OH WHY
why
have windows
when you have got
television?
why when cerebral implants
still the need for eyes
I asked
but seems like all ears
tuned today
to another frequency
sensual, sensuous,
simulation can deliver
more than we
able to
desire
could ever require
CLEAN SHOT
Ah! You look back with
unbelievable fondness
trying to relive the time
only one of your feet
had a bullet through it
not two beauties in each
felicitously self-inflicted
the accuracy having
substantially improved
unerring aim —
today shooting at
oneself
it is
impossible to
miss.
SPEED DEAL
This poem is coming at you
in real time
you may
reduce the speed
to ensure you do not
miss anything
for what is a poem
if you miss anything?
A thing you might
have to read again
another day
when you feel better
when you feel like
being nudged ever so
slightly
towards
your much better self.
A UNIVERSE
give me a Universe
where our is still blue
and the sea
is not raw sewage
give me a world
where Sylvia did not
stick her head
in a gas oven
to commit suicide
give me a world
where there is not
by some other name
the practice
of slavery
give me a world
where there is no nuclear threat
giving us
the chance
to survive,
perhaps thrive
GALAXY
Ah, yes, Professor,
that Gutenberg Galaxy!
first only one Church;
and now
everywhere a church
far as the eye can see
a billion church communities
religion
is booming
Jesus is booming, dividing
and subdividing
splendidly proliferating
first there was one text
now there are many texts
once many
texts, many libraries
but now, when it
comes to libraries
business is
on
a downturn
we are down
to our last one
GALAXY
Ah, yes, Professor,
that Gutenberg Galaxy!
first only one Church;
and now
everywhere a church
far as the eye can see
a billion church communities
religion
is booming
Jesus is booming, dividing
and subdividing
splendidly proliferating
first there was one text
now there are many texts
once many
texts, many libraries
but now, when it
comes to libraries
business is
on
a downturn
we are down
to our last one
GAZEBO
I built myself gazebo
step by step
in my mind
hoping that it might be
pretty much the ideal
place to write Nature poetry,
Japanese tanka, and haiku
can close my eyes
feel centred, grounded
and put
pen to paper
shut out, if but for a moment,
the world of worry, serious debt,
huge obligation
alone except for
things I host
with a yen to explore
things curiously ambivalent,
hybrid-seeming, here
from the dawn
of time, perhaps,
but currently sharing
this address corporeal
in
manner internal
could be of our world,
most secretly so, or
genuinely alien, of home-
world extraterrestrial
creatures in size ever-
shifting, unphased by
change of shape
wholesale genetic
adjustment
and spatial orientation
like this exquisite, verdegris
dragonfly with
what looks like
neon
under-lighting
buzzing around my head in
size and demeanour
flitting across the
breadth of
every spectrum, between
tiny, metallic waspy thing
and
titanium-alloyed killer
drone
but
this my gazebo
this my throne.
STONE’S THROW AWAY
I think there is a moment
of pure clarity
but then it goes
then everything goes
never having experienced
any such clarity, indeed
anything pure
I am at a loss
to extend you an image
provide a metaphor
but
time draining away
like someone of something
nicked
its artery
that moment of clarity
of deep and complete
change in perception
must be near
if not at hand
but a stone’s throw away
CLOUDS
the clouds, who
whilst they
have hidden so much,
equally so
have seen it all
everything before
came scudding my way
to whistleblow their truth
that evolution in
human favours the rich
and rotten
the denizens of
deep comfort zone who
will live
and die (but so yes-but,
and grudging absolute end of the day delay
on mortality) passing on
their inheritance
to generation the next
producing this fine stock
out of
which we might dream
of the future utopia
no, as the clouds did indeed
take pains to explain,
evolution does not
sieve, does in
no way strain
strip cream from dross
amongst what does
rise to the top
evolution is not a miner
up in the Yukon
for gold hard a-panning
no evolution just looks and laughs
wondering what its
mutations might mean
LANTERN
bottle rocket
ship lantern
nothing so poignant
in my humble opinion
braving the dark pond, the calm lake
that is the ocean
that is the immensity of
intergalactic space
soaring high, showing the stars
what we are worth
how we can make stars
that explode and fall
with our chemistry wisdom
every
colour of the rainbow
(where in the cosmos
star that burns lilac,
star that
burns lime green?)
the stars our audience here
so tiny from our perspective
our moment of
triumph
ecstasy the dead Universe
out there has never felt for itself, seen
the like of
no feared fable of entropy
the lantern boats sail, burn
are consumed, sink
disappear
tiny energy, cause
and effect
to perfection
our hearts hopes
on that little
Odyssey with you
the morning rain turning all
those spent cardboard tubes
to mulch
the stars
in recess, no doubt
conferring such distances involved,
such titanic energies
doubtless stirred into some
kind of reaction by
all our performance
poems 2 die for