Tag Archives: poem

3 POEMS: BLEACH, HOW MANY, BEGINNING

BLEACH

crossing a
cultural desert
gun ports
not entirely closed

I come well-prepared:
my sextant and
my astrolabe likewise,
runes for divination,
charms
woven into cloth
and many
a magnetic stone

tattoos, furthermore,
inked from head to toe
all over
my body

a magnum opus, a script
that the algorithm predicts
all of you, to a man (and
a woman)
will be sorely tempted
to read allegorically

yet what we have here
should elicit no parallels
the text
     plainly needs no
code decyphered, simply
proffers illustration
of famous
historical scenes

actual ones, as well as
by virtue
    of being counterfactual,
never actually happening
there solely
     to confound, or
to tease

in this
     the last of my kind I
am without question

such text
as a matter of policy and
dear human salvation

removed from
all my bretheren (sisterhood
likewise)
          purged from
public space erased
by fire, with bleach

****

HOW MANY

how many
more were
than
    waves in the ocean
pebbles on the beach

who scribbled endlessly
fighting that
worst of wars
against silence
and futility?

writing
for themselves, for their
beloved, for
anyone
prepared to read
at all

see
   how hard it is
to craft
something
for the cosmos

words
        lost in the
depths of deep space
                         yet

impossible
not to write at all

and this,
      my friend, I
am far
too sensitive, afraid
to tell you

this is the way
with every act of
creation

this the failure
defines us all

****

BEGINNING

Hamlet died
last night
and
  I died
with him

he at Elsinore
me in the front row
just below the stage

him
   in the light, me
in darkness

neither of us
of the firm belief
we spent enough
time together
to truly know
each other

barely talked, even
thought of establishing
a relationship

and yet
at that meta moment
we both died
and were revived
with curtain call
and, much pleasantries

things
    taking back
to the beginning
yet unable
to erase all that
shared death pain


LET THE SATIRISTS

LET THE SATIRISTS

Let the satirists arm themselves
with.357 magnums
and Khorammshahr missiles

using expanding hollow point
and cluster ammunition

time to
defend themselves
against gangsters
local and global
indigenous
and international

who have never
throughout all of history
taken criticism, mockery kindly

hence
the need to arm all satirists
if any exist these days.

AGAIN

AGAIN

How is it
certain questions
have no answer

how is it
we
are
nothing like
the same

together again,
back to back,
face to
face

so different,
wholly other

no memory of ever
having done this before

and yet
     tell-tale signs, traces indeed
of previous encounters

you and I
         reaching out
to put to the test the very
idea of the hopeless

so divided, set apart
by distance in era,
disjunction
in
   space-time

and yet here
brought again to this
proximity to
question everything

infinite possibility
impossibly contained?

WOLF AT CHERNOBYL

WOLF AT CHERNOBYL

Winter and
no roadside picnic
no Tarkovsky disturbance at
the heart of the dreamscape

I am
pack-driven  running wild with
the wolves at Chernobyl,
wild with
my gold
and black genes
streaming through the turnstiles

I am
myself a wolf
become
one by default
mutation, transformation,
transubstantiation

what was latent in my blood
found alchemy, became real
surrendered itself
to this project
of reclamation

running hard, running true
as softly
            yet faster
than you would have ever
thought it
everything
gets effaced

and in truth, to your eyes,
as we
    luxuriate in the silence
move so
muffle-footed, we must
sound like nothing, look
like ghosts

appear as the icons of
every irony of your presumption

threading our way through
the wreckage of your hubris

shock
   of the horror, which
in your misunderstanding of
your power
                 you unleashed
upon yourselves

I am
wolf at Chernobyl
outlined against
       the stark
whites of winter

        I am creature of
these forests whose message could not
be more clear.

WAIT

WAIT

Wait
until your eyes adjust to the light
for adjust they will

look at this
what we have here

is it not
like a planet metaphor
with inner
meanings, outer rings

Saturn
     in her full regalia
nothing saturnine

until
   you get up as close
as we are now

and here you lock on
with all your technology
literal antennae

that hunger for resonance
that transcends species, outlived
race and colour

no idle promise
from some mad mystic or
their posterity text
that we
might become one
know ourselves
know each other

somewhere here
there is a beyond special
moment a forever now
searching for you
trying to find you

let
  that quest
to squeeze every bit of life
out of words and things,
out of
      oceans of language

run
   a blind course, suffer
in vain.

FUTILE

FUTILE

resistance is futile
(for which truth
we must forever
thank the Borg)

but in the face
of overwhelming odds
let me
    proffer

this
poem

(was here, I swear
but mysteriously disappeared)

of no
    real value
it would appear

despite the fact
I gave it everything

CAME LOOKING

CAME LOOKING

fuck that Chinese sci fi
writer telling us
hunters in the forest
better keep
our heads down

went out on a mission
looking for holes
in Fermi’s paradox
determined
to investigate them

sent out
my own little message
faster than time
itself possibly
arriving
before I sent it

no curt text engraved
in gold
    giving whosoever
the specs on our
divine image
    target co-ordinates
and
  John and Paul for
the benefit of Mr Kite
if you
   find a stylus, play it
like a
   LP record

no I commissioned every
quantum computer
to access all
our truth, across every
alternate universe
construct the
    definitive manual
guide to
   our impossibly complex
whims and
wiles             philosophies,
systems and
psychologists   no
danger, no sweat

no dark forest vibes
by the time
front to
      back
top to
bottom they would
have made
their calculations
imbibed our text

we would
be long gone

would be long gone
(three body problem
beautifully solved
solved beautifully)