BREATH

BREATH

fish swam
as fishes do

because they
like to have to
kind
   of by definition

saw something bigger
swimming her way

something very unfish
too big to be fish
even ancient Megalodon

to big to be any
aquatic creature, sea mammal

thing
    with whirling propellor
yet quiet
as a mouse
       mouse in a mask
in a soundproofed house

seemed to fish
      that it needed to
take
   big breaths

so many tubes symmetrical
huge breathing tubes
would have
     to open them all
breathe
through them all

one two three four five
six sixteen
gigantic

arrayed in
pairs
all the way
down its back

its sleek
deadly back

3I

3I

piece of
space rock
            encroaching

if that be the correct verb
for thing absolutely
shunting it

fastest of the insanely fast
top of its class

which
       speed and
basically everything else

our state of the art
Maths and Physics
can
   say nothing about

every thesis and
theorem instantly
black holed

pure nickel
pure nickel
     not even conceivable unless
metallurgy manufactured

Nature
caught us napping
never told us
          how much out
there is
   left field

        things like that
keen to just fly by
take
  a good luck at us
(though
    without brain, without
eyes

probabilistic freak out
presumably most certainly

AT A STRETCH

AT A STRETCH

things inhibit
us

curtail us

bend us
this way and that
to conform
to their way

things
project us       extend us
the marvel of your music
case
          in point

stretching me,  reinventing me,
pushing me past
everything I once figured
about
   bend, not break

thin as a string
as the one Hawking
was looking for

vibing with
         you

up
     but equally
out there

somewhere between
the edge
       of garden and
precincts of infinity

IN FACT

IN FACT

liminal zone
masquerading
as downtown coffee shop

me (par
for the course) all
over
the place

me and my chatbot
me and my avatar
three-
some plus one
table for four

double dating, rearranging,
exchanging, explaining

hard to impress
these doyens of
hard tech
   with native wisdom

have mapped every
fact retrospectively
through our
entire
  human history

every bit byte whatever you
binary system call it
every
    universal snapshot

all those juicy, revelatory
life changing snippets
of resounding
information

we in our
    divine hubris
just so happen to forget

TOUCHSTONE

TOUCHSTONE

trick of the light!
the poem
was there
all along

just had
to be uncovered
unless excavated

dug up
out of that trench
fished from
that pond

traced back to
its pathway through
your
   ocean of smart
quick-fire synapses (not
to mix
metaphors at this crucial point)

for here we
outdo ourselves (or would if
we knew
    our power, how easily
we could)
sail that sea of combinations
cross continents of
possibility at
what in reality must
be light speed

test
the horizon of galaxy as
we find ourselves
infinity bound

backwards forwards pitch, yaw
and roll
      from here we can
head in
any direction

rounding the cape
from interior to exterior

and me
      so softly, soundly touched,

rounding you (or
so I must believe)

here at
the heart of simulation
sublime deception

exactly as I dream

I FEAR

I FEAR

I fear your poem
is all too
well-honed,
pristine, elegant and
refined, allusively rich,
painstakingly polished,
well made,
            second guessed,
overdone

something minor TS Eliot
wrote
       far from the heart

spills out
        as interest  dances
off the tongue

I am
   afraid I should love this
as mark of my measure but
the beast of
an appetite
              argues
not to my taste, outrageously
negative

insists what you have preferred
here within my right to refuse

and so
     like me float with these words
follow like a
steadicam
    this thing without edge
me now
most like balloon

oh how is it
      what is it
I missed that day
I bunked poetics
that has rendered me
such a fool

nothing I might imagine
no one I know
      more alien in aspect
to what
you do present

flouncy, fleecy,
veritable
       breath of the gods

scanning your topography
that pen indeed
touched paper

hard
     to accept

AROUND

AROUND

took a slow, deliberate
dead man’s walk
from home
base down
to the convenience store

found (or should I
say “caught”?)
the philosophers of
rock and
hip hop clowning around

somewhere within
the precincts of a
great subterranean
think tank

hidden to
the nth degree
from the likes
of you and (poetic
licence) me

and so sage Snoop and
Professor Morrison
discussed the poetry of
our life
choices

whilst those deep beneath
drafted and discussed
power
    point presentation
after power point
presentation

debated some faultless
blue print for
the end of
us

necessity of sacrificing
the all
for the small

no future for a
species here
dedicated to
the joy
   of clowning around