
POEM FOR DENISE


SMOKE
your smoke
keeps me awake at night
those hot coals
inside you
your words smoulder
and I pretend
not to be impressed
not to burn
spontaneously combust
no smoke
without, in
your case
volcanic potential
magma, caldera
thermonuclear fire
IN PRAISE OF
SACRIFICE
people will
fight for truth
be nobly
martyred
but how much more
strongly, happily,
forcefully
fanatically
they will
fight for lies
the bigger the lie
the bigger the sacrifice
XCHANGE
touch me feel me
see me love me
hear
me
I wan’t to spread
your wealth
across
the stars
be union and
be disintegration
want to expand you
horizontally vertically
along
every axis
you having
so much to give
so much
to receive
QUICKLY
read this poem quickly
we have not much time
an nasteroid/comet/meteorite
is going to
hit this Earth tonight
but even before which
tensions on the planet ensure
the button will
get pressed
failing which a killer virus
has obviously escaped
and then one or two
of the world’s
super
volcanos
is primed to blow
fill the Earth with pyroclastic flow
toxic dust
blot out the sky, the Sun
so, read
this poem
have some fun
best thing to do now
quite frankly
FARM TALK
let me
withold words
surrender
poetry
thus may I
figure out what
the farm is saying
the trees speaking
catch
these voices
hitherto drowned out
by my insistence to
delve into
the depth of my
faith in language,
human
linguistics
so many different ways
of writing, talking out there
DAVID
if you are
the David in
this great battle
why
are you slaughtering
all the poets?
if you are Solomon
with so much wisdom
to bestow upon humanity
why are you
flattening all the universities
burning the archives?
watching as
culture and history goes
up
in smoke
or dancing
around the flames
HANNIBAL DIRECTIVE
Ah, yes,
the Hannibal Directive
thought that would mean
smashing your enemy
into a lake
or luring them into
a complete double
envelopment
not killing your own
people to avoid having to
submit
prisoner swops at
outrageous rates of exchange
WHAT THE SATIRIST
TOLD ME
tell me
about yourself
so I
can really
offend you
feel my words
razor sharp
as they slice
flesh from bone
SHOSHONE
you were so in
need of the fruit
from the tree of antithesis
when I came upon you
arrived on the scene
slithered amongst you
rattling my
tail off to wake
you up
not much hope there
popping gobstopper-sized
pills to kill
your anxiety
already
you can see what
it has done to
your internal rhyme
scheme and system
pretty much shot to Hell
last to say this, for
obvious reasons, but
right now,
at this juncture, need
to stand
outside yourself, commit
to alterity, flick
switch to at least
semi-
Slavoj
dialectic might be just
a pipe dream
but what better
pipe
conduit to great
spirit do we
full Shoshone have?