NATURALLY
a nation of shopkeepers
without shops
a nation of conquerors
without conks
a nation of accountants
called to account
in the event of
analysis
it’s a lout
rout

NATURALLY
a nation of shopkeepers
without shops
a nation of conquerors
without conks
a nation of accountants
called to account
in the event of
analysis
it’s a lout
rout

AS IT SO HAPPENS
as it so happens
the Church and State
are both
outraged
the Sun and Moon
have begun to
tango begun
to samba
and some devil drunk
on tequila
is in the vestry
demanding communion
damanding absolution
quoting from a mash-up
of Neruda’s sublime Cantos
and visionary
holy books
and all are aghast
having booked their places
these
sons and daughters
not a tatter between them
no missing thread
and thus
in assued completeness
remain well aware
that devil on tequila becomes
devil in tequila becomes
democratic
host of devils that
bring decorum down
become god of thd people
hacked to pieces and
resurrected
become
the bones
of the philosophers doomed
until the end
of argument
to host
perpetual return

BIT
you summoned me
for party-games,
for romantic
themes
or so it sounded,
so it seemed
given your dancing through
all protocols,
your show and tell
and mystery
graceful
as all Hell but too
leopard fast that
I might anything retain
and there we ending
playing Monopoly diplomatically
diplomacy
monogamously
unless
in Triple Entente or
Menage a Trois
and me
in inquisition mode
determined
to interrogate your very
sensuality probe you
high and low
for heresy
(whether best
or worst of its kind)
the Turing test
the litmus test the blind taste test
with control
and me busy scribbling my way
through raw data
conclusion (and recommendations) thick
with crescendo
and to think
my original presumption
(seduced into
aberration by
Descartes demon)
was that I did not could not really exist
and therefore
would never get laid
an alternate universe somehow
devoid of sexuality
I am at
the bottom of the Seine in
Rimbaud”s
drunken boat
awaiting Nemo
my last hope of rescue
need
to go full Nautilus
to get
out of this place return
to my gone childhood
where robots are spooky by
no means mind-
expanding and
voraciously sexual
she sitting with me in a pose
that
given the technology may
well last forever
time whirling, whorling
into gold blue circular
star patterns
insistent
on their forever
soused in an artistic courage
determined to have its
(wicked) way
we are not anything
nowhere
nothing
like,the rest
merci beacoup
for
the darling sex
(you so
so slickly
do
your bit)

NARC
beautiful planet
so we
can expect narcissism
everybody
overdosing on blue
smoking thick cloud
but now
like a battered football
a bit sore
about its looks
sad for the planet
sure it is has its own
ideal of
something to which
it once
so
tragically aspired

PYGMALION
the gods pitied Pygmalion
his love for his statue
(so nubile under
his fingers),
her reflected love for him
decided to bring them.together,
enshrine in marble
make
their love immortal,
permanent
aching to embrace forever
inching closer each
millennium
a tale with enough true
sadness for
our age
though the fable
Iives
inspires in
different form
secure in
its impossible irony







TOROJAN WOMBMEN
Toorojan Wombmen
have helmet heads
love licorice
(it is their
most guilty pleasure)
hate
allsorts
would send all allsorts
down to Poseidon’s locker
something fishy already
felt about the smell
Oh but the Achaeans
are coming
the Myrmidions are coming
loaded with logic
and rationality
their armour as
bad-bullet proof
as Blackpool rock
(so many cavities
in the fangs
you
are bearing
so much yellow enamel
in need of bleach)


HARPIES
They tug at the heat strings with state of the art wirecutters
so let us call them
“Harpies”
double envelopment
they have
broken through
both flanks
and encircled humanity
the minds they have captured
headed fod relentless torture
but this
blue bunting, red-
hot pokers
is all about mythology, about
Palladian architecture
and ancient meanings
the ocean sighing as it pulls
back from.the Dover shore
before biting further
into ths landscape
no time to
set fire to the ships we
must imagine them burning
must instruct
the plebs to
see them burning
everything so gaslit
it is plain
as day
and there
quoting disparately
in elementary Latin stands
our Caesar
sort of stands our Caesar
Oh when will
such a Caesar ever
come again?
poem plus AI art


BROKE-ASS
came across a broke-ass poet
sort of all medieval minstrally meandering around
strange how the Carolingans also had their surrealists
just didn’t know it
thought that search for artistic holy grail
the most dubious pilgrimage,
most apeshit quest
of them all
and you have to be careful
in an age of belief
you cannot shake off
full-throttle God-rollicking
divine diss from place most
high
you are not going to come back from
recovering in sanatorium
placed
on injured reserve
but
here
in our age of sidetrack
no one
gonna get
allow themselves to get
railroaded
so hopelessly
find themselves suddenly cast up on desert shore
fate worse
than turning bankrupt
becoming the thing
your father’s whole being was
so well protected against
and yet
my dear saint, so grievously arrowed,
a smattering of suffering (dint
of raw chaos)
might just do the trick
to shoot you
to Olympus for
(statue, no statue) sweet consultation with Apollo




AND IMAGINARY
The women in my room
are unreal and imaginary
we spend time
drawing invisible Venn diagrams
all across the floor
in this world, unlike this
supposedly real one
(which is,
of course,
bullshit)
the gratification comes easy
is intense
and profound.
