poem – Page 208 – poems 2 die for

LINGER

unspeakably glad
you have
taken time

to read this poem
stepped outside the habitus
of your time zone
embraced relativity
treated each
word as special

allowed
your mind to linger
dally with the craziness
of each idea

such time to spare
such acumen, breadth
and depth

all of
which

a function of our modern
exponential economic
and social development transforming our

time space
space time
mindset

rendering our
reality much
more malleable, elastic,
receptive

which
you so most
beautifully exemplify if

you
have made it so far

GENIUS

who can
stand up to us

when we got genius?
genius here
demanding
sacrifice of blood
and elbow bone
in slavish following of plan

the plan everything in
its true brilliance

pity
they don’t buy into it
those eagles swooping
soaring
high overhead

FIELD

it is not
my baby

this multiverse of
fluctuating quantum fields

I was fine with Lego
with all those
Pink Floyd
bricks in the wall

was fine
with looking at my arm
flesh and bone
before my mind dissolved it

and you and me
was what we were up
to mere ripples in the flow
producing
out of nowhere
ecstatic conjunction?

as I said
this is not
my field

not my baby I lack
the total mathematics
the Platonic wisdom

SOMETIMES

SOMETIMES

sometimes
I am
just
randomness

Cummings words
jumping all over the
quantum page

as if
twin slit experiment

(the smile of physics gone Gemini
getting our minds pretty
tangled up together
you tell me coyly
inform me
in no uncertain terms)

if it cannot be
real
this everything

if it is lax on locality

could it
be dream?

I asked this of the iconic cat
in the box before it
disappeared

and now I am blessed with
the answer but sworn to secrecy

science
now in uproar

doctoral candidates frayed
fissile

exploding in clouds of
white chalky dust
as if
made of talcum powder

all over Tesla’s headstone
thinking of
the half-life of what
lies
in that grave

Sent from my iPhone

INSIDE

poem is the fiction
of interiority

trying to persuade itself
it is
what lies inside

ad infinitum
again and
again
and again

sometimes with quite
spectacular transformative effect
(who in
their right mind
would doubt there
is an
inside
after that?)

GO FIGURE!

GO FIGURE!

was in Heaven enjoying the brand name
slurping bubbling carbonated cola
through a golden straw

thinking of all
the people in my life
whose names I no longer remember
(don’t feel bad, or alone:
I no longer remember my own)

did they make the cut?
hey who the hell knows?
it’s all
immaterial

but life
lounging by the soda fountain
is not so cool — albeit eternal
when
stripped of all its chemicals
devoid of its additives

seems whoever is in
charge of censorship here

is letting me
express some alternative ideas

a bit of a blow to those
it must be
sacrificed themselves
for
Holy conformity, divine
regimentation

figure!

IMPOSSIBLE

I cry out
many times

cry out
but am
not heard

you might not think it
to read this poem

what point is there
crying out
in this poem

crying out
in any poem

poetry being a vehicle
of containment
a thing
of control

not a place to cry out
the pain
of each cry
rendering the poem
impossible

RAIN

the writer writes
the end of
the world

but the paper
is putting up
too much
resistance

somehow he just cannot
write his way to
his vision of
an ending

quietly cataclysmic
apocalypse falling
upon us soft as rain

EXCHANGE

EXCHANGE

paradox of choice
constant of change

let’s just surrender to
life, the flow, the poem

forget writers and
readers
who is where
who is what

where to find our story
the narrative that spreaks us
captures us totally
in its
open-
ended box

AS IT SO HAPPENS

as it so happens
the Church and State
are both
outraged

the Sun and Moon
have begun to
tango begun
to samba

and some devil drunk
on tequila
is in the vestry
demanding communion
damanding absolution

quoting from a mash-up
of Neruda’s sublime Cantos
and visionary
holy books

and all are aghast
having booked their places
these
sons and daughters

not a tatter between them
no missing thread

and thus
in assued completeness
remain well aware

that devil on tequila becomes
devil in tequila becomes
democratic
host of devils that
bring decorum down

become god of thd people
hacked to pieces and
resurrected
become
the bones
of the philosophers doomed

until the end
of argument
to host
perpetual return