Tag Archives: poem

TRANSPARENT

TRANSPARENT

“Différance does not precede the elements of the opposition it makes possible; it is their mode of existence.” Christopher Watkin

don”t say
transparent

when best you can
aim for
ever hope to
achieve
is translucent
(thus ducking
quite neatly
the
   thorny issue of truth)

but then there is context
and then there is history

whose meaning
is deferred until
you
    write the thing

time lag
    side step

           every excuse for
spin, circumlocution, Derrida’s
Gitanes-smoking
deferral
       of what if is

Oh you Cartesians, what could
be more opaque than
your
    methodology of demons

heads spinning like tops
whipped by sticks

viciously, vicariously

what difference if the
fate is epic monotony

could your
      metaphysic possibly make?

TICK TOCK

TICK TOCK

tik tok
stop the clock

bin what’s there
gotta stop
the new narrative
at
   all costs

tik tok
anticlockwise
we got

    all is
on schedule
need to
     total shut up shop

those kids so misguided
will interpret
how they
         will
hear
    what they want

truth so disatrous, if it
spread to
          entire credibility

carefully cultivated
fiction
    of humanity

so tik tok
tik tok

don’t like what it’s speaking
need to
          bomb scare
that ticking

take down
      that clock

FIGURES

FIGURES

figures
were fashioned

no sooner so
than they produced
brutal beauty

an angular ballet across
a square battlefield

the mind stretched to its limit
to master
     have complete power over

surrogate for war itself
and yet still the shock
and
     sharp self-
recognition
            in defeat

figures were fashioned

you could spend a lifetime
exploring, imagining

that entire
little universe that
accrues to them

AND CRAZED CHESS GRANDMASTERS

AND CRAZED CHESS GRANDMASTERS

Nabokov, Nabokov,
there are
Lolitas in the room
and crazed
chess grand masters

who, to this very day,
gave never found themselves
in zugtwang

and
    know every opening
backwards

but
    the clocks are ready and
all will
commence

perhaps the greatest sequence
of sacrifices ever
to force mate

perhaps it would have been me
in an immortal game

who knows how many times
before
   the move was there and
I failed to
     see it

CLASSIC

CLASSIC

want to see
the water
cascading
   down you

in my
scruffy little
shower find
you
    gone full
Botticelli

Venus
  newly born

and our love,
which you proclaim Platonic
shadow-shown
        on the wall of

my mouldy bathroom

though would rather that it
were enacted
           comically, tragically

in the cosy comfort
of our cave

GAVE

GAVE

I gave
blood

gave
money

gave
humanity

gave poetry
inspired by
a drink
made from
agave

gave gave gave
but you took
you pocketed
swallowed everything

finished the lot
shot
   through my resources

like a machine that eats
you up totally

run
   by artificial intelligence
they usher you
into your
world of debt

sweet electronic swindlers
connecting you instantly

to your
dream of wealth and capital

each replacing a host of humans
once the
     social face
of every bank.

COTTON CANDY

COTTON CANDY

you must
fight and die
for cotton candy

fight and die
for a thin processed
meat sausage
jammed
   into role

you must
fight and die
to appease, suppress
our archetypal
shadow

for aeons old
collective guilt
            you no longer feel

must give your life
throw it away for nothing really
for your right
       to keep God for yourself
address him
   in your language by the very
name you gave him

translated from a foreign,
ancient text
you do not own
           and can no
                      longer read

but above all, hero,
                         it’s
for
    cotton candy
                         
                 

MARS

MARS

Ah, Mars
you red-eyed god
of grain
    and guns

here on the farm I smell
your secret cordite,
perpetual war
    concord, discord
forever
   in battle

circle of being, conflict
of life

    the trees, the corn
all
   akin to spears

as they stand in phalynx
tall and proud

except

      that is not it
at all

this is the shape of thinking,
seeing that you bring

reducing to raw red, rampant
green, crude
primary
       colours and basic shades

as if it were all one
monochrome chess
                           games

with its millions of moves
and permutations

light and dark on
       opposite sides of the board

split from each other
                drawn up in opposition
files and ranks

a most
    feudal arrangement