poem poetry – Page 10 – poems 2 die for

HEY POEM

hey poem

structurally
speaking

are you
wrestling? are
you
striptease?

looked for you
in Barthes mythologies

did not
find you

maybe you are
not a part of
any
system
of signs

have
nothing to do
with culture
at all

INSIDE

poem is the fiction
of interiority

trying to persuade itself
it is
what lies inside

ad infinitum
again and
again
and again

sometimes with quite
spectacular transformative effect
(who in
their right mind
would doubt there
is an
inside
after that?)

SOLDIER

poem is
special
forces

is soldier in the war
against being
dumbed down

will
teach you
how to fight
feed you ammunition

one, two, three
programs on TV
crafted supremely and carefully
to dumb
us all down

enough there for more than
the odd pot shot
need some serious serious
poetry
great poetic guns
with heavy
metaphoric artillery
your intellectual life
here
in my hands

WORLD OF DIFFERENCE

there is a world of difference
between splitting hairs
and splitting atoms

between
quibbling pointlesly

and raising
the temperature of
the planet

a couple of
million degrees

FIXED

FIXED

Wasn’t broken
but you were determined
to fix me

and so
here we are

I am here
(you where you are
having slimed yourself
in somehow)

and me just waiting
for the wind
to go
chainsaw, the Sun
to shoot fireballs

and every molecule
of my being to evaporate.

IMPOSSIBLE

I cry out
many times

cry out
but am
not heard

you might not think it
to read this poem

what point is there
crying out
in this poem

crying out
in any poem

poetry being a vehicle
of containment
a thing
of control

not a place to cry out
the pain
of each cry
rendering the poem
impossible

PUT DOWN

Put down
your candy crush game
(would so
like your candy
to crush)

but first a word from
our advertisers

if you went professional
option you would get
premier service and not have

to worry about anything

meanwhile in the simulation
that is the poem
we are either particles
or waves or
both or neither

so let me crush your candy
whatsover

catch you me
cheating on the two
slit experiment

by the time the last line enjambs

many many alternate universes
(eat your heart out
Michelle Yeoh)

up and running, teeming
with our joint energies

ESPRESSO

was malingering in Hell’s
best coffee shop

started to fancy a coffee-
coloured barista
serving espresso
shrouded
by steam

and yet
still no mistaking
her demonic beauty
(so on point with
these fine surrounds)

and me
trying to catch her
jade green eye and
lure
it
towards me

as if she might fall
for a run of mill, ordinary devil

such as
the one there
in the corner
writing this thing

MONETIZE

monetize
demonize

I am
writing a new thesaurus
looking for
a common denominator

even as you
wait in the shadows
crumbling
to dust

once wondering but
now given your answer
as to
how it is

all going to
end

RAIN

the writer writes
the end of
the world

but the paper
is putting up
too much
resistance

somehow he just cannot
write his way to
his vision of
an ending

quietly cataclysmic
apocalypse falling
upon us soft as rain