poem – Page 8 – poems 2 die for

TALKING DESIGN

Chomsky being currently out of commission
dunno who is going to
explain to me

whether love
is transitive
or intransitive verb

and then,
as regarding the word
as substantive
is it here
by design or
off the cuff a thing
we just
make?

and talking design
blue prints, project management,
where are
we exactly now as
everything
ebbs and
flows?

time not just elastic
but a kind
of liquid

I have felt that before
and,
Occam’s razor aside,
do believe it confirmed

inside outside
don’t spook me out
with talk of wall to
wall
consciousness
sloshed around
like buckets of whitewash

yes
talking of design

why were we not all created,
designated, love engineers,
exquisite
mechanics of pleasure

so much in our specs (as
sent out
into deep space)
to have us believe this
well within our range

CORE

Marco Rubio
in his, speech
to the Munich Putz
crossing
the Rubicon

Rubicon
Rubicon
let’s in his honour,
rename it
the Rubiocon

don’t came us waiting
here in Africa
anxious
for your hard
regime change
outright colonization

the soft big mac and coke
and Hollywood
attempts to
colonize by
mind assimilation

not
cutting the mustard
not cutting
anything
any more

carriers
in our waters, marines and
ice police
on the shore

bulldozers, cranes and
every means of
excavation
screaming, streaming
to the Core.

WELCOME

Earth
sent me

an SMS
(who the f
gave it my number?)

told me regrettably
that we are
all over
our heads

have broken
the bank

totally overspent

outstayed
our welcome.

SAVING

I’m saving up
for Armaggedon

when a can
of beans
is worth
a billion dollars

and the queues
into Hell take
forever
(need to
purchase
snacks
so as not to starve)

the queues into
Heaven
no where
to be
found
and ditto the entrances

when the big one falls
enough collective
guilt
to go many times around.

ON THE SPOT

You asked me
for an inspirational poem

so I filled an oil drum
with every sugary
sweet
epithet I could
on the spot
regurgitate

dowsed the contents
with treacle

knock yourself out
with this
the spoon
of spoons.

EUROPA

years of darkness
my skin
seriously
lightened

fog of war, smoke,
gas blindness,
could not scry the sky

nothing to do
with Renaissance,
Enlightenment

that and
other
choice bull

this
before you now
hogshead
on a platter

my
flash news

EXPERIMENTAL

experimental
mental

banking on
une chanson l’amour

a kind of magic
watch my hands
each a little
imp
of diversion
distraction

beneath the city
beneath the mountain

going nebula
creating
(that is
the theory at least)
special connection, entanglement,
new pathways

kind of comical pondering
this nothing
is real reality
that is emerging

big box
of paradox
tied up
with a rainbow bow

and there we were
the two of us blessed cursed
to live a
life of standard fare

not a shred
of resonance between us

just
that initial shockwave
wave, particle

positive, negative, opposite
identical spin

who
would have hazarded
a guess at it?

what
were the odds?

TRACE

I knew I was going to going
to leave no trace.
But that we were all
leaving no trace,
erasing ourselves
frankly appalled me.

No more messages
leaving these shores
at lightspeed
inadvertently or
intentionally is
thing hard
to get one’s head around

a Universe of silence,
devoid of intelligent life

seems to defeat the idea of
purpose, meaning,
evolutionary achievement

I did say intelligent
but this intelligence
of ours

infinitely stupid.

FLIGHT TIME (NO RERUNS)

FLIGHT TIME (NO RERUN)

gone
in sixty seconds

plus flight time
all of thirty minutes

the chess board burning
the pieces melting
it is a game
that no one
will ever play again

certainly none of these kids
sitting under their desks
they know
“duck, and cover”

no one thought much about this
could imagine it happen
forty, fifty
years ago whole
cities
shutting down
the streets, out in
protest

even Donald will not
pronounce all the syllables
calling it
his “N word”

the slightest nudge
and the species, scared
shits we are
went total
hair trigger
whereupon complete first
strike
went total retaliation

you evaporate me
I evaporate you

that’s the bargain, that’s
the deal

a winter to take us back
a hundred thousand years
nothibg
to eat
but each other

no more reruns of
Strangelove on You Tube

INVOCATION

It was my optimum desire
to forward you an invocation

and tell you (in an appendix)
that you should genuinely
feel free to deploy it
as you see fit

but I was unsure
of my vocabulary, in
particular which
verb would
be the most appropriate

so desperately reluctant
to get things perchance,
breaking every
protocol, twisting
customary practice,
getting things
irredeemably wrong

especially given
our fraught and brittle
exchanges
over the years

where so hard
to judge whether
things
between us
cold as Arctic ice
on boiling
like the magma
in massive Vesuvius

and so
I left it to you who or
what
best in this context
to invoke

whilst I felt caught between
the wish that
in all aspects
you might “glow”, or
there again “sparkle”

beauty of rich sunset
versus diamond string
of stars

unless
best do both

or best, neither

as the days shorten
and never
grows real

I will invoke the gods and
the Universe itself

to ask, as last best gift,
some light might find you.