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
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
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
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 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
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
(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
CLEAN
Senator HIJKL
dawdles through the hearing
playing solitaire
fiddling
with the Tarot
I see
The Fool
The Falling Tower
The Hanged Man
I do not see
Death
or
The Devil
but I am not observing him
as clinically as I should
those cards may
have slipped by me
by sleight of hand
and now
a pencil is produced
for doodling or
perhaps sketching
whilst the video
runs he
doodles away
sketches a future
I’m sure as works of art go
it is
no Picasso
not Cubist or
blue period
certainly no Guernica
Oh JKL doodles
doodles away
the walls of Republican Rome
once covered
in such graffiti
under Augustus
were given
a clampdown extreme
right royal
and (most) imperial clean
never had
to suffer a repeat of
the process
never
the call to go
through such a scouring
again.
TEXTBOOK
it is a textbook case
need to
kill every
shadow
every
evil
reflection
erase
as quiet as we can
with total
extreme
prejudice
kill
every word
before
story escapes
anything
gets written
anything
gets said
it is
a textbook case
textbook case
for all time
remembered
as
true, necessary
exercise
the pages
soaked in blood
forever
forgot
what
the law requires
what
the faith demands
WITHOUT
poems written in the darkness
have a different timbre
a different cadence
a fundamental uncertainty
word insecurity
for light
is the state
the statistics do show
heavily favored by readers
and without readers
(stuck in the dark,
dead in a war that
suddenly escalated a
little
bit nuclear)
who cares
what is written
on the page at all
at all?
poems 2 die for