poem – Page 194 – poems 2 die for

UNDESERVED

UNDESERVED

take it away
take this away
keep
well to yourself
I refuse to read rhis
we refuse to read this

you have nothing
to sell
you havs sold everything
this poem is immired in
bloodshed and murder
holy lies,
false propaganda

the slaughter of poets
right next door, through
the barbed wire

right outside
your secure (impossibly
insecure)
contrived
golden cage

take them awsy
these poems, your writings
this so-called poetry

forgive me
forgive us

if we give them
the contempt we feel

where you tell us images,
symbols,
metaphors

we see
only blood, find only
complicity

no matter how much you
tell yourself
do everything human
and barely human

to convince us
it is
undeserved

and so

plesse go

we csn suffer you no longer
take your sad, broken
failure of
a Muse with you

and
just disappear

AM

maybe
it’s because
I rashly ingested
exteme amounts
of caffeine

I found it in my nature
to come over all cummimgs

completely kine-
sthetic
shot-gunning like
a olive-grey black mamba

all over
the page

fang-sharing, snapping
left,
right,
and centre

as if oozing deadly venom
(which
in a sense, of course, I am)

FIELD THEORY

FIELD THEORY

a thermonuclear blast
that’s real loadshedding for you

have to
figure out
lightning, atoms,
electromagnetic field
how they connect
what
is the exact interplay
between the four forces

all this at
a University

built
from twigs
and leaves

so much needing
to be re-
invented

not least
ourselves

DALI BREAKFAST

DALI BREAKFAST

nothing quite says
“Dali dream breakfast”
than a few octopus
tentacles and a
bowl of red squid

eaten inside
a divers
helmet

other octopi
and squid
swimming around
the helmet

peering inside
shocked,
horrified at

the
surreal shock show

yet by no means
as surreal as other reality TV

IN THE MIRROR (HEAL)

IN THE MIRROR (HEAL)

in the mirror
we were

all together
all beautiful

luxuriated in a joy
that could not
be real

took me
time to grasp
how here
were sown the seeds
of an
impossibility
that was
our destruction

needed to
read Alice, see
the Matrix

sit on your couch for ours
as you teased out
every tumour

in my consciousness

and then, no doubt too late,
I began to heal

UNDERWORLD

UNDERWORLD

it is a war on the underworld

and so
they burn everything

and so
they burn the sky

the shades of heroes
long gone stare
across
the river
in supreme disbelief

not since
the Children’s Crusade

has an army of the tiny
mustered to cross

souls
that did not
have a chance to live

REFAAT

REFAAT

so now
they have resorted
to killing poets

because
the pen is mightier
than the sword
it is said

and they took that literally
and
as is well known
James Bond carries
his old Q branch
speciality
of rocket-
launching pen

nothing
more deadly

which
you know,
       we know

every spy agency knows this
it is something that
military intelligence
                even one
caught false flag asleep
at its post
has prepared for
extensively
trained for
exhaustively

knows
only too well

and how can
target
be a poet

if they are all animals?
that is the syllogism for you
to
take to heart
the
reactive-armour
heart they
gave you

as you plough through
guilty humanity
steel-skinned in
your Merkava
kampfwagen

hunting for the tunnel
will take you down to Hell

where
poets, great poets,
will all be waiting

to raise a few things,
take issue with you

by hook
or by crook

endeavour to persuade you
that there is
something in
this voice, about
this speech
that justifies itself

WHEN NC GOES MISSING

WHEN NC GOES MISSING

when Noam Chomsky goes
missing in M. I. T. they will
all say
end of an era
I will say
end of a planet

and
we will both
essentially
be correct

though my
feelings on the matter
might be difficult to
express
might struggle with
all sorts of
gatekeepers
internal and external

battle to find both
the voice and platform
in which and from which
to express this

eternal battle: beyond good and evil
(as Uber-Fred put it)
fight to
the death and
beyond death

between
the politics of print
and
creativity of grammar

Oh we all await
our day of reckoning
but how we
characterize them
so fundamentally
different

no rapture for me please, nor
May Day square tankfest

but to see you
on the podium confirms
grace
of intelligence
intelligence of grace

so much silver hair there
and beard

who now has the audacity
to argue the toss
for supremacy
of golden?

MANIFESTO

MANIFESTO

I am
the Mike Tyson
of poetry

go straight
for a knockout
best
pound
for pound

what’s that you saying
dissing me
at the weigh in?

sorry can’t make
head or tail
of it
seems you
just walked into
an uppercut

someone who is a real
backstreet badass
did
smack you
in the mouth

and there in faltered
your tactical plan and
halcyon vision

fell
by the wayside

third
knockdown

and out therefore
on a technicality

I studied this art
from Homer to Ezra
know
all these
technicalities

you may say
I am completely au fait
with
every tone and trick
and
ruse in typology

seamless it be
my artistry

which is
why you not seeing it

later
enlightenment, illumination
but for now:
lights out!

GAZEBO

GAZEBO

(the) gazebo
is a portal

can
whisk you away

transport to mainland,
ancient China

watch the Sengoku Jidai
run its course, take place

alter
the outcome if
you feel that way

and so no
war with Russia or
Pearl Harbor

no cities devastated
by nuclear fire

unless it is shipping things
across the galaxy at
faster than light speed
tickles
your fancy

like this insect-like, alien,
shapeshifting creature

its antennae so switched on
ready to receive

huge, biomechanical possibly,
perhaps even shape-shifting

pushing the boundaries
of what we
might conceive

here, outlandishly, to
communicate, negotiate,
wing
its way to our leader
dictate
surrender terms

or thrust us aeons ahead
as we crack the code
of its impossible technology

or stick you
with its stinger, run off
with genetic evidence

that others, no less curious
than our
so far limited species

might like to study
perhaps find

hard
to believe