ENCYCLOPEDIA
I spent a lifetime
maybe more
than a lifetime
compiling an encyclopedia
of things that
do not exist
and then
as I left this task
this world
to the future
wondered if now
it would not contain itself
might not
contain me.
SO LET ME
so let me
try to understand this
you write stuff
different form and
better than
anything better than
what I could write
more valuable to
the human race
than anything that I
could
or might write
more truthful
to our
human
condition
than, you are sure,
as a principle of faith,
anything my ilk
could
ever have written
when, truth is,
this stuff is incidental,
peripheral to who
we are
of absolutely no consequence
except where
in its excess, in
its call to arms, plea
for
essential truth and
species transfoemation
a huge threat and danger
an evil setting itself
against my and
all other’s
way
of life
for which we must not
neglect our dury
to destroy
you and your kind completely
no place in this world
for so insane a practice
and.
pernicious conspiracy
BATHE
want to bathe
in you
feel your
ripples
your undertow
and the power
of your crashing waves
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
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
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
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
MANDATE
we combed
the galaxy
looking for protein
searching for
wonderful, strange, intelligent,
civilized moral beings
scoured the cosmos
every chink
and crevice
beings that
as is
our mandate
we might colonize
eat
and kill
poems 2 die for