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?



HERE


HERE

it was not a great play

the Danish constabulary
arresting Hamlet’s
uncle
    in the final
scene

bringing him to justice
full force of the law

warm
    inside we felt
but harrowing catharsis
was what we
paid for

nothing quite like the blood
soaked stage
       that marks the escalation
to biblical proportions

full geometric progression
that marks the fulfiment
of desired revenge

likewise
      love restored
Othello and Desdemona
working on jealousy and
self image
    in partners’ therapy

or Dionysus giving Pentheus
a book to read
      about his divinity help
this stupid
  fascistic king

better understand
         the god of ecstasy’s ultimate
terrible kindness,
beautiful power
     (Nietzsche’s The Birth
of Tragedy
could do this well)

but
    none of these cut it
none make the cut
          regarding what
we need.

the hours spent in the theatre
must alter time, change
our perception

bring us
      to the threshold of
apocalypse at the
                  insane spectacle

such as

          is in flood across

the airwaves
.
as is presented here

RUIN

RUIN

in the ruins
of a bombed-out city

(the bombing
destined tp continue
whilst the perpetrators
are still
    at large)

an iconic, Teutonic soul,
philologist-philosopher by trade
and prescient mind
from a former
   world-defining age

sits on a white plastic chair
more conspicuous target
it would
     be hard to imagine

communing with past,
present future

citizen of the inescapable
State of Ruin

              Kingdom of
Heaven

somewhat deconstructed,
polarized,

       downward death-shifted