REVISED
saw Adonis and Aphrodite
at the Heavy Metal ballet
watching barriers collapse
boundaries stretch
saw sheet metal fluted
rolled exquisitely sheer
the weight of those chords tempered with
grace, fluency
of style
and Adonis and Aphrodite
if not riveted in love
at least
holding hands
the truth of their narrative
so handsomely revised
the
years so softly silvering them,
their conquest of time
OUR LITERARY HISTORY
scruffy rebel poets
Knights of the Realm
sometimes those
strangest of
hybrids that fall
into both categories
and there
in the schools
and universities
an industry at work
creating a mosaic
building a pantheon
that Shakespeare, whoever
he is, whomsoever
he was
can float high above everything
in great
volumes of cloud
Hamlet teasing the Danish
first minister to fix
upon absolutes where
all is
shifting significance
VAULT
opened the vault
hadn’t looked that
deep inside
for a very
long time
found your
photograph back there
brought all that
loss, sadness
to my eyes
and you
standing behind me
so passed it to you
you
looked sighed
kissed me softly
on the temple
on the lips
this the place
where all roads meet
all secrets
revealed
so close it must seem
to the end of time
GHOSTLY
did Hamlet’s father’s ghost
write Hamlet
in the same way
that
Shakespeare is
the ghost
the rest of the plays?
not a question
to pose to you
my friend Professional
my
world of cold truth so
riches to
rags of
its very nature
yours so
smartly sanctified
appropriately sanctioned
allowed you
to make money, get status
more more money
and status
writing this ghostly Shakespeare
than anyone ever
made
writing his
plays
OPPOSITE OF SHAKESPEARE
read everything
write nothing
everybody knows
everything about me
no shares
in anything, brokeass
Professor
done my best
to bash the whole
idea of Imperial
greatness
writer
as god
I am
figure of antithesis
the opposite of Shakespeare
read nothing
wrote everything
greatest writer ever
we know nothing about
IMMORTALITY
was striving
for the wrong
kind of
immortality
needed the kind
of accolades showered
upon Mr Charles
Bukowski
which in his case
was like
holy water
off a duck’s back
DREAM SEQUENCE
In a place of darkness
that could not be
more exact
or complete
I dream.
of you
as you were, as
you are now
my creature of
light, creature of dawm
magnificent as always
in life and
here
now in my vision
even in this
realm where all
is meant to end
told to expire
there
is something
about my love
will never die
MERCUROCHROME
we left some
skin on the roads
our middle name
should be
mercurochrome
dripping pink to
tell the world
how
rubber failed us
and aphsalt turns
to grindstone
at even
less than high speed
but what is it
they chase, these bikers,
their dangerous
immortality?
I wonder to myself
abstracted from all
sense of peril
as the road narrows
in tune to the
bursts of accelerated
shifting perspective
riding a Kawa Ninja
does not
of itself make
me a Samurai
nor is it the
Nietzschean definition
of living
dangerously
just an
exercise in edge and
sense of finest balance
a dance you see
with the roar of high
compression
engine
as you get as low as
you can in terms
of centre
of gravity
molecule-thick distance between
outer edge and
blade itself
DRIVING DOWN TO CAPE TOWN
driving down
to Cape Town to
honour your invitation
need to fill my veins
with the fuel
of liquid stoicism
fifty years since
we last laid eyes
on each other
fear a
single touch from you
and I might disintegrate
recalling that moment
where in your bedroom
I declined
the sharing of the bed
and whatever
consequent pleasure
thinking this meaning so
much less
so much less
for you
and now
me heading South
realizing
in light of
this current sweet
invitation
how hopelessly wrong
I must have been
OVERSHOOT
the board
is a blur
they are playing
at lightning speed
my eyes cannot
track the pieces
let alone
my mind
make
sense of the moves
need to
slow this down
to a crawl considerably
right now it is
the red-
hot embodiment of
the brain’s
capacity to
chess overshoot
poems 2 die for