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
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
ODDS ON
bet you
don’t encounter
too many wobbly
xenomorphs
out there
coming here to conquer
and convert you
teach you
the truth
of their
unbalanced philosophy
so many equivalences between
our worlds and cultures
including our deep
religious faith
in four-
lane highways and
reality
TV the black hole of
consumption we
were created to be
GRACE
by grace of
was saying grace straight
forty days
and forty nights
had to survive the flood
by surfing on my plate
could have
said it as
an epigram
spoken it
as haiku
no
saving grace
as every unsavoury creature
made its way to gorge its
greedy seven-
deadly self
turning our feast
into a mockery
as
bone-headed
as it
graceless gets
and raw
a ritual rhapsody
poems 2 die for