poem – Page 17 – poems 2 die for

LINEAGE

this is dope:
in a court room
trying to make my case

attorneys, solicitors, haggling
over the cost of my bullet
in pounds sterling
in dollars and cents

outside there is a cow
in a patch of moonshine
trying
to capture an idyll
looking pretty subliminal

clouds where the spots should
be and suddenly guitar solos

must be
to announce
golden gates. chosen people,
stretched across chasms
structures
of tubular humanity

and me the accused
summoned to speak, brought
into evidence
watching the film
how
my life rolls

but let
me not disturb you, muss
your precious slumber

dream on dream on
dream a gathering of the clan
tough as tungsten nails

fever in the air
spring time for fundamentals

this is dope
totally dope

pink as your pink
what more can I say? (therein your DNA)

TRAIN SMASH

don’t panic

this is just
a poem

lots of things, items,
that it is not

not an emergency
(State of Emergency)
not a
wormhole or
nuclear weapon
not an
insurrection
not a train smash

not a thing
we typecast as a comet
flouting the laws of physics

not something
so desperate to be read
it will die if you deign to

going to
try to survive even
if you refuse
to read a word

writer reader
even as the ground beneath
our feet gives
superstructures tumble

good odds we can get
through this
together
poles apart though
we may be
creatures
if not of connection
at least
continuity

TOTEM

I shut down
all my memories
of my childhood
and the place
I was born

had to do so
because they
had gotten
out of control
were
overpowering me

taking me back
to a time without limbs
horrific venom.and
no ability
to walk
only slither and crawl

and there
in a bold new
brave new land

the mindful ones
wiping out rattlers and vipers
with pump-
action guns

for the land be safe and
clear and clean
not only so
but sacred
and exceptional

what was before but
a pile of bleached bones

a cairn beside a church
with
whitewashed walls
and
from ocean
to ocean
real regular worship

diamondback
the totem
   by which you
                     might indeed
come
    to approach me.

ENDING

there are
noises in my head
noises
in my head

stones rattling
inside a tin

and I am petrified
of what the MRI scan
will tell me

scared
of the silence
should these stones
stop rattling
the noises
go away

leave me
flat and white sheeted
prepped for brain surgery

my eyes
dead as sapphires
filled with blank sky

before
these noises au revoir
damned sure
I have to write them
get them
down on paper
and take everything from there

out in the sticks
civilization in the making
gathered around a camp fire

here is someone’s great ancestor’s
ancestor’s ancestor
a million times removed

thinking that stupid thought
will
split the atom
give us
the atomic bomb
(no getting that genie
back into its bottle)

and then
he is there too
prototype of the first to
covet what
today we
might recognize as
god-like profile

imagining a being of
sand and
ore

can talk, obey,
speak it’s own mind

and so it goes
we drink we sleep
we learn to speak

finally
break that circle

to find (found) first cities
with towers
and spires

the wheels of which,
slick truth of history,
bound to
grind themselves down

no future when
all we have for ourselves
are broken axles

but
some of
those old tall tales
yet refuse to die

have carried us through
many a terrifying, star
spangled night

clinging
to the hope of morning
Sun returning

near infinite countdown
to end
of time we have left

FOR ANOTHER DAY

never
want this poem to end

can swallow itself
carry on forever

this moment too
between us
could hang around
a bit longer

but even as
those words escaped

I noticed
you were on your way
alles klaar;
finished already

no way
to call you back
nothing I can do
to induce
you to return
to me

induce, seduce,
reduce, produce

looking
for the right Latin
verb to
Roman road your
ass
home to me

who
am sadly
so ghostly-voiced
long dead already

were
this not the case

were all
up and running, this
on the fly
a text I might change

be
your agent
active

tear up

this mess

write you one to replace
close to the bone
closer to
home

for another day;
made to measure

AH, PROFESSOR

ah Professor, Professor
your students
eschew reading

see books
(courtesy of TikTok
science fiction)
as things
wholly alien
set on
sublime modes
of mind control
even
devouring as
yet unwired brains

and some of these books
are fat tomes of sheer boredom
too heavy to
carry
impossible to read

unless you
mentally photostat
each page skimming
through them
at lightspeed

or have
the entire text
condensed

into
blue pill
or red pill

to crunch like a
jelly bean
flavoured to taste

SO FAR

so you were born/
cloned to
protect our crowning
achievement

our ability to
split the atom release
planet destroying power

which have become
so widespread every
nation, family,
individual
owns at least one

bare minimum
essential for humanity to survive

for without
fear of mutual destruction
what might
keep us civilized?

to destroy everything
wipe out one’s neighbours

every citizen across
the globe’s inalienable right

testimony to
the vast advances
in wisdom and knowledge
we have made so far

FOLLOW

I write
streaming live
scarring myself with
every pen stroke
as I do so

inadvertent self-exposure
sheer torture

navigating a ball and
chain spiked Medieval landscape
(how the dark
moments in our
history
cannot wait to return!)

what started as
cosmic irony
back-sliding, mutating
(openly) into
cosmic horror

as in
painful slo-mo
text allows itself, demands
to be weaponized

as was always threatened
as we started to think,
write, talk
in this most unforgiving of ways

as you walk
around me here
monitoring my footsteps
desperate not
to appear as some or other
poor
lost soul

and yet
you can take this anywhere
fly away
with whatever message
gleaned
or just follow

EARLIER TODAY

read my poem
read my flow
saw it
go

slow; fast-slow

slower, faster
than Andrew Marvell’s
“To His Coy Mistress”

pored over, read until
it glowed
became cataclysmic

went Krakatoa, erupted
like Vesuvius

as if just
to prove
you ain’t never read
a poem like this before

read
you got
you to read me
like textually can
be nothing
beyond
this logically

like we wake tomorrow
only to realize
there
is no tomorrow
wrong
on all counts
when we thought there could be

a fit ending
I might add

for this
insurpassable dovetailing
of poem and writer
writer
and reader

flush menage a trois
of everything
fitting
beyond perfectly

AND SO (THE DEATH OF RIMBAUD)

and so,
a candle
burns quicker

when fed
oxygen and absinthe

the latter best
not from a drip
or medicine dropper

if if is
essential
to preserve the mythology
of most favored
of fan favourite
precocious outlaw

Oh yes,
let us take a poll
on this side
those who
might suspect
the drunken boat sank
on this
those who would
steadfastly argue
it is there if you
would care
to search
for it
safe at its Seine mooring

but you yourself
were a veritable personification
of resistance to tethering

and now
no longer with us
bond boundaries and bindings
do appear everywhere

the colours of the vowels
have lost their
surreal charm along
with
former deep saturation

we
should take a plebiscite
to see if
in this impoverishment
poetry
might survive

and you so
word-
agile reduced to
a meme expanded
to an
entire semiotics

stuck in
some library
every
library

where they
got you to behave
taught you to dance

their dance
nuzzle and fawn