Tag Archives: poem

VILLAIN

VILLAIN

each of us are a villain
in some origin story

my phone alarm sings
celestial cosmic sounds
at 5.20
    in the morning
(exact
   moment I was born
making me an
ascendant Aquarian)

and news of airstrikes
all over the media

preparations
   for the SuperBowl, one
week away to see
which team of
scarlet supremos

will
   be champions of the world

the world
being America, it is a
killer synecdoche,

poet as villain

      not with you
thetefore against you

further from grace
with my every little diatribe

SAD TO THINK

SAD TO THINK

can’t put
my finger on it

something seems
off

the wind feels odd
the TV
    looks wrong

everyone I hear
feels that
the truth
    must be hidden
cannot be
uttered at
all costs

the plot
    has been lost
the record stuck

and those who
deny what we see with
our own
eyes

are believed

cannot put my
finger on it

seems like
the beginning of the end

we had
our run, had our time

self-destruct is
   now on
                     override

sad to think what
we might have become
    could have been

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

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

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.

MAKE DO

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

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