poem poetry – Page 8 – poems 2 die for

SAILOR

I sailed out to the end of the ocean
but found only
meaninglessness
when I had been
expecting land

and in this space
where nothing is of consequence
everything forced or
obligatory
I found myself
in one sense floating at random
through a cold, deep darkness
in another sense
absolutely rooted
to the spot

but that spot moving because
here there is no stationary
and yet no
clear causality or
direction
to follow

and I wondered about love
and every love message

were they spoken too softly
or did I, to my shame and
destruction
of life somehow
someway

contrive to channel
them away
blot them out

I sailed all the oceans and
appear
to have learnt nothing

SURE

couldn”t sleep late
this Sunday
had my talk of Biotechnics
to revise and then prepare

wish I had all sorts of inputs, downloads,
screw- ins, prosthetics
seamless interfaces
between
flesh and mechanism

then would my TED audience
see and hear
something unbelievable
something they had
never witnessed
on stage before

not one of these killer points
lost on them my speech as a whole

a beautiful joy ride
from
take off to
maximum elevation

and here I am up
on Sunday around dawn
battling to
get anything
down on paper

in search of something

pretty sure Sunday got
to be the day
of the week upon
which I
leave this life

infinitely more secure

STILL

these poets
they all say big things
“legislate”
is the word,
I believe

things
which reverberate like
distant thunder, not yet
on the horizon

maybe moving
in the opposite direction

and we
who suffer for our
thirst for beauty

still
waiting for rain

waiting for the rain.

SQUARE DEAL

can
a poem

stop a tank?

better than
a Javelin missile
a WW2 German
88

or the guy with the shopping bag
rock steady in Tiananmen

something in his stance that day
confounding the mechanics
of wheel and track

HIEROPHANT

pucker up
for your papal kiss

as blessings go
will be a
bliss blitz

mighty under mitre
elephant
in the room

except it is
my hierophant

supreme teacher of every
dark
catechism

to reduce
the polarities of
gospel sense

RETURN

come back Isaac
all is forgiven

don’t want no multiverse
no wave collapse
restore
my comfort zone

force and motion, quantum
probability tells
me you must return

reinstate the old classics
that were
so ball-bearing

sex that is
simple mechanics
no
this way
and that

love that cannot be
entanglement

is there in the calculus:
mass meets acceleration
(what better
golden ratio?)

RABID

RABID

the rabid ones
Pavlov’s charmed children

the colour of their blood
indeterminate

all cloned to recite
ad nauseam the same
sad soul-destroying
excuse
for a human idea

FIRST STRIKE

aliens havs taken control
of Parow library

they are using their plasma
weapons to take out
all the poetry
classic novels and
books of philosophy

there were
not so many
but all are now gone

this alien high command
circling the northern suburbs
in their mothership
are openly
celebrating as
a titanic victory

the human race needs
to be even more unread
dull unimaginative
and stupid

to become the compliant
servants and slaves
the great
alien think tanks
are convinced we can be

LIGHTS OUT

lights out for you
for me

lights out for us both, for
us all
to the edge
of infinity

and we haven’t even talked
had dinner together
and what
comes after

and so now we know
there ain’t no after
so wrap yourself
in your body blanket
construct
a Faraday cage

dig around to uncover
a shovel put
together a bunker

maybe unearthing
signs
of comet impacts
and lost
civilizations

all the way down
I wished we might
go down