CHILD’S PLAY
like a child:
but did not mean
infantile
did not mean
psychotic
did not mean
projectile vomit
all over that globe spinning
in the living room
did not mean
you blood-painting
yourself
into a corner
all the while selling us
your story that you
are
responding to
Tik Tok and text message
direct
from above
BECAUSE BECAME looks off the charts sharper and so much brighter in full extended spectrum of colours and booming panopolies of sound look closer, feel the width, check the texture decayed, deceased, delimited, disinclined frozen upon demand and so beneath the flash flesh colour paler shades lurk already haunting shadows at best of what was big screen Technicolor huge popcorn before essence of all that was before before became
NIGHT FLOWERS (PROFANE) night flowers vanished sunlight put paid and so it goes: desperate levity, quick fix beauty on social media aspects of your hot body (Aphrodite parts) jammed into my face a place to shine: her scent is there to tell us today she is ghosted by the thought of a lover, her lover not can get no satisfaction sorting her an instant poem there if not resonant then at least afterglow fine tune the world therefore whilst it is turning exactly for sleep and chemistry are apposite in dream (flood of words and, behold!, a ship sailing home on them) what is lost in this exchange: ancient joy to master or be enslaved always, even in the bleached church courtyard, something pagan, much that is profane
MY FLAT COUNTRY my flat country scrub divided by highway stretching further further Oh, the luxury of a small town with a library chance to drink coffee be philosophical mediocrity entropy won’t say they’re married but rented a room by the hour for much of the night and when it comes, when all stalls at risk of repeating myself Oh, what a night incomparable night
EVEREST someday someone will be the last speaking truth to power attacking the spin that has deceived the whole of humanity excluding those, of course, piled up happily, left to rot a real dead zone mountain higher than Everest
HISTORY CHANNEL (KIND OF REMEMBER ME THAT SIEGFRIED SASSOON) watched a video on World War One who started it who finished it who went who stayed at home who came back like my Mother’s Dad big gong of a medal around his soft young neck which is just as well otherwise wouldn’t be here myself to waste your time as Siggie’s bishop himself didst poetically proclaim the ways of God being satirically strange watched a video on the channel on World War One same as the last one same people won
BEYOND (YOUR) EMBRACE no melding tonite your mind closing like an anxious wound infection, infiltration, metaphors of sickness seep still into the body politic have done so, I am afraid, since the beginning of time but the risk, you tell me, the danger sheer danger of reaching out whatever the payoff, whatever heaven in that yield risk run (you calculate) is catastrophic better to err on the side of hate
CHANNELING
a pretty derelict
unused space now
(like an
interstellar void)
but once
tge SkyVue drive in
used to cover
acres of territory
and the bush under the screen
where as kids
we played
cowboys
and savages
remember that screen
well it used
to fill half the night sky
saw Spartacus there, and
Cast a Giant Shadow
which wars, it seems,
never really died
Rome always lingering
Empires of Man versus
Empires of Heaven
but now
the whole planet
is our
screen
we have screens in our pockets
screens in our heads
inescapable
channeling
and there enough projection
to fill every known desert
desert of the real
Neo
truth having
dissolved, truth crucified
by fiction
truth’s fate to be enslaved
by the narrative of the day
and like
the poem says we
have all
become cyphers, organic
little molecules
in the dance of supreme fiction
the new reality to be
broadcast twenty-
four seven
dreamworld Neo, germane to
the Zhuangzi parable
cowboys, savages, think
like
a butterfly
the wild gift of technology
the premise to allow
without any
lingering sense of irony
to speak of self as supreme,
and, yes indeed, the world
.
GENRE we presupposed it was fairy tale it was a natural presupposition we were not well acquainted with cosmic horror and understandably, who expects the great ancient demigods to claw their way up to the surface right in the midst of a military campaign of ethnic cleansing fuelled by religious demands for mass extermination clearly we need to learn much much more about the spectrum of genres
SOLITAIRE which way is the wind blowing? empirical, metaphysical equally valid as a question so let me sit here debating whether to play solitaire or show my solidarity writing a poem must not cannot absolutely unable to face the thought that one less casuality one less maimed or broken soul if I had sat playing solitaire rather than battling with each angry bitter word trying to shape them shape of this poem
poems 2 die for