NIKOLA
Tesla man
is reaching
for the stars
Tesla man
is gobbling up
prime
real estate
on Mars
back at the ranch
as we South Africans say
the real Nikola Tesla
died penniless
living in poverty
could have given
us free electricity, available
everywhere
but what
would that have done for profits?
PERIGEE
I saw him
last day of primary school
for him
riding his bicycle,
exultant
down that
street
in Parow
next year
high school
a big brainy
boy now
Mars
at its perigree
his head
full of
Ray Bradbury
nothing in the night sky
redder or
more relevant
than our brother
world with
its dust and its
oxides and canals
and
perennial
alien menace
(though
in Mr Bradbury’s
book it
is we
who colonize you
to our shame and
shock and
terror
(the tribes of the plains
know that
story through and
through)
cycling full
of joy
leaving past
behind
for future
wonder
what come the end
of his days
what of this
he foreseen
what
the one
foreseen
might possibly remember
this is a poem
about Parow
a God-forsaken place
jam-packed with churches
some of which, it must
be said, has
been said,
have needle sharp spires
pointing perpendicular
up at
the stars
and the planets
Mars
singled out high above
red
as ever
something knowing
about that look
if this
world of
dreams, and fears,
and desires
and secrets
could ever look
ever feel at all
RED
sample size
economy size
government warning
on the box
telling me to
take care
what appears
on the pages
but me
I hot for it
got a handle on it
don’t give
a hoot
not a thought
about danger
don’t care about stops
drive free
of punctuation
before I am turned Ayrton
going to
paint myself
Ferrari
and red Ferrari too
mad red in colour
red-planeted myself
across ruthless
dimensions
into and through
(Event Horizon space
folding) the tough tesseract
that speaks itself
through
the two-dimensional surfaces
of Craig Raines home-
seeking postcard
and me
so well read, always
reading incessantly
took down (in a
single sitting) Silver Locusts,
Martian Chronicles and
Pynchons Von Braun rocket
rainbow
the flames
from the tail of that sucker
a sight to behold
if I say so myself, given
absolute and infinite
creative poetic licence
sample
size
economy
size
if I don’t
fit your paradigm
get with the program!
NEAR PLANET CYPRUS
swimming pool breasts
that goddess is
the archetype
of woman
in water
no Pygmalion girl she
no labour of love
to put her
together
she was as add water
instant delight
as they come
stirred
not shaken
(we are the ones Honey
Ryder first
appearance shaken
Mr born-under-
Mars Bond)
and what
a recipe
something went
so wrong with the logic
flummoxed our expectations
gorgeous
complete antithesis of
imagined Kaiju type beast
(unless
as with Troy in absolute
beauty such much greater
capacity for
disaster
causal factor)
even now
plunging me into
state of arousal
suddenly suffused by
the light
of her
near planet
and yet it is for night
one night
I pray in vain to you
would
absolutely cross oceans
swim
out to you
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
ON MARS
do not breathe the air
the atmosphere
will scramble your brains
more than
they have already
been
scrambled
this is the red planet
getting redder by the day
planet of war and
hard masculinity
in human mythology
sister planet; brother world
look into this glass
and see our world, the one
you left behind
collapse into chaos
the Martians, though, are
ready for you
have read that story
by Ray Bradbury
are about to lull you into
the belief that
there can be a place
in this Universe to
find or build
equivalent to Heaven
will strike and destroy
when you are living that
dream
threatening to
destroy their civilization, colonize
them out of existence
sometimes ones salvation
lies in the strategy
most insidious of all
ONE DAY ON MARS
Mars bars
Mars bars
the man has been
eating far too
many
Mars bars
his brain
is reaching
escape
velocity
reading too
much Martian poetry
I blame you
Mr Wells, blame
you Mr Raine
blame you Schiaparelli
dug
all those
canals
in is brain
and above all,
I blame you Mr Bradbury
filling his head
with Martian mushrooms,
telepathic Martians
losing a war
of colonial conquest
most basic parallel
with Earth history
a writer
strolling across
a desert
plain
munching
on a Mars bar
(overhead the irregular
shaped
Phobos and Deimos)
might feel compelled to make
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poems 2 die for