Tag Archives: Nietzsche

HERE YOU ARE

HERE YOU ARE

Oh cruel philosopher
here you are

weeping over
a flogged horse

before
getting shipped off
to intensive care

and hete I am
trying to see
a pattern here
work out how all
these moves
thread together

so much more diffucult
to become
a chess grand master

than your common
garden variety
      joyful wisdom existential
superman.

RETURN

RETURN

I rent a
flower

am renting it
right now

rented one
yesterday

this one though,
is special,

before
petals fade,
colour
fades

need to
take it back
get a full
refund, perhaps
      even
accrued interest

good flower
good money

time waits
for no
     man

but this
is how we
make time

time
   (that strange
German sage
said it
again
   and again)

time
is illusion
a fiction

time
is
  return

in all
its horror
and beauty
  

FREEZE-DRIED

fudge soft
     was my brain at my
first philosophy class

Plato’s dialectic wholesome,
why should not the State be
good and strong
and solid and true?
why should I not be
thinking axiomatically
working my
way slowly
     towards great gnosis
at the cave’s entrance

why should this not all be,
even in a philosophy class,
some desert of
the real shadow show
programmed to
amuse
   this unspecified
superior intelligence?

But these are questions for
later
     not for poor white boy
at mountainside university
refugee from
all that Christian National
Education might teach
true
   to apartheid

and so, face-beaming, I
did drink it, savour
swallow
   every joyous scrap of
the fat one via
Professor Obi Wan’s
interpretation

the Jewish boy in the corner
(so slightly older
reading his way into
territory
     full-on genealogical, beyond
good and evii

scowling at my
naivete,

     having not
become my friend

Nietzsche not yet
my philosopher of choice

outside, of course, outside
the theatre down
the slopes
beyond the steps

something stirring
something
        at a different pace,
with a different
dialectic

about to explode
about
   to rock to the core

but this
down the line

from up in this high place
easy to calculate
work with
   established truths,
historical certainties, clear
percentages

down there
as bra Chris wrote

its all
in graffiti, still
yet in code

soon
   world going to
go full on punk, class-war
deconstructive

defeat in Vietnam

meaning
power
      of powers

determined to determine
we think how they say,
are
   so subtly, subtly
forced
to do as we are told

mind put on hold
fast-food fried down
to the last algorithm

brain
    freeze-dried, feel
free to liquify

fudge soft
back then

     but maybe
Plato was right

TO EACH OTHER

TO EACH OTHER

clearly
iceberg and
Titanic
were Other
to each other

such a risk
with first
glancing kiss

shatter of the mirror
fragmentation, disintegration

and so much
icy depth, no one
divulged how
quite the abyss
we were talking

quite the overkill
we must suggest when
it is the belief
less than a tablespoonful
will suffice for drowning

but there you are
above the waves
not bobbing
       but floating supremely

clear as royal icing on a cake
(if not clear then
as smooth entirely)

wishing them well
upon their wedding night
(much blessings
             much much blessings)

so much of that
bleak psychoanalysis having
imbibed

         knowing how love
as hubris might just turn out

a smile
     a wave — pun
                        unintended–
a look like that of
that mad German we
do hate
        so because
we owe so much

who dethroned sun-bright Apollo
threw in his
              lot with the god
of drinkers

VERTIGO

VERTIGO

I hate vertigo

fear it
entirely

wonder what
life should be
like

could it
be at all tolerable
if it
    did not go
of own accord
consent to
  leave me

and so I am
sensitive to
the world’s vertigo
the one
that mad philosopher
wrote of

the one where all
that was balanced
is lost
    the tipping point
of fundamental energies
refusing reconcilement

in the words of the crazy one,
forever our fate,
    determined to return.

FRIEDRICH

FRIEDRICH

I was getting nowhere
praying for my soul

falling by the wayside
moving further away

which exact
moment you seized
to muscle in
on me
hold a knife
to my throat
(sharpest possible
blade I do
now believe)
and, lightning lurking
in those eyes,
gave me
      books of
our darkest, sweetest god
to negotiate

mugging me
      in the Church

so
about to fall

situation pretty much
the same
      as when
      the dark god
mugged you.

SUPER BOWL POEM


SUPER BOWL POEM

woke up
in time to hold off
on the SuperBowl result

worst fears confirmed when
I summoned up courage
to check

    yep Brock loves God
but Brock loves
Patrick Mahomes

(does not seem
to care much about
Head Coach Kyle Shanahan)

and at this
        juncture, out of the blue,
an unruly host of
archetypes made their move
wanted to stick
         around a bit, get
the lie
   of the land in the process
of passing through me

a mad mosaic it was
for a while

      many shapes and
sizes, manners and
demeanours

     jostling up against each other
(Brownian motion)
          excanging, debating,
doing their
dialectic dance, analysis
synthesis
no homogenizing

and there I was in a carnivalesque dream

chatting to the players in
St Francis’ kingdom
of those elevated
                    high above
the realms
of material wealth

peering into the abyss that
a philosopher cum psychologist
had laid
      before me

a tablet broken with the
entire script jagged

and there on the road
a burnt out humvee

and there in the docks
a rusting destroyer

archetypes at home within
settling
     for a game of solitaire

and me
thinking, wondering,
      who does have a
prophetic bone in this
my body

is winning everything?
    and if it is not

will there ever
indeed

      be an end to war?