Tag Archives: poem poetry

EXCHANGE

We thought the goddess
was here incarnate
to impart her blessing

we thought Aphrodite
but it was
time of Kali

wrong mythology, wrong
about everything

and you
hot-stove focused
when
I made my move

the chemistry I thought alchemy
much, much mistaken
this
kitchen stuff, basic
premise of our evolutionary trail

exchange of fluids, no
noble elements, grubby
hydrocarbons

no catalyst here for
transubstantiation
trans-
formation of the real

and we, after the greedy, grasping

clamour of our exchange

left wondering
where we were heading
praying
we not taking
our Universe, the Universe
along with us
for some dark ride

and Kali’s dark eyes filling
with the light that is
her darkness

needing
our little, paltry,
insignificant dance

to spur her upon
her cosmic charge.

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

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