Tag Archives: poem

AT THE MANTIS BAR

AT THE MANTIS BAR

first day on
the new planet

picked up
a woman
at the Mantis bar

should have
had second thoughts
seeing her
  lick her
lips at me

after hearing
            in her culture

not an
    Inch of distinction between

different
    kinds of lush and
                    de-lish

SPIDER WASP (SEQUEL)

SPIDER WASP (SEQUEL)

spider wasp buzzing
the hell out of me

yes, sir, madam
I know your history

how you and that Darwin
bloke
       exploded ET phone home

got us
        alien-inseminated on
LV 426

       scared us out of our wits
and got a knighthood for
Sir Ridley

I’m watching you my little friend

you should watch it too
Sigourney

        terrible if a wasp embryo
should eat its way through
your fine fine chest

don’t climb into the loader might
then think you
                 got eight legs

don’t ever want to give it that idea
since you know
      James Cameron going
to be calling for a sequel

ARIEL

ARIEL

Looking for a tunnel
to hide in
not to
  shoot from

roll mines
into

looking for paper
to write on
got no pen and ink
have to use
my finger

and the blood
seeping through my skin

heard an interview with
a veteran
 
touched my heart
              switched sides

he moved to align
himself with humanity
     away
          from war machine

no use to them now
                    at all
                    at all

lost his tunnel vision.

GLITCH

GLITCH

“A glitch that renders flesh and blood so weak,
Yet paves the way for words divine to speak.”

was wandering through
the killing fields
of Gaza

dodging the whatabouttery
ducking the bombs

when it struck me
that poets
be normal human
beings

except for their software
there is a problem
in the software

the problem in their software
being that it is too soft

UNSPEAKABLE

UNSPEAKABLE

I know wounds
I am currently
still wounded

I am unwounded
you call me
unspeakable

stick that label upon me
with a white hot iron

and now
    in the light
of what you have done
your catastrophic achievements

think you
should back off
        a little

last defence of your position
an appeal to hypocrisy
desire to shut
out any
    all contradiction

think you should have
a serious think
        and rethink

weigh it all up
               carefully,
                    as we
humans are
supposed to

check your direction
confirm your
                 moral compass
before
you step
any closer

for I am
as pointed
out earlier:
wounded indeed
bleed in both
body and
soul
     internally
      externally

feel I can
never heal
      in light of all the death
with which

you have
surrounded me

and yet
        nevertheless

testimony to
      my stupidity

I do refuse
to be silenced

be labelled
unspeakable
       dragged into that
narrative you wish
              have to wish
              we would believe

wounded I am
(may even
           qualify as
     
    distant
     collateral damage)

shock-splinters in my heart
to be true
      (feel them
                  I do)

yet
I know
      come crunch

come what offer cannot but
                                     be refused

how
to
wound badly, terminally

unspeakably

how to wound too
        

AFTER THIS

AFTER THIS

after this
you ask me

not what
forgiveness

but what
salvation, what
resurrection?

but in the absence
of principle
I cannot answer
I do not know

mine is a ramshackle
up-down, on-off
lesser evil, beyond
good
   and evil kind of spirituslity

but this is
a crime beyond crimes
in the eyes
of God
were he willing
to open them
were he
prepared to see

and all this
blood
    this carnage

it cannot but have stained us
smashed that mirror into
shell shrapnel, bomb
splinter sized
     needle-like fragments
the one
     in which
divine likeness
         was seen

wounds
      need healing, and
all these wounds

are
    self-inflicted

ask me
          later

not now not now
later I may again believe
in something, in humanity
in purpose
     and vision

today
      but today

just short of hopeless for me

silence better
than these paltry words here

ON BOARD

ON BOARD

you made yourselves
into gods of chaos

chaos
     that proceeds orderly

methodically
has lists

moves street
by street
     wiping out, missing
nothing
    could not be
more thorough

having learnt from
its horrific encounters
with the
     demons of the past

terrible demons that
cast a monstrous forever
                         shadow

hook, line
            and sinker

precise depths of that evil
turned
          rational

taken on board

AT THE READING

AT THE READING

the poets are gathered
in the auditorium

make the final checks
to see nothing wrong
with their uniforms

doped and dragooned
the audience
        off-loaded from trucks
are marched to
their seats

essence
    of the system

one attendee
one seat

     was the promise decades
prior that won
the landslide election

whose benefeciaries are
here too

armour-plated limousines
as
    gatekeepers of
fine standing

Ah what
a sight!

      same old same old
every poem
basically the same
so
   no sense
in expectation

indeed
best thing that could happen
before a line is recited
a stanza
is read

is that something
from smallest inconvenient
hitch
   to extinction level event

stops everything in
its tracks

temporary reprieve
      or a long long wait

a few million years
    to the cockroaches that
survived
and evolved

get their act together
   to run a better, more
poetic,
     democratic

and yes,

         human event