FROM THE MOMENT

FROM THE MOMENT

from the moment
Christopher set eyes
upon the New World
he was plagued.
by double vision

a world not
the world he had remembered
not the world he had anticpated
it shifted
    in and out of recognition

something so exceptional
about this place

whispering voice of
the Great Spirit, invincible towers,
        swathes of wheat

light and darkness, darkness
inside the
     light

suddenly Europe a land forgotten
the tired and huddled masses

Christopher scanning
the Eastern horizon

wondering,
          stocks and shares
permitting

how many leagues their
ships lag behind
   

DITHYRAMB

DITHYRAMB

god of the sky
god of the soil

dismembered god
reborn in the fire

your gifts:
tragedy, ecstasy,
drunkenness

curses and blessings
set our triumphs
our limitations

energy
that electrifies

energy that
destroys

you ask us to revere you
then destroy us for
doing so your song

sweet dithyramb
capturing the balance of
all our
equivalences
our dialectic
of extremes

all our pain, intensity,
destruction and desire

AND BUTTER

AND BUTTER

you butter
your bread
with genocide

got genocide
sizzling
     on the stove
take it with
milk and three sugars
the taste
to sweeten

swing your fat arse
into the studio
there to pontificate
argue
      the toss
(toss
    the argue)

that genocide, by
very definition,
ia a crime
      against humanity
that can never
be said to exist

SLAM DUNK

SLAM DUNK

mindset to mindset
not yielding an inch
not conceding
a point

leaves me confused
as to whether this is
chess or all-in
  -wrestling
we find ourselves
confronted with

with chess no rips and
tears and broken bones

deadly
    serious this game

hardly spectacle: so
poorly choreographed

posture and
        bluster

in the same league hardly

TAO

TAO

solid lines yang
moving lies yin

I was pretty fat
(both)
outside
     and in

but now
am suspiciously thin
                 in both
substance
and being

when not having managed
to squeeze my
way
    into a
poem

for as in a poem
so the I Ching

as in the I Ching
so a poem

these the wind chimes
that must have tinkled
in the great
Leo mind of
Mr Carl Gustav Jung

real lion mind
that loved
to devour everything

reduce us
    to some vast
expression of the cosmic

you are huge
but uncomplicated
archetypal by
nature
archetypal
by creation

the music of this oracle
reeling him in

caught like a fish
though
       Leviathan he is

BACKYARD

BACKYARD

I did not sweat
through the missile crisis
I was too young, had
no idea where Cuba was
and it was too cold

testing an old siren
outside our school
fun
   sitting under my desk
practice
making perfect

that cold cold bipolar
war
    one wromg move
could get every bomb
from Kalinin to Siberia
heading for
my face
  every American base
.
but that’s geopolitics
and the worst of ideology

Oh
    beast, non-
                beast

bestial, non-bestial:

    wish there were a switch
to flick or dial to turn
to shift us, bounce
us between polarities

would be good for my
Mars in Aries issues, get
my return
      blow in first forgo
and concentrate
on kindness
     and diplomacy

and not stacking my missiles
or my anti missile missiles
right in
       your back yard

BROOM CUPBOARD

BROOM CUPBOARD

broom cupboard
you have the rigour
and acumen
of a broom cupboard
and not one
that anyone in
their right mind
would consider
spacious

no, this cupboard
is so tiny
best it could do
would be to hold
a brush or two,
though admittedly
more could be hosted
if the broom and brushes
were in fact broken,
which, in your case,
they naturally are

and so we must come
to your intervention
a strange mixture I felt
between the necessarily glib
and striving
to be profound

if it were served as sustenance
it seemed neither solid
nor in any way, by
size or shape, nothing
that had not been pre-,
paid or especially selected
to give the support
the ranks of the mindless
seem to save
for their own

no fat suet dumpling floating
in hot greasy water
is the best
cuisine analogy I can
dredge up for you

watching that fat imperial face
dole out imperial ideology
as if history
had stripped your
divided nation

down to a plane, perhaps
a tank
and a boat or two

not the right backup stuff
for tough talk premised
on old battleship diplomacy

pop
goes the pop gun

in any
real confrontation with
the rising world
they sweep clean
your talk is doomed

RETURN

RETURN

sat by the oasis
dreaming of the ocean
dreaming of rivers.

sonetimes
water is everything
whole story
story beyond story

not your cockeyed
fable, an affront
to intelligence, all
our sensibilities

trying to tell me
it was delivered unto you
directly from Heaven
that angels had in a hand
in all the suffering
this has caused

so badly told, open
to simple deconstruction

the power that
truth must speak to

the lie
     so ingrained, expression
of that darkneds to which
front
beginning of time
we have
always aspired

but as for me
waiting at this oasis
for whatever inspiration

know how in this
business, words
                       beginning
to swim

line by
line
moment by moment

thinking, writing the river
the ocean

suddenly all talk
is of this great return

FANCY

FANCY

we have (all of us)
our very own fancy
for apocalypse

projecting on the world
our own thirst and fear
of ending (Oh what a strange
species we
are indeed!)

yes, what thrill is the final
scene
     if you perform it alone
stage empty, auditorium deserted,

is there not supposed to
be resonance, sweet slash
bittersweet connection

and then there are
those most philosophical
of warriors, most warlike
of philosophers

there music too, will shake
you like no other
between such highs and lows

to which, if that we not enough,
we must add the crime
of psychoanalysis

one in particular
Leo-sign showman

reading from a single patient
the brutal future history of
nation
       and a species
it did decide it had done with

no schadenfreude here
     just special kind of
go

when the revelation that
we are not gods
we aspire to be
gets us plunging into
final destruction

tumbling
of power
         from its throne

and power with its exit clause,
its played-through endgames

knows
      (knows all too well
all too well)

always space for
last laugh

           throw of those
diabolically secret dice

at the death         at the death

yes, that gotterdammerung word
nutshells that best