THERE
feel you must be starved
so, disingenuously,
I offer you this poem
not sure how
life-sustaining
it will be (into
what food groups
do they fall:
metaphors, wordplay,
similes, images,
ink, paper?)
but
the thought is there
with poetry
the thought
should always be
there
here there
there here
what use
is anything
bereft of care?
GIANT
how
absolute om
evil is
survival oriented
one shiver, shake,
slight seriousness
in planetary wobble
and all darkness
leaches out
stuff
that ice worlds, dead
rock planets
are all made of
not to speak
of the huge death narcissism
of every
gas giant
WEREN’T WE?
weren’t we
supposed to hold
up the mirror
to human nature
not let it fall
splinter, shatter
crash and burn, break
into a billion tiny
diamond-bright pieces
jagged shards, blood
soaked, blood
painted, bloody
never to be fixed
never
to be returned
never reclaimed
never restored
all those bits of light
dancing in the Sun grotesquely
hold
up the mirror
to human nature
who the fuck, nowhere
near his right mind
came up
with that idea
(go not pass go
leave the planet
sail steadfast, venture into the cosmos
cross
the galaxy
not, never
in a trillion lifetimes
nothing out there
to mirror what
we
might well be)
weren’t we?
WHEN IT KILLS
“As with many tragedies, our story opens in a moment of triumph.”
Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors
Now we
see
how deep indeed
this story goes
how sure
the colour
in the rose
of itself
in every detail
its thorns
the truth
of its beauty’s cruelty
the colour
fixed on absolute
when
it kills.
AND FILE
imminent
immanent
who knows
cares
what these words
mean?
whether they circle
each other in a loop
stand in
series
rank and file
or jostle with each other
flex their muscles
or scratch like stones
giving
sparks
birthing
fire
RECALLING MR POPE
sound
echoing sense
but what if there
is no sense
rule of your nonsense
Mr Pope
descending into
the entropy
of brute power
I decline
to add
for why say anything
when gets so grossly filtered
crushed by the imposition
superimposition
of hideous, ruling
mythology
under which stone rubble
words die, asphyxiate
cannot breathe
AND SO
and so;
God showed Job
the small things
of the Universe
the fine
print
of his creation
as they
walked together
across the smouldering ruins
the fields of ash
the huge expression
catastrophic to
a fault
of those
who refuse
to see
who
do not read
EDITORS
the editors called
them in
hectored them
told them that
to keep
the people down
we need
to keep language
he we she it all
they them
need to kill
the words
kill
and liquidate
kill
and paraphrase
topple words
from their throne
strip poetry
to the bone
(reduce it to a
sweet
bare rhyme)
down
down
down
kill and devour
reduce all
words to spit
and spume
our few
true words will
hold all power
and so
the unthinkable
can
be made to think
and think
the death of truth to power
ZEITGEIST
steam
going nuclear
hissing through
the pipes
after the roof blew off
mutation and Nature
began to conspire
my brain,
much troubled,
was shuffling through scenes
as if a pack of cards
as if the ghost of a film
Tarkowsky envisaged
but never completed
I looked at my skin
wondered if it could
become and then
saw it suddenly
do duty as
a screen
I felt like I had become
digital, become metal
without Tesla lightning
without leaves bursting
through my fingers
as some pagan
god or other
felt my mythological truth
was that I should
become a tree
poems 2 die for