poem – Page 164 – poems 2 die for

CORRECTLY

CORRECTLY

You are better
than those other people

they would have
harvested the hair,
collected the skin

I stopped to clear
my lungs of smoke
and ash
for a moment

not on
an industrial scale, you say,

yes, I will give
you that,
it is an essential difference

I step away
pick up a stone
scratch out a haiku on
the back of it
with a bomb fragment

that is not
a haiku, you tell me,
point out correctly

that five seven five pattern
I see it nowhere

yes, my friend,
I stand corrected, you
speak correctly

but there again
from my perspective
there is
something skewed
in everything you tell me

I wonder
if you are

perhaps
not human, that
basic core

self-
mutilated

ordained pattern
expelled

CASCADE

leaflets cascade
Iittle
life-parachutes
they

flutter down

tell you
that if you are
at all disinclined
to follow
the stairway
to Heaven
at this
very jumcture

you had better leave
ditch everything
you had better move

because
whatever ladders you thought
doors gates windows

they are all
about to be removed
pancaked out of existence

a time of wandering
is at hand

as has been written
in blood
in the book of centuries

GREY

GREY

fell
into a world
of colour

the colours
so Heavenly
saturated, warm

but immediately
I felt so
lost,
uncomfortable

my inner palette,
to the best of my knowledge
only running from slate
to the lightest
of ash greys

VICTORY

VICTORY

You were screening
a film about your victory

when news
of your defeat, your
complete defeat came

sudden consternation
in the projection box
reels were exchanged
and that
film replaced

by one so different,
one that dealt
with the death of hubris,
end of arrogance

and a way that slowly,
painfully
the sins and crimes

might be
confessed before humanity;
some redemption take place.

ROCK SOLID

ROCK SOLID

there is a devil
in the rock
whirring

a clock
tickimg

causimg
mutation

I see
your slow
mutation

there are timy bits
of devil everywhere

pray to God
they never gather
come together

they are
thd scattered frsgments of time

CAUGHT

caught you
doubling down
on your duality

morning you were
totally Borgia
evening much
more Magdalene

which
as wave
as particle
have to calculate
your mass
determine your path

in terms of all tbat is
you are entangled with

in
the entire cosmic
catalogue

for better
or for worse

and perhaps much worse

MAKE DO

I slipped you
a tube of brutality

that you might
better acclimatize to
accommodate
the world

but hard as you tried
with vices and pliers
cutters and torches

you could
make no headway
getting the good
stuff out

and so, as agreed,
with ran
with plan b
reverted to kindness
and the pursuit
of sainthood

not what
we had hoped for,
but
it allowed you
you make do.

OBSERVE

watch this poem
change on you

transform
before your very eyes

splitting
of pathways, sliding
doors

two
complete readings
whole new universes
brought into
being

in one
it goes Schrodinger
and the poor little cat
goes completely
zombie
    uncertain whether
when box
is open
it
   lives or
dies; is dead
          or alive

in another
it goes Oppenheimer
heads out
to New Mexico
wipes

out
half
of Japan

saw the film; he’s the man

and here you are
in state of
superposition

I have
never been super anything

neither
in faith, nor reason

watch this poem watch
us both observe

CROWN

LIGHTS!

lights!, lights!,

we are
immersed in darkness
cannot find our
our way about
the stage

see if we are
in a tragedy or
a history play

in a love scene
or a whole act
of battle

though we appear to
be falling down everywhere
slipping in what
feels like
smells like
blood

prudence
tells us it could well
be the latter

or it’s all just
comic, absurd, existential, meta

whole world as stage
and we imprisoned
in a
brutal metaphor

lights!