OFF THE PAGE
I was writing about
the world
but it all
got very
faint
and small
like a film dissolve
set to permanent
and those strong words
powerful words
there to express
energy, vigour,
passion, life
went elsewhere;
refused to show
their faces
leaving me
in my watercolor world
pigments merging
everything
that might have made
this a poem
dripping off the page
SHUT
close your eyes
it is better
to read this poem
with your eyes shut
lest these words dazzle
trick you, seduce you
lead you off
on a dance
of disaster
as, from the very beginning,
they have me
they have me
eaten me up
entirely
ON THE OTHER HAND
Aphrodite passed it to me
bade me drink
and drink deep
mistakenly, I took it
for a love potion, but
those are
I believe somewhat bitter
this, on the other hand,
was sweet
to the taste
that taste
long and lingering
until it
began to fade
and
everything too
HEAR
wrote you a poem
but you said
you preferred silence
so I doused dampened down
the lines made them quiet
as can be
forbade
everything from shouting,
speaking, making
a sound louder
than a whisper
and I would love
my poem to sidle up
right up
to your ear
almost say
all the things I want to say
that you say
you dare
not hear
IN THE CORNER
in the corner
a bucket of nothing
full of nothing
under a sign
never to peer inside
for no one can tell
(though we all hypothesize)
the true threat
of nothing
what it might
do to us
how deeply
it might
skew things
infect our Universe
run riot on the inside
end body and mind
or just
open a doorway
to paradox
upon paradox
mystery
within mystery
get us, searching
for final
ultimate truth
truth
by its promise
presumed depth
and nature
way
above our pay grade
impossible to find
IMMORTALITY
you are still here
but your body
is buried
in a thousand graveyards,
has been
reduced to
handfuls
of ash scattered across
a range of locales
you should know death
so intimately, but
are none the wiser
have no kind of access
to all these fatal histories
and so
it still continues this
curse of life since
consciousness. horrifically,
is forever
is immortal
that sleep of sleeps, that
fruit
of the fall
most
ingrained wish
just
a fantasy
you still here and the
you that is here
forever survivor
blessed with
the curse
of immortality
hard luck trying
to disappear
ALMOST MEMORABLE
a floating feeling
my inner snake checking in
with me sadly, peering
into my eyes and
then it disappears
I wish it well, God I’m
going to miss him
so much
he gave me, made
this almost memorable,
made it
almost worth living
but now floating out freely
with the current, along
this river
of darkness,
not a care in the Universe
all my stars going out
down to the last sprinkling
and then they disappear
LIKE THESE
strange that so
many
ultimate particles
can turn
off
the great on
switch
can turn
the bright cosmos
to
one deep
dark
dead
hole
the more we discover,
the more we learn
the worse
it grows
the more
mathematically certain
so much
bad down there in
the small print, subtext
that is fatal
quark, quantum, strangelet,
neutron, Higgs Boson
so much out there
could be
our annihilation
just one
moment here and pop!
gone the next
not fusion, not fission,
but more absurd demise
new set of
parameters, laws, that
change
our entire situation
rewriting the Universe
in a way
not to think
about,
our minds ill-
equipped to envisage,
no one ever considered
nightmares like these.
,
SPRING CLEAN
vacuuming the house. mowing the lawn
wonder how many
subatomic particles amongst
all the grass, dust and, fluff?
better make
a really good job of it
before the Higgs Bosun field
decides to
do its worst to me
(the more
stuff we discover
the scarier it gets)
false hopes false dreams
pyramids of false assumptions
everything we thought
provisional at best
vacuuming the house hoping
not to throw into thrall
any off-kilter false vacuum
moving slowly,
carefully,
seemingly static
observing every
margin of safety
way below
the devastatingly instantaneous
speed of light itself
IMAGINABLE
sometimes the wind changes
not for a day
but for centuries
find myself sky
suffused with grey cloud
have to drag
myself back from death
persuade myself
I am real
to achieve anything
more than
a postulate in latest
lunatic physics,
a trick of light and shadow,
whose meaning
has turned viral,
whose
truth has gone rogue
thought I had every possibility
of becoming a song
of awakening, whistling
a chorus of joy
but then those
small, fatal miscalculations,
that missed
decimal place that
ends everything
everything to nothing
in fractions of
a microsecond
as if
it is all, we are all,
just ingrained fictions
of a fleeting brain
terrors there
in the disturbing logic
in that flash-
in-the-pan philosophy
as I sit in the darkness
conversing with you
hunting
for you with my
searchlight
thinking
here in our words
the foundation of
all enlightenment
something to
dispel the hold
it has
upon our souls
this
darkest thought imaginable
poems 2 die for