poetry – Page 122 – poems 2 die for

BEST HE CAN DO

BACK

back you are
to tell all

you who
found yourself’
privy to the soul’s
panorama

found yourself
presented
with such
establishing shots

so beautiful
so terrible

tracking shot through
the gates of Heaven
gates
of Hell
divulging the ground zero
truth of the latter

whole horrific spectacle
way beyond language

leave us wondering
what we
could have done
to possibly
deserve this

forgetting
how the world works

how it is
what it is, no

end
to the suffering

MY CASE

sick in bed
2000lb building buster
fell on my head

out of nowhere
the papers passive voicing
the issue of agency

saying that
my skull thick
as concrete

no sign
of a brain

no doctor willing
to tend to me

there is not the
bedside manner
in the whole
of Christendom

willing and
able to

deal
with my case

SIGN

I want to take you
on a bed
of wine coloured
roses

my lips wanting your
brown skin
beneath them
for all of
human time

and though
I have not yet
found you

and still have
to persuade you
to commit
to this enterprise

an enterprise in which
we die and die and die
forever and ever
constantly rising
constantly reborn

for which the shade of deep burgundy of
these flowers
has become
of
this desire and
would be passion
its
eloquent sign.

THIS SPACE

found
or otherwise

you have no footage
of me writing, whole
creative process

you just have to
go with face value
take on trust

seems that no bot
wrote this
you think
as levels are
discovered;
let themselves
get uncovered

before, in
coming to
a reading,

you edit and
manipulate

impose
and frame
according to
best-
guess narrative

supreme
authority
over all
located in

this space

MOTORCYCLE DIARIES

me and Modiegi
watched you
swim that river

only to
die
in Bolivia

the CIA more deadly
than piranha fish

between which
there is a piece of
timeline

in which
you changed history

became the T-shirt
and thus immortalizdm

JOSEPHINE

Josephine
I do not ask for your
cheetah
or your
anaconda

just let me
unpeel one two
three all
these dancing bananas

all eyes on you
as you mesmerize
me watching an actress
enact
your story

the patrons, and yes
even the Gestapo
in the world
of the solidly real

but, alas!, not one
from that dream-factory
fairy-tale land
you managed
to scramble away from

the sky
is the limit

but you are what you are
if you be
black or
brown (forever down)

Oh to be part of
if not your rainbow tribe
at least
your menagerie

or have some role
some task
that might
continue your legacy

touchstone for the power
of our human drive
to surpass ourselves

irrefutable argument
that we are indeed all one

OUT OF THE CORNER OF MY LEFT EYE

OUT OF THE CORNER
OF MY LEFT EYE

I am such a soft
precious revolutionary

I smother demons
(my own included)
with an exquisite pillow
where
it might well
prove impossible
to integrate them

put them on paper
place them before
the great
arbiters of
civilized society

in no way
a scion or off-
spring of Comrade
Vladimir Mayakovsky

whom
I espy, out of
the corner of my left eye,
flinging a Louis XIV chair
through a crystal
clear
window of
The Winter Palace

EMPTY

Eden is empty

frozen over
or overgrown

no one comes
to clean up, ckear weeds,
pick up the garbage

here we
must consult with
the biologists, philosophers,
theologians
have coffee or a beer
with Neil deGrasse Tyson

to puzzle through the impact
of our human departure
on this now, to all
intents and purposes,
alien world

and whether, riff on
flower unseen meme,
the colours, the odours,
the sounds
very tactile feel of
the place
might exist
in our absence

forever persist
in their wondrous,
fabulous intensity

or has it
all just freeze-framed
forever capturing
the tragedy of
our great catastrophic moment

that coming to a consciousness
so acute we
no longer have hope
of the real.

NIBBLE

nibble
nibble
nibble

cit the wrong wire
armed the system
the count down

going
crazy

we both doomed
whatever explosion
between us

whatever
volcano
about to
erupt

magma
upon magma
superhot caldera

no hope for us now
started with a nibble
a single, fatal
total nibble

here is a desire
unleashed

devourimg
everything in its path