
your masterpiece

CROSSBOW

CROSSBOW

I interrogated Aphrodite
after the fall of Troy

so much death and devastation
through her direct interference
all for a single
golden apple, and the required
abduction of a queen

holding her in
the sights of my
crossbow whilst
I bombarded her
with questions

on the nature of love,
her sacred domain, and
why
   it should exist at all
when it destroys
so many of us

or leaves us
alone and yearning
victims of its disdain.

SOUL MATE

SOUL MATE

you asked me if
I were still
looking
for my soul mate

in turn, I enquired
about your ideal lover
and how you
would recognize this
from how
he made love to you

suggesting what I felt
on this score
providing you with
an admittedly limited
graphical illustration

which seemed
to spark something
all cylinders firing
beyond my expectations

as you rushed off
at top speed
to search for a soulmate
to match these criteria

ready
to scour the planet looking
for the rest
of your life
if needs be

DOWN THE STREET

DOWN THE STREET

heavily disguised
beauty herself in person came
walking past
   neither close nor
giving a wide berth

to me
did not speak:
not a word
not a glance

best response possible
given prior
misadventures
seriously sad encounters
(though one or two
with great physical
moments
    memories burned
into my consciousness)

all of which colluding, conspiring,
to stick me here in
this rather unique
place as
unique places go

beauty always
heading down the street
moving away
from me

heading into the distance
leaving to me to remember,
kill the dream, forget

RWGIME CHANGE

REGIME CHANGE

we are meeting for coffee
fifty years to the day
we last
saw, spoke
to each other

could be real could
be just a dream

reality getting so porous
you could easily just
stick out
your hand
test the fabric

odds and probabilities
suggest five times in nine
you could
stick
your finger
straight through

the veil fading, evaporating
and something no less
ephemeral now
about the realm
of truth

all of which we do not discuss
hard after all those years
to find common
ground, something
worth sharing we
know
will be appreciated

meanwhile flashing in neon
writing on the wall
portents eveywhere
suddenly it
is all
a troubling semiotics
of apocalypse

heads blown off my
bombs, pulverized by
missiles

innocents vaporized
at primary school

signs and codes of
death and
second
coming, dynasties
of temple

perhaps (thinking aloud)
the world needs regime
change
for our very survival we
need every single regime changed

I feel, though you
shrug, the betrayed presence
of a half smile.

TRIAL

TRIAL

thought you
would love me
if I were
brave as Achilles

had a body like
Apollo’s
not a blemish
not a scar

if I could
sing like Sting,
Robert Plant or
Pavoratti

or riff
like Django or
Jimi Hendrix
on the guitar

if I could speak
French faultlessly,
seductively, and
then write
like Proust
or Rimbaud

had the intellect of
Derrida and
the wit
of Oscar Wilde

and all this childhood trauma
that I carry with me
this toxic
family stuff
inside

you would love me
once I found
the instant
total cure for it

or battling and failing
to shake it, negate it,
integrate it
shape it
   to true loving ends

you
would love me
for how hard I tried

POEM FOR 1983 ME (revised version)

POEM FOR 1983 ME

there you are
in that disintegrating photograph
so sure of yourself
Mr Wry Smile, so unsure of
yourself : deconstruct
this photo Professor Academic
Expert
so much space here
to delineate those inner doubts
and (to make no bones
about it) existential torments
scars of neglect

and what eyes have browsed this?
looked here, remembered,
eyes have looked into,
souls loved, have loved,
still love
could never
possibly forget
(know who you are, know
what history we have,
stuff
    shared together)

and now having
pulled this out of the hat
my next trick
will be
one of disappearance
taking all this stuff of self
off the shelf
go Cheshire Cat on you all
(having at times
threatened to
go full
mad hatter

perhaps in truth, far more Alice
caught right there
before the door into Wonderland
crazy. divine, nonsensical
quantum who
knows what
Wonderland

battling to balance
medicine that makes me
too big medicine
renders me too small

she
   of the sign of the Libra born
most loved of the beloved
quietly shaking
    her head at this point

and you
     who only yesterday
told me
to come visit

hit me
with all that goddess mythology
made everything
look so
   effortless

what fatal nonsense
was it our paths crossing

what fatal
nonsense was it
nothing and not
    everything, all?

ALL APIECE

ALL APIECE

“Seven days in sunny June/long
enough to bloom/ the flowers on that sunbeam dress you wore
in Spring.” Jamiroquai

Can’t believe
they called a flower
“honeysuckle”

begs
the question, what were
   they thinking?
 
that’s real
bower of bliss. midsummer
night’s dream stuff

all apiece
with
lords and, ladies. fairies
and mechanicals doing
their thing
   prancing around

which beats
sharing a melting icecream
with Doja Cat and
Slavoj Zizek

fanning myself,
taking a break away from
finding myself
always haunted by
sublime
    prospect of
things
before my very eyes
turning from real
to surreal
to hyper-
    real

nothing every returning
to braveface the real

as Janet croons
seductively to inform us
regarding
    the nature of love and
its, inevitable destiny

must have
been brain dead to
love
    as I did for
so many years
 
can’t believe
they called it “honeysuckle”
to my mind that
for better
      or for worse

in sickness or in health,
really takes the cake
                      
             

OF ORPHEUS

OF ORPHEUS

nothing stopped
slowed down

the clockwork
kept running

Hermes
on time with
all the crucial mail

and lacking all hiatus
the merest suggestion
of a frozen moment

flesh and
spirit
      finding themselves divided
wondered how the
world could
yet
  be green

time ticking and my lyre
learning of this
to spite
    every serpent, in the main
those deadly
in their venom

refused to play, eschewed
all that can
plug in, be electric

and me looking back
not eyes dead ahead on
the road to
consummate
my love

should have them glued
sold my limbs on the dream
of finally
    your touch

for real
not in this most
central of myths, key
to our
entire mythology

ultimate heart of
every lost dream

PARALLELOGRAM

PARALLELOGRAM

there are some
(maybe one, at
a, stretch , two)
parallel realitues
where we

were lovers
and flowing out of that some
small differences,
divergences
of no real cosmic consequence

but this one is ulterior;
this one
is so so
different

this one
does not look
like our Earth
and we do not
even look
human

though
Earth and human
it well, we well,
both maybe be

and this language
we are, speaking does it have
could it
support
poetry

best thing about it though
from our currently
could not
be
nore massively involved condition

no word
for no
that
defining word

in all those parallel
alternate words
where
     our levels ran disjunct,
separate, distant

shadowing me, shadowing
that one of which
I was
     speaking

sharing
with you

this very first,
last last time