Tag Archives: poem

THOSE KIDS

THOSE KIDS

those kids
I gave them a poetry lesson
on Blake, Milton, Shelley

bless their little souls
they took it all
to heart

figured out
they could be poets too
be like
these masters, maybe outdo

change the world
with the
flick
of a switch

which, my bad,
they have the power to do

WRITING ON THE WALL

WRITING ON THE WALL

I saw
the writing on the wall
someone had written it
in fluoriantinomic acid

to prove a point
pile on the pressure

this of course
weakened the wall
making the enterprise
not a little
self-defeating

you might say
this process meant
instaneously techno-
chemically deconstructing
the message as the author
was making it

but this
is just my random guess
terminally limited
interpretation

and so
    to conclude
let’s be pragmatic about it

take it
all in our stride with
a grain of salt
(sodium fluoroacetate
              compound 1080)

AT THE UNIVERSAL EMPORIUM (OF UNIVERSAL EMPORIUMS)

AT THE UNIVERSAL EMPORIUM (OF UNIVERSAL EMPORIUMS)

too many stick-legged statues
things on plinths

it is not
as I remember it
nothing like my old haunt

unless the harbingers
of universal emporiums
within universal emporiums
are not
statues at all

far
from it

here I am wandering
between the chapels and stalls
following my nose
hunting down
hints of
imperium

calculating
how much cement
and marble
it will need
they will need

how many rolls
of fabric too
to craft
a tapestry

tapestry wide
long enough
to record everything

cement-coloured people
springing up
out of nowhere
animal,
   vegetable, mineral

once they had
hoped to, promised to
evolve,
   become transformational

the dream of thinking
the dream of making

hard to believe
it was once centered here

epicentre of focus
sweetest cosmic algorithim
all disappeared

SPARROW’S FALL

SPARROW’S FALL

we were sitting
in the back of the plane.
safest place if
you wish to think
about providence,
tempt fate

and Providence the city
we to be shortly
disembarking in

you with
your nose for gnosis
me with the chemical
acumen of
forked, flicking tongue

banqueting
upon the very air

but perhaps
due to  time
shift of quite
radical nature

when we touched down
a delegation of machines
appeared
     assembled to
converse
with us

embraced us as
long lost souls did
conduct us through
their world

baffled us with
the intensity of
their bombardment
with technical information
scientific explanations

walking, talking us through
every nut
        and bolt in
terms of
form and function
how it
     all did work like a dream

yes, every
quantum interface
they guided us through it

we saw, heard. felt
how seamlessly every facet
did dovetail
deep together

reminding me of
the meaning, true
                    poetic meaning

of the Prince’s
    immortal, much celebrated,
marvelously resonant phrase

APOLOGIA

APOLOGIA

sorry so sorry
to interrupt
mess with your attention span

but I need to
tell you
how to weaponize this poem

clean it, cock it,
prime it
      load it

point it in the right direction
take
   the safety off

aim low when
you got your target

fire at well
       single shot

automatic fire
      the poem should cycle
through its action

smoothly
    no jamming

have the impact
you wished for
when
  you helped write this thing

OUR MUSIC

OUR MUSIC

The aliens are, coming here
rushing head-over-heels
faster
    than a guitar riff
because they love
our music

speakers blaring Zeppelin
and Hendrix
smashing the peace as
they hurtle through
the galaxy

reminding those
old enough to remember air cavalry choppers
colonizing the skies
of Vietnam

the aliens are coming here
now all the critical questions
of survival
     relate to the possibility
of jam sessions

and whether our human
overlords
    will let them land and
pluck and strum

or pull
    the plug

desperate to
shut them out

WITHOUT SIN

WITHOUT SIN

I took every
precaution to ensure
this piece of writing
is free from blasphemy
totally without sin

God forbid
that my little village
with all its stark poverty
gets burned
to the ground
for sinful infraction
or bad punctuation

it is right
that evil be erased
wiped out of existence
before it
   gets to
see itself stand
naked

hear all the bloody
euphemisms
whereby we hide its name.

WHEN YOU SUCCEED

WHEN YOU SUCCEED

I sent this poem
to your letter page

neither
floated it
on the air currents
nor shackled it
to a tbunderbolt

sending it
the expressest
of express deliveries

no I
broke it up into
bits and bytes
photons of light
two-slit experiment
forwarded it
    digitally

no message
in a bottle

ether crossing nothing
to do with the ocean

testing you
to your Turing limits
pushing you
          hard until you crack
like the
Nazi code in
an enigma machine

and there before us all
in hallucinatory space
all
  our circuits, on-board
programing

my little poem, this tiny
buffet
        testing you to
outer inner
the limit of your limits

finding, reflecting where
you fail, back
at you,
where you succeed