Tag Archives: poem

SIX POEMS

SIX POEMS:
without batteries
masterpiece
tantra
scrapbook
the music
warhead

WITHOUT BATTERIES

insidious, the pun
destabilizes

mangles single-
meaning

in its electromagnetic
                        field

a field day having thereupon
I think of a goblin green
Vader Christmas

slipping down an industrial
smokestack for the children
who choked to death

on his back a pack of Death Stars
and other Sith machines
to toy with
and destroy the galaxy

luckily without batteries,
Skynet took them, the Matrix
took them

total the disappointment
whereupon for the
children of every executive

reminding us all
of former wicked times
of Scrooge economics
and monetarist deprival

and those who suffered
the feeezing calamity
of Christ”s birthday
reflected
     as it was in the tiny
suffering always
happy face
of Tiny Tim

meanwhile some Jew or other
in the British musuem
is slaving daily
    at his big
red book

we are
creative creatures, he writes,
not regretful
afterthought, surplus
liability
      
        image that is no.match
for such
dreams of
  transcendence that plague
our human imagination
(the ghost of
a Marley man financier
ghastly at the door).

****

MASTERPIECE

I read an
unusually bad poem
from a
Professor or so

worse
    than normal
but no ways so bad
that I might
quite involuntarly, mind,
require to
     gag, vomit, spit

which would have been
not a good look for me
given his
current level of
appreciation
(verging on
near total public
         adulation)

such pressure on me
unforunately to
favourably respond

that when I did in fact retch
(following
      line of least resistance)
I threw up
     a jewel

wonder of transformative
power of mind over matter

a gem
    of a vicious
     masterpiece

****

TANTRA

I drink
where the rivers merge

slake my thirst
at the delta

some ocean salt here
too which
I taste
    no mistake

a lock
on time
    when you
flow
with me
and we
locate our
psalm sustenance

behold
     something has
changed

      seems the sea is
surfeit

we have
long left the land

****

SCRAPBOOK

I am going
to repaint this town

in line
with how you
dream it
retell
its history

scatter sepia, reframe
as daguerrotype

invest with shade
of fake civility
wherever
     the whim takes me

nip
   new

in the bud
let

this be my enterprise
until faith
       in the lie

gets up one day
and quietly leaves me

****

THE MUSIC

there was no music
none
   to
talk about

then suddenly,
there was
the music again

and the Beatles
found it

learnt it played it
packaged it
         sent special
delivery
from turntable
           to heart

and there
        inside that music
there was
one Eleanor Rigby

who
   are went
           looking for

nobody
found

sadness of that
            fiction destined
to haunt

****

WARHEAD

I don’t know
about your brain

what kind type of
brain and
whether firing on
all cylinders

but your head
     did take
             your body
along
other day
went looking for
                 headwear

thought
      if at least looked
half articulate then
    the words might just
elect
to follow

but
nothing there your size
nothing
     but extremely bad
  
fit

seems
     your head
                   has sacrificed
rational brain for

warhead target selection
and
    guidance system

set with such hair-
trigger precision

best not
     ask you to speak




AT ZERO GRAVITY

AT ZERO GRAVITY

no soul

just
a hole

and me falling
fast out of
dense parent
childhood

like Alice
without
a parachute

until, trick
of physics

I hit
zero gravity

feeling myself
unplugged, unsupported

choice words
hurtling past me

seemingly from
pen and
     paper from

the immortal
Ms Dickinson

and me
trying to catch,
hold onto that

before I go
meteor, comet,
full asteroid

burn up
   in Wonderland’s
realm of
alternzte science

wild
     surreal curved
atmosphere

TED

TED

…as if the stone’s mind came feeling
A fantasy of directions
                  
                            “Pibroch”)
       
                   
it is a Winter truth:
every
    library is
a mausoleum

every poem
a tomb

I think it must have been,
if memory serves, in
an old revamped cotton
trade building
that I sat amidst a throng
of hopelessly
eager Mancunians

devouring your every
brooding, grizzled,
Yorkshire syllable

seemingly homespun, yet
distinctly Oxbridge academic,
web of
   sturdy twine

each thick, visceral, seed-
spilling phrase
     falling like iron
parables
on every kind of ground

Mozart, shark,
  hawk from a handsaw,
you were
obviously speaking
of yourself

as we all do
                 (be do)

metal scraping white ceramic

outside
   I am released into the gravel air

pause
  for a moment to think of Sylvia

****

old stone
older even than
the cathedrals of conquest
my ancestors
                  built everywhere

petrified
    as to what I might find

I too fish for archetypes
rustic rivers, industrial canals

stuff down there for sure
with more
    skewed history than
sets of pram wheels

dull green-gray these waters
of artifice
        nothing gurgling yet
we
    were no doubt told
means to
our emancipation

***

my grandfather buried here
think he
      might have cultivated
a bit of interest
in the craft you
were here espousing

my boys
were the poets of his war

the ones
who died writing, or
returned
     to ditch their medals
at the river bottom

common trade
common seam

                  painful
                  perpetual

clear as the first sharp
thought in the mind of a stone.

DUE PROCESS

DUE PROCESS

give the Devil
his due

saw him hauled into
court for
every human rights
violation in
the book

mainly because
he wrote the book
(proudly proclaiming
we are
    still
   only half through it)

been up to his crimes
against us
    since the beginning
of time

which i am here
to spin as
  errors of omission, simple
misdemeanors

with this battery of lawyers
up against us
how on Earth could
guilt be proved
beyond
reasonable, terrible,
existential doubt

and with jury
of peers from
    the ranks and files of
humanity
carefully conscripted

and that Jagger-
Richards song fatally ringing
in all
    our ears

a convinction on
even the slightest and
most trivial and
totally indefensible
political offence
amongst all
of which he
stands accused of
commiting since
the dawn
of time itself

impoosible to get
the court
sure

to reject
   upon which, as I open
my case for the defence,

would
   bet my life and
immortal soul itself

so give the Devil his due
his day
    in court and

trust the process

CATHEDRAL

CATHEDRAL

sorry!

just a
slip of

the tongue

was just
imagining myself
a mamba
and
   the wrong
word flickered

wanted to
was of
a mind to
say
    “is it”
what came
            out

what I ended up
saying
   sounded like
“Zizek”

such a sublime little
slip
    fork
in the road, twist
of
   breath

and the hovel
of my art
            rising out
of its
foundations

becomes thing
long suppressed
                    other
than
itself

thinking of, naming,
seeing
     itself as

thing now
     descending, shape

in the clouds

maybe cloud to you
but to me
some
       kind of
cathedral