poem – Page 203 – poems 2 die for

BATHE

BATHE

want to bathe
in you

feel your
ripples

your undertow

and the power
of your crashing waves

HAPPY FAMILIES

HAPPY FAMILIES

we were playing
happy families

in the darkness
buried, bleeding
starving

to show that we are
humsn
do what humans do

get bombed to bits
buried alive
by other humans
who contest our right
to be like them
to think
and bleed and love
and feel

trying to do
what humans do

buried alive in
a flattened town
thankful at least that
unlike
so many we

may yet survive
if and when
they dig us
out

playing the cards that
we have been dealt

to win
the gsme you need a set

death and judgement and
the devil and
the falling down
.
cough the thick debris
dust out your lungs

and shout out what we all
do not, should not ever doubt

we are
all one family

QUARK QUARK

QUARK QUARK

I was fishing for quarks
in my mind
whilst playing chess

sometimes the serendipity
of the game
appeals

but not today where
every move is
wrong and
I am getting
battered to Hell

feudal and hierarchical
totally unforgiving on the surface
and in its depth

yet as gorgeous Gary,
incomparable attacker knew
it is all
metaphor, life
lesson

this
from the outset

as he rotates his way at
the table
through every conceivable
variation of every conceivable defence

exuding Russian intensity
and Russian charm

(test and you will see
in exactly
equal meaaure)

meanwhile the quaeks in my
brain are less like
sharks
in the ocean than
Koi in a pond

all flash
but no dash

my game in its death throes
thinking of the
great wizard of
Reykjavik
his brilliance so
beyond me
beyond anything I am

I scan, I plan
only the odd good move

bobbing up
to greet me only when
could not be more obvious

quark
quark

nothing moving
from my side of the board

not now

not ever

HEIRLOOM

HEIRLOOM

there will come a time
when you step
out of your front door

only to
find

the clock in the house
old family clock,
heirloom
that both of them
for all their
differences obvious
and concealed, real
and imagined
will both swear and
schedule their lives by

only
to find

heirloom, heirdoom,
doomloom

time inside and outside
could not
be more relative

and there it is
         out of nowhere
a growing pains singulaity
                          suddenly
extreme gravity
cosmic, yes, but
              when you speak
them in the boat
whirling around the vortes
just
   outside
the event horizon

you will learn the apt term,
which may, in this case,
well be
psychosexual

and there they are dictating,
prescribing
these great theraputic
gentlemen

who never in the world did
you expect
to see
in real life

persuading you, pleading with
you
imploring you

to find your negation of
this house of fiction, parental
palace
of delusion

and until such time
use the back door to
leave

quietly
and at peace

PLAGIARIST

WITHOUT BATTERIES

BUT THE SYMMETRY IS PERFECT

BUT THE SYMMETRY IS PERFECT

and now we
know that horror

the depth and extent of
its shadow

cast forward in time
for over eighty years

but time
future and past

it is all meaningless
relative

is thing of moment and instant
running forward and back

causality, karma, punishment
for those beyond time
who escape the limits
of our bound
wisdom
racing
helter-
skeltet to collapse, inescapably
fast-erroding

know that shadow forward
is also
shadow back

and your horror now
is your horror then

we see
no sense, no logic,
but the symmetry: this is perfect