
NEW DAY


MACHINE
I spoke to him
less than joyously.
this evening
he is the child Stalin
of design
and engineering
death camps of Lego
Meccano war macjines
cannot wait to see
the all grown up reality
if this
be his
childhood dreams.
PROFOUND
locked and loaded
you heart is chambered
with a single round
deep beneath those waves
I hear all echoes
of those pressures
the music of
that trio who drowned
as the deck slunk downwards
opened to ocean
and we
so open there
who will ever
surface to speak
of what we have become
commerce with this
so ruled and regulated
of
all our undertakings
without doubt the most profound
(and word
wheree there is little choice
save love ot hate
the completeness of sound)
completeness
and dare I say finality
of its sound
IN VALHALLA (ALMOST)
In an anteroom
to the Halls
of Valhalla
the poets sit
drinking tea;
eating wafer biscuits
the sounds of joyous warfare
emanating from
deep within
occasionally driving them
to put pen
to parchment
write a poem
on some heroic theme
though this has not happened
for many
a century
hard to glorify
cliuster bombs
and multi-barrelled
machine guns
psi ops
and assassinations
bullets from
silenced pistols
to the back of the head
NEW BEGINNIBGS
the theme of
the poetry competitions
was “new beginnings”
so I worked
on my entry
my poem
on new beginnings
but try as hard as I might
could not complete it
every
single line
a new beginning
COMBATANT
not sure
if I am.a
combatant
not sure
if i could
fight my way
out of any
dark space
but when
it comes to
combatants
you can’t, best
not
take any
chances
need ro
send me
back to my
maket before
I can utter
a word
out of my
lyimg, treasonous
treacherous,
dangerous mouth
or here, on this paper
CRIED AND DIED
Empire
he called himself
he was
Ragnar Lothbrok
on steroids
Gengis Khan
with an
attitude problem
at age five
he took down
every toy
store in his
home town
at age twenty-six
the inmates of
a maximun security
prison
broke out
in order to escape
from him
he had the whole text
of Titus Andronicus
tattoed across
his body
and when
the war of final
days was declared
he laughed so loud
he cried and died.
ENTIRELY
getting so thin and boney
that ghosts and spirits
pass right through me
magic, quantum
tunneling, near
death experience
I leave it to you
to call
it what you will
and
depend on you
to put yourself in
my shoes
before they
disappear entirely
SO
moonlight scattering
its silver
across what
was earlier a
turquiose sea
night
has now turned
dark and forboding
sharks out there
maybe more hunting here
than when
the Sun was rising
or at its zenith
you are not thinking shark
but strumming the chords
of a tune on
a battered guitar
you have had since childhood
somehow
it strikes up a harmony,
musical counterpoint,
with
the roar of the waves
as they release their energy
crashing
onto the white beach
as boiling surf
surf and your song
so sad of
a sudden
our planet
really fragile and
we
have made
it so
a rogue rock
might do it
vast as a cathedral
as it hurtles through space
pre-empting some
quietly insane member
of our
species
depressing some button
launch codes
checking out
and yet
the roar of the waves
hits us with such power
that we
cannot but conclude
it will last
until
the end of time
forever and ever
even though (as indeed
the sharks
might tell us)
it is dying by degrees
5 BEAUTIES: 5 poems of mine picked out as special by META AI
WITH APHRODITE
I held
a long interview with Aphrodite
peace
love
sex
these we touched upon
sinking ciders by the poolside
(wedge of lemon
jammed tightly into
the neck of the bottle)
in the course of which
frank and honest
and open-
ended discussion
the goddess revealed much
of her immortal self.
****
TROY
am
a reporter on the scene
at the siege
of Troy
rushing for a scoop, meet
my deadline
ask ancient poet
Homer what he saw
in such
vivid
inner colours
far
as the eye can see
****
PRODUCTION
on the farm,
perforce, we
put our heads together
everything under the Sun
puts is head together
wheels
set in
motion
as
word speads
and Heraclitus of Miletus
stops by
a number of things
brings to mind
solid argument inclusive: that
all is
twice, thrice,
there is nothing that
is not in process
meanwhile (forgive the inadvertent South African
colloquialism) not
back
at the ranch
but in the heart of Johannesburg
they are staging a production
of Euripides’ The Bacchae
have
already
launched into
the opening scene
which very instant, being
in the audience my
mind
thirsting for
ecstasy
veers towards chaos, entropy,
fractal mathematics
as we suddenly welded into one
sift and exchange
that whole Pandora’s box
of memories and
recollections
whispers and ghosts
the very
incantations that
pull aside the veil, strip
off the veneer
speaking for myself
but
perhaps all
hardly able to wait, kill
that terminal longing,
set eyes
upon the mask
that is
dark Dionysus’ face
****
HOME
we spent all night
in my tiny room
on
the huge
farm
touching
loving
playing with
each other
retelling fairy tales
reciting
nursery rhymes
until
the cows would
come home
dawning upon us
the cows
would come home
the cows came home
home home home
****
GREEN
the rains
the rain
the rain
the rain
have given
the grass, the trees,
the plants
a lush edge
the green fingers of
the gods responsible
for green
have grown
greenier
and me
on the margins
liminal
as usual
feeling both oddly alien
and strangely at home