
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!
lights!
AFTER THE RAINS
after the rains
the grass grew high everywhere
swamped the farm gate so
you can barely see it from the road
which is
frankly reassuring
helps me to feel
I am adequately camouflaged
as I coil up on the bed
communing with my snake self
at peace and in contempt
of all those
evil men of the North
desperately insecure in
their hemisphere of rage, fundamental
scheme of violence
with their drones and devices
submarine delivered nukes and
uranium depleted
ammunition
at the core
of their true being
oh good seed bad seed
such vagaries in our condition
spread thoughout the cosmos
I might believe
zero
to infinity
yes and now your hear me
how could not find me out, search
hard
for me
feeling that the rains the mounting grass
will hide me, save me
in the lack of all basic state
of the art
otherworldly surveillance
and, of course, deterrence
secret
serpent can sleep
at least
EYES
eyes blue
green brown
saw so much
too little
some
of late
closed forever
and those
that closed them
some so
long
before their time
cannot believe but
that the Earth the Sky
the stars in the Heavens
cry out
for justice
whilst vengeance, brutal
and total vengeance
is the only
thought in my sickened mind
DEVIL IN THE DORITOS
the chips
I am eating are
flaming hot
off the scale as
regards their
Scoville rrating
each chip not a chip
as much as shot
of concentrated flame,
chemical fire
calculated to build
up to a spike
and then
the endophins come
floating
first in a dribble and
then
in a stream, a tide of
feel good
a one with the Universe
though a
furnace is raging
you in the Himalayas, up
on Everest
about to summit K2
on every psychadelic music
record cover
a picture of nirvana
(state, not
Seattle grunge band)
and redeemed by the fire,
purged by the near
nuclear
(thing built
by Oppenheimer there in
New Mexico) a
picture of you

PLACE
yout touch
indelible
your fingers
going right through
my skin
into my brain
smoothing everything
everything
until the
stars came
shooting, falling,
shooting, falling
their heat and light
bathing us both

finding
every place
TERRITORY
it puts us
in bizarre territory
the death throes
of a theocracy
when it calls upon
the angels
to save from
economic disaster
military
defeat
when they themselves
have the god button
and think
of humanity
as just
so much meat
DID NOT
I did not expect
the darkness
to have
such surveillance
I did not think
it capable
of flying in
at supersonic speeds
I did not think it would
smudge, alter,
shift and change
words
in the language
pull a veil
of incomprehension
over everything
we see.
FLIES
the Talmud says
the saving of a life
is the saving.
of a world, of
a universe
entire
I would not
go so fat
but
somehow, suddenly
the stars in the firmament
are going out
one by one
the stars
in our flags
dying like flies
INTERRUPTION
sorry for
interrupting you
for busting
your face open
and de-commodifying
yout soul
for taking
the gloves off
without
forewarning
the pain you
must feel here
must be
bare-
knuckled
how else to
instruct you
in the squalid
horror of the real