Tag Archives: poem

IN PARENTHESIS

IN PARENTHESIS

Long division
square root

she has gotten into the habit
of reading me like
a novella,
a very short book

backwards, forwards,
start to finish;
finish to start

goes overboard:
dividing, multiplying
working
     her way
down and up, up
and down

searching for that quotient
hunting that
             divisive dividend

her face
     a picture of joy when
it comes
to multiples

(our
lowest common denominator
a value to espouse).

BUTTERFLIES

BUTTERFLIES

butterflies
are here

to remind him
of the truth
of transformation
and of
crazy causality

setting him off
on his own
transformation
which (they
never do)
did not go
exactly as
carefully planned

from which he did
not return as anticipated
in the form
that was expected

unsure
   in his own mind
what
   he had changed into
what he
was before

and whether, as his
brain was left simply
questioning

whether he
had left
        and if, having left,
he had
managed to return at all

101/COPERNICAN SYSTEM/RORSCHACH COYOTE STORY/SET 8N TIBET

101

postmodernism 101
will be written
in the Mirror Room

make sure
you look good
and agree with
your reflection
before taking
the examination

the notes for Chaos Mathematics
will be issued on holograms
every
   key theorem
broken into fractals

delivered
should systems collapse
by android
drone butterflies

well
before the hurricanes hit

the one caused by
the stress and
agitation
       suffered by your
fellow chaos
students
   writing the same exam
                            in China

****

COPERNICAN SYSTEM

tellers of tales
doctors of spin

the world
is a globe
it is
an LP record

it turns
with you, against you
within you and
without you

it is the Centre
of the cosmos
it is
a billion light
years from anywhere

screaming
    ahead of
    languishing behind
the times

common as muck, forever
plucking treasures
from the heavens

out
of the blue

****

RORSCHACH COYOTE STORY

swear I saw
a coyote testing me

not quite blotted out
motioning
     for me to follow

teaching me right there
and then
       every trick under
the Sun, aphorism
in the book

a wealth of key tactics
and strategies
        to cover my trail
dupe this
queen of analysis

****
SET IN TIBET

I perused Tibet

conferred
with a Llama

found
wooly enlightenment

the exact
moment a star
went supernova

somebody’s Sun
exploding overhead
a million years ago

RIDDLE/LET THE POEM FAIL

RIDDLE

who
am I

what are
we?

did any of me
manage to
ripple
    through

or bump into you
heading my way
from
the opposite direction?

If so
I trust this was no kind of clash
only the softest
of encounters

as yet unlived life touching
yet unlived life

meeting at a cafe
we both conjured up
from somewhere
arguing over
   whether it is
spaghetti or
fettucini as we did
once and therefore
must always do

the same ghostly liminal
coffee shop
that always somehow
is deternined to
serve us pasta

and being
       a coffee shop
we both scan the tables for
the archetypal presence
of existential philosophical
and literary intellectuals

huge heavy hitters
conceptually speaking

who have
    no idea how
wondrous a fallacy it
would be

to take on the grounds
of consciousness alone
everything here
(as the
    regulars believe) is
incontravertibly real

****

LET THE POEM FAIL

let the poem fail
allow its words
to slur against
the grindstone

halt
  to such
an idea!

under our (your and my) watch
no King shall fall
no Queen tumble
no
   sans coulotte tumbril
(marking
  a change in style)
taxi these
sweet royals to
a one and done audience
with this most
sharp-
    spoken of Madames

yes, and no
booby-trapped package
to drop
through some
key letterbox
     escaping our surveillance
   promoting
the cause of anarchy

and
    God forbid we fail
to deflect
that burning fuse cocktail
named after Mr Molotov

landing
   bull’s eye
in your breakfast cereal

putting
    fire in your tank
adding punch to your day

let us
    leave this here, all
to fate these
terrible days

let the poem fail
it has no
power
except to

say
what it says

****

EXCEPTION TO THE RULE

EXCEPTION TO THE RULE

in constructing
your ideal world

use all the elements,
heavy metals
Providence has provided

except
polonium
except
uranium
except
plutonium

all together now
shout it out so loudly
that there can
be no one anywhere
on the planet
that does not hear it

except plutonium
plutonium plutonium

keep
   repeating this
until this metal
kills us all


O PROSPERO

O PROSPERO

the waves
go Charybdis
swallow you
syllable by
magical syllable

I search for an analogy
but Polyphemus devouring
navigators is
the best that I can
come up with, limit
to what my mind can do

and with that
all this wizardry, command
of the firmament
is at
its end

and with its end
the island sinks slowly
like a torpedoed galleon
slides under
      a grateful ocean
desperate for repossession

everything best
in the fulfillment of this desire
saved for last

WHEN

WHEN

When time got reversed
the plan was
to sail backwards
across the sea
undiscovering everything

magically, one by one
things disappeared: chilies,
popcorn, burgers, chocolate,
tobacco, tomahawk missiles,
baseball, gridiron, surfing,
rap, hop hop, jazz, blues,
slavery and potatoes,
Pickett’s Chsrge
Hiroshima and
the Normandy landings

the world
becoming a bit
less fun but
remaining that
much greener

and nuclear winter at
most a crazy science fiction idea.