nuclear – poems 2 die for

LIVESTREAM

I was
a walking stream
of consciousness

a stream of consciousness
walking with a cobra-headed
hard red-wood stick

treating myself to
a slow circumnavigation
of the heart of the farm

on YouTube meanwhile
much screaming & pontificating
about red lines being crossed
and slippery slope
to no tomorrow

tactical nukes even
as we speak ready for
testing
being wheeled into position

men in their Strangelove
think tanks think
it’s just
a game of brinkmanship
serious
high-stakes bluffing

and me in my Cassandra moment
thinking about the pressing
of that button
to remove the surprise
from smugness in person

it’s wonderful, what
it can do, what platform
it affords for
all career launching

a prestigious degree wreathed
in ivy league ivy

how in such hands, how
safer than safe their
algorithm would
wish us to feel.

EITHER (OR)

either
we have forgotten
everything we
have ever learnt

everything we
were ever taught

or we didn’t;
we simply went insane

EMPIRE OF THE ANTS

ROCKET

ROCKET

good rocket morning

to express
my love

a rocket
is on its
way to
you

watch the sky
should arrive
in a
couple
of seconds

expecting the flaah
I will be
watchimg
the sky too

LIVESTREAM

LIVESTREAM
.
woke up
minutes
before
the dawn

still alive
so made
some coffee

read the news
being livestreamed:
no nuclear
war in the laat
quarter
of an hour

quiet
hosannas
and hallelujahs

hope that
despite our
terminally insane
rulets and
leaders

the world might
just survive
the hour

SUSQUEHANNA 2

there are ghosts
in your country
I saw them dancing
in the mist all
along the Susquehanna
one cold January morning
just after 9/11
a couple of miles upstream
from Three Mile Island

and we were talking Civil War mlilitary,
myself and this kindly
African American
Professor of Sociology from
Harrisburg Penn State

him detailing how the Federals and Confederates
were criss-
crossing this territory
playing this cat and
mouse game
only to crash headlong into
each other at a
place called Gettysburg

of course neither of us
back in 2002 could have imagined
twenty so years on this
land would
find itself of the brink of
such a division
where the spectre of such
horror looming again

and those precious
twenty or so days
my sole experience
of America

of breathing the air of
its liberty, if
such is your belief

something the ghosts
trying to tell me, their
cold touch
alerting me

a new world and
forever graveyard

tension
in the spirit world
it seems far-fetched to bridge

the river
with its
Native American name

flowing with the forever
waters of such secrets

leaving
the old lies, the old lies
to spread, make
good trade,
do good business

what ripples outward here I fear
ultimately chain
in its reaction

WONDROUS

TIME WHERE

EXCEPTIONAL

death will not
be satisfied with
simply thousands

death wants
millions, billions,
that’s the price
that was set
and will be paid

if this
were not so
why do you think
death had to invent
comets, supervolcanoes,
meteors, rogue asteroids?

to supplement the vast varieties
of weapons of mass destruction
its most beloved
of all
species
happened to event

including, not exclusively,
the vast thermonuclear arsenals
huge stockpiles of
megaton, kiloton
missiles and bombs

sheer numbers here
dictated by the laws
of necessity
of supply and
demand

and exceptional theory, but
sadly it ends here
with the demise of
its authors

of whose disappearance
the rest of the Universe
could
not give a damn

PRECIOUS

I was confiding
in my friends
the insects

all the true scientific
horrors of nuclear war

when you came down
like a missile
from up
on high

demand that I shut
my mouth, cut
all such nonsense

speaking through a translation
device
this being a head, a father’s
head attached
to a stick

and then, since our debate,
was going nowhere
you opened up
on my tiny
friends
with a state-of-the-art
multi-
barrelled weapon

firing
millions, billions
of rounds ripping up the landscape

but fortunately
my friends being so small
took
out such precious
few of them.