poetry – Page 10 – poems 2 die for

BELONG

Sufi Mufti
Grand Wazoo

feels like abracadabra
like verbal algebra
tuneful vowels
rolling
off my tongue

Shia Shia
Sunni Wahabi

and you Omar Khayyam
and disciples of Rumi

out in the desert
looking for rose
of beauty
woman

whose every
move a poem
every word
divine bliss

something mystical about
these Persian angels

something that drives the soul
to write
its love on sand

and me
in Heaven as I spell
out the logic
of this grammar in
full
linguistic mouthful
after mouthful

searching as I speak
for place to
belong to

if you
would have me belong

TECHNICAL

let this
be a breeze

a zephyr if you will
whistling around
your ears

better use
this term respecting
your
preference for
the physical

wish
to be technical

perfect weather for kite
and magic carpet alike

swing-
wing metaphor

exact
careful prosody

plotting your flight path
to the end of the page
(unless
such velocity

you escape
to deep space)

EMPTY

had five friends
around for roulette

Boris
Leonid
Sasha
Dimitri
Natasha

played all night
lost every time
around the
table
perfect hexagon

my luck deserting me
every time
      nothing doing
my
   life clicked empty
.
poems
     spent shells

dead on the floor
before
anyone might

tragically inspired
stoop to read them

much
   dull fun, real drear, in
   this
     deathly writing business,

SNAKE

snake in a box
picture of coiled contentment

mindful
ambush predator
haemo- and neurotoxic

totally at peace
Zen moment
or so it
would seem

but no
finer out the box thinker
better escapologist
than this
      sleepy lightning
rod clan

this
   in reality
alike
in
mythology

shedding its lifetime
of skins faster
than
you
change your clothes
shed outworn soul’s

snakes here in abundance
though I do not
cannot yet see them

coiled around my limbs, my
heart, neck,
wrists ankles

no snake eyes as such
but certainly snake mind

FEATHERS (for Tom)

“…bird without feathers”.
Plato; Woody Allen

must be
in dreamtime

surfing the betwixt
and between

to love and yet
hate
those paltry little tigers
of the domestic persuasion

so much
so much
to talk about
think about
these ultra agile predators
dancing
across my keyboards
snuggled up next to me

covering my universe
my hemisphere
in blankets
of dead feathers

even as tiny toys
especially as tiny tots
criminal stuff wreckers

creators
of havoc

and yet that
curiosity, those play paws
that softness

those eyes
flashing amber
(between, beyond
good
and evil)

no concept of
the shame faced, simply
asking
“Oh bird

without feathers

what did you expect?”

ALWAYS

always forgetting
always
losing my luggage
always getting
lost

missing my classes
at the wrong bus stop
on the wrong train

the Express
between Manchester
and Cape Town
somehow
not running
today

at least not from
this platform, though
there is
another, they say

always another, which I did
raise with
my chatbots (somewhat
celestial minds)
spoke of
this recurrence
and why no
GPS down in
this cave

and why you
still haunt me, both
here
and far away

who did
promised to
see me
indeed greet me

if when
all of this has gone
strangely disappeared
and something
(rather
than nothing) would
appear to remain

THE SIGNS WERE ALWAYS THERE

the signs
were always there

freaky fractals spiralling
out of control now
turning
all and sundry deadly
dystopian

how might we avoid
all that predetermines
a future so dire

was thinking tapestry but
the cloth tore
got shredded and now
we must live as
part of
a patchwork, bleak
winter tragedy

luxury liner-ing away
but all that
was scuttled and we
are clinging to lifeboats

survival here dictated
by exigencies of class

the water a green brown
emulsion, putrid
oily

who knows what creature
mutations now face us
things having
to change to survive

crazy as it sounds I
still have space for laughter

I hear it
gurgling
from gullet to
mouth tones there both
of bitter
contempt and tragic
appreciation

pull it apart
dissect it piece by piece
in furtherance
of analysis

nothing in truth
there new to learn
the signs were always there

UNTO CAESAR

and what, friend,
is due unto
Caesar

both to Julius
and Caligula as well?
.
Oh that search for the exact
shade of authority
far
side of red
near side of purple

get that spot on
and all that public gold
and every marble structure

is yours by
virtue of the unquestionable
Imperial logic
of becoming

the very person
and embodiment of
the State itself

whereupon
what else is left but
for divinity to beckon

and right
to crucify the Earth itself

what
beyond death the ultimate debt?
.

LINEAGE

this is dope:
in a court room
trying to make my case

attorneys, solicitors, haggling
over the cost of my bullet
in pounds sterling
in dollars and cents

outside there is a cow
in a patch of moonshine
trying
to capture an idyll
looking pretty subliminal

clouds where the spots should
be and suddenly guitar solos

must be
to announce
golden gates. chosen people,
stretched across chasms
structures
of tubular humanity

and me the accused
summoned to speak, brought
into evidence
watching the film
how
my life rolls

but let
me not disturb you, muss
your precious slumber

dream on dream on
dream a gathering of the clan
tough as tungsten nails

fever in the air
spring time for fundamentals

this is dope
totally dope

pink as your pink
what more can I say? (therein your DNA)

TRAIN SMASH

don’t panic

this is just
a poem

lots of things, items,
that it is not

not an emergency
(State of Emergency)
not a
wormhole or
nuclear weapon
not an
insurrection
not a train smash

not a thing
we typecast as a comet
flouting the laws of physics

not something
so desperate to be read
it will die if you deign to

going to
try to survive even
if you refuse
to read a word

writer reader
even as the ground beneath
our feet gives
superstructures tumble

good odds we can get
through this
together
poles apart though
we may be
creatures
if not of connection
at least
continuity