Tag Archives: poem

COSMETIC

COSMETIC

to the best
of my knowledge

no one asks
the planets
the stars
the galaxies
about their loneliness

not a single poet
single cosmologist

and so to
Earth

for God knows
how many centuries
the centre of everything

Hubble bubble
     popped that one
didn’t he

back to Earth exquisitely
nothing special

we got mountains we
got oceans
    boy have
    we got oceans

but under this curved sky
this vault of blue atmosphere

at least
talk of beauty,  the cosmos
cosmetic

to the best of my knowledge

LOVERS

LOVERS

millions
were making love
when the bomb
dropped

a fat few megatons
vaporized them instantly

moment when
dream and desire
annihilated themselves

love and death
in dark exactitude
of intensity
    so mirroring each
other

as if the species
was fucked from the moment it began

but
the poem still here

jury out
clock still ticking

lifetimes of love
still to resolve

DREAMSCAPE

DREAMSCAPE

you think this is a poem
in your dreams
       it us a recurrent dream

one in which
we lose
     each other try
to
    find what went wrong

search for joy
             escape the nightmare

bliss, salvation
nirvana, integration
anything remotely resembling
even
   as shadow the above

question is will you help me
will I help you

or are we just relays, ciphers,
circuits in
   the dream machinery?

something out there
seems to be hounding me
and yet
      cannot discount the possibility
might be here to save me

whisper softly (turn
on your audio, unmute
yourself presently)

                     tell me
since all ears

the message as it is (or
how you best guess understand it)

promise on my soul
to keep it locked between us
exclusive
     share between us

thing at least to bind us
running through this recurrent dream

even if we wished to
as much as we try
                         simply
cannot escape from


RECITAL

RECiTAL

I came to
your recital

enthusiastic, hoping
for the best of the best

some of it
      sounded smart

some of it
may last

went down like a dream
swept
      up your audience

who were
so taken by the spin
of your spoken word

skill
     of your voice

this despite the heard
it all before
      painful self-
centredness
   of what
         passed for a text.

MARIONETTE

MARIONETTE

I was
interviewed by a,
marionette

someone ardently, adroitly,
pulling, plucking the strings
behind the scenes

was from network or
other, I forget which one,
CNN, FOX, BBC
much
of a muchness
if you ask me

someone
working those strings making
them sing
though I would
struggle against
the grain to
call it lyrical

too much
noise, dissonance,
same old same

English words
on life support begging
for death, screaming to be free

I was
interviewed by a marionette
sent
to get my fist
publicly expose me

narrative
confirmed, truth out
the door

left me
to my thoughts, not
good ones either

better by far
had they sent a robot
AI intelligence never
so
well programmed

if had
left
me be
better infinitely more
than entirely

BODY OF EVIDENCE

BODY OF EVIDENCE

the jury is out
cannot

reach a verdict
in the streets, in their
backyards for
those with
ears to hear a
body of evidence

strewn everywhere
bodies of evidence
high as
a hillock, still
piling up

vast
as a mountain up
there in its
death
zone where
no human
might breathe

the jury is out
out on a limb
severed limb
of humanity

there
is no justice, will never
be justice

we are all under judgement
all in balance

judges hanging
from every lamppost and tree

UNDER WRAPS

UNDER WRAPS

Rutherford split it
in a laboratory
at my alma mater
                (kudos
to that)

then
     over Bikuni Atoll

air burst.
over Nagasaki

barely tested and
rushed into action
     could have ended all.wars
previously if
as
   conjectured
had set the atmosphere on fire

be thankful
for small mercies

atom split
world went hush-hush,
furtively fissile

pandora’s box within
a box within box
inside Schrondinger’s
thought-out, Cheshire cat
beaming
        wave collapse experiment

in Miss P box (box according
to Madane P (P for plutonium)
the weight of
secret subterfuge
lethality
of
   big lie

obviously satanic in its ceremony
dark critical mass

common (and uncommon
sense) dictating

must keep the sure thing
odds-on holocaust
forever
     under wraps

REAPER

REAPER
.
I sowed my oats
(whole, rolled, instant)

built an ark in
a time of drought
(deploying modern
hi-tec materials, paste,
carbon-fibre)

set my GPS to rapture to
navigate the
longitude and
latitude of
much
theological mess

sea of troubles
oceans of transition

came looking for your soul
heart of your true being
so pure
and, yes,
so pink

me hot for that
like blazing meteor
as I torch
the atmosphere some
dinosaur checking me out

my soul
much refried red
giant comparatively speaking

hot to the touch, sizzling
Carolina Reaper off
the Scoville charts

as I
negotiate your lips

DRUG OF THE DAY

DRUG OF THE DAY

had my blood
my innocent O neg
syphoned, extracted,
replaced
with King Crimson

planted beds of magic
mushrooms
in the furrows
of my brain

symbolism
being my currency;
mythology my game

was ’69 a Rooster year
and Yasgur’s farm
Hendrix blitzkrieg anthem
and Carlos wrestling
with his
snake guitar
channeling the cosmos
raw, unfiltered

and me sitting in a library
in apartheid South Africa
sweet
sixteen
reading Plato (had
to start somewhere)

desire for a truth mystical
not yet a droll dream

keys
being pushed on
my mellotron keyboard

swirling with tune samples
and snippets of ideas

heart beat be
a drum but could
it do
a hard rock solo?

stuck
on the turntable of life

I watched you undress
slip into bed

wondering
my whole life wondering

was it
beyond me, your
nuance of invitation?