BETTER
you want
Peace
here
is your
piece
its
a bit seriously small
too
small
for anything
is bombed-
out; barricaded
but its the most
we are
prepared
to give
most we
dare spare
we openly defy you
to summon
Heaven and Earth
see
if you might do any better
NEAR PLANET CYPRUS
swimming pool breasts
that goddess is
the archetype
of woman
in water
no Pygmalion girl she
no labour of love
to put her
together
she was as add water
instant delight
as they come
stirred
not shaken
(we are the ones Honey
Ryder first
appearance shaken
Mr born-under-
Mars Bond)
and what
a recipe
something went
so wrong with the logic
flummoxed our expectations
gorgeous
complete antithesis of
imagined Kaiju type beast
(unless
as with Troy in absolute
beauty such much greater
capacity for
disaster
causal factor)
even now
plunging me into
state of arousal
suddenly suffused by
the light
of her
near planet
and yet it is for night
one night
I pray in vain to you
would
absolutely cross oceans
swim
out to you
WITHOUT EXAGGERATION
this poem
may,
without exaggeration,
be
the death
of me
even as I write
artificial minds
are reading
between the lines
which lines do not exist
since all
is dust, is code,
is wll that flickers
between
death
and infinity
this I do confide
as we approach a turnstile
time for anxiety should
cards
not be in order
should there be
no automatic passage
from desert
on one hand
to circus on the other
with such
an outside and inside
precipice, blade
of razor
all destined
to endure
system
is forever
our salvation our doom
this poem, without exaggeration,
taking the very life from me
JOY
a god walks the stage
the world in
a state of wonder,
state of fright
loses; forgets
its words
as above
so below
jets and drones
contest the sky
we are below, suffering watching
unless the god
rescinds his
refusal to elevate us
teaches us that which we need
to scoff at this war
thess wars
elevated to the stars
the words that turn
a world streaming out
from under that mask
direct from Olympus, words
to drive insane, turn
upside down
flood with intense
laughter and pain
dark understanding
filled with divine joy
so far beneath him
this thing they
will eventually call
history
terrible in its
truth
a god walks the stage
JERUSALEM
if this is Jerudalem
why do the stones not speak
the very walls sing hossanas?
why does God who owns
both symbolic rights and
ultimate reals estate
command his worshippers
to share, unite,
not flow into that darkness
of which there are no words,
solely mystery
as one continual, endless stream
whose only form and shape
and sense
is blood?
THIS GUITAR
this electric guitar
is singing, screeching
to high Heaven
and the Devil has
promised me a woman
before
I be baked in an oven
roasted in a furnace
reduced to
sentient ash
doomed to suffer forever
the flames
of an intense fire
and this
as fair, reasonable
payment for her beauty,
such beauty
your beaity
creature created to
define and express inner
and outer
the entire limits
of desire
DOWN
I am a god
demigod
hero
beloved by
all on
Olympus
I am switched to
panorama
I get the whole picture
and here, with the denouement,
I shall call upon
divine machinery
to
escape
the stage
leave them to splinter and
splutter, their
tongues
tied around them
constricting like the serpents
that swallowed
Laocoon and his
male chlldren
and here it is, my vehicle now,
dodging the heavy flak,
as it slaloms through
search-
light beams
luckily this is classic, no
thought of variation of outcome
alternate history
not a hope
in Hell do these aggrieved
little mortals have
of shooting me from sky
seeing me plummet down.
PRODUCTION
on the farm,
perforce, we
put our heads together
everything under the Sun
puts is head together
wheels
set in
motion
as
word speads
and Heraclitus of Miletus
stops by
a number of things
brings to mind
solid argument inclusive: that
all is
twice, thrice,
there is nothing that
is not in process
meanwhile (forgive the inadvertent South African
colloquialism) not
back
at the ranch
but in the heart of Johannesburg
they are staging a production
of Euripides’ The Bacchae
have
already
launched into
the opening scene
which very instant, being
in the audience my
mind
thirsting for
ecstasy
veers towards chaos, entropy,
fractal mathematics
as we suddenly welded into one
sift and exchange
that whole Pandora’s box
of memories and
recollections
whispers and ghosts
the very
incantations that
pull aside the veil, strip
off the veneer
speaking for myself
but
perhaps all
hardly able to wait, kill
that terminal longing,
set eyes
upon the mask
that is
dark Dionysus’ face
ABSURD
in a poem
it gets so absurd
the whole thing
can be changed
by
one word
for the piece
at hand
it’s life
or death
the shift of shade
you now express
CROSS
my sphere
your sphere
two
hemispheres
no actual line
of demarcation
marked
for us to
cross
at out
peril
as painful first
step to
(what discord, what
dissonance,
what celestial music)
some
kind
of redemption, state
of liberation
poems 2 die for