TEAPOT

TEAPOT

below
everybody’s radar

a fabulous world
bunkering
at the bottom
of your
white rabbit hole

and
after a divinity of
fine tea in the
arms of such company

time to reset
boot up
    swipe
delete any virus
inconvenient program

waiting for
the bus of old age
who on Earth is
going to believe your story

the jury out
on whether the bus has
been missed, is late,
can
   be said to exist

that debate
still raging, if ever
so quietly,

the luxury of it all
every tea set fully furnished,
expertly laundered

no future as monolithic
on the horizon, on
any horizon, as that
presents us as star child

not wishing to moonshine you
Cheshire Cat or Caterpillar you

you my dear girl
        captured in this selfie
under the hat you
borrowed from
that mad
fellow

nothing in your sharp mind
going to change the heavy
metals in
    his system to
                     gold

who single-
handedly threw
tea pot into unknown
postal district
     this saucer into whole
new big bang aggrendisment
lurking in
galaxy not up
to us
to speak about

WHEN IT KILLS

WHEN IT KILLS

“As with many tragedies, our story opens in a moment of triumph.”

Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

Now we
see

how deep indeed
this story goes

how sure
the colour
in the rose

of itself
in every detail

its thorns
the truth
    of its beauty’s cruelty

the colour
fixed on absolute
when
    it kills.

TRADE SURPLUS

TRADE SURPLUS

shut up with
this stupidity

are you grooving
into an epoch of
mental deficiency?

just because it is
the sublime will of money
the rapture of
self-serving power

when I see you
talking your processed
speech

I wonder how much
in the way of steel pins
for your face
brass screws
for your teeth

when they resolved
that you should
trade
      your humanity
rent out your heart

COUPLED

COUPLED

be careful
what you
wish for

imagination
coupled
with
distance

is such
a killer

the creature of
my dreams
was
    so different
strange, alluring
utterly unique and
exotic

sadly
    she is
light years distant
in space
and time

her species across
the galaxy on a
distant
      epic planet

                      however
you do spin it,

her species not having
begun to
truly evolve yet

at least in a direction
I would extremely like

LAST

LAST

this should be
my last poem

the process
has become fraught

protection permeable
hostile takeover imminent
constant suppression, much
infiltrating

you look at what
is on this page

ask: is this how
savages, animals
write these days?

and you fighting with every bone,
      every breath
for consensus?

so many conceptions, contending
definitions at play

out of this problemmatic
few crossovers, no
idea miscegenation

things you
believed getting tunneled under
tunneled through

and always, still
same overriding question

is this how poetry, a single
poem should look
    and then what about

humanity, in what image
a single human?

LOVE THEM (GOT TA)

LOVE THEM (GOT TA)

poets, poets
got to
  love them

all shapes
and sizes coming in
fighting
  for the light

some pushing, pushing
edge of that envelope
push so hard it
    boomerang back courtesy
of curvature of
the Universe

some
    dibbing, dabbing

polishing the inside
of that bubble that it shine
like a
    jewel and
still
keep its perfect shape

room for both in this place
I say
    no lebensraum issue
either way

perfect bubbles and
magic
    messages from
the back of beyond beyond

you see
what life be like
    without either of them

CLOCKWORK

CLOCKWORK

like clockwork
everyday
      somewhere
in the world

a poet
jumps under a train

they know
it’s a poet

because
they find poems

send them to me
to fix, to edit

a labour of love it is
piecing them together
making them
              whole
editing
      out
            all

the
stuff
  that might
derail the project

all the unconscionable hurt
and real raw pain