Tag Archives: poetry

FLESH OF THE FAITH

FLESH OF THE FAITH

some buffoon
they call and
who calls
himself
a philosophy
slipping between
jokes
   and profundity
fires away

name of the game
dance
    of truth, not
so easy to work out
the steps
   world and self what
they want to say
for themselves
despite themselves
so damn intricate
so hard to
    pin down when
in this labyrinth every
level brings
fresh layer
  of deception

and why
must he always
touch
   his nose?

is that some
kind of tic, sign of
secret brotherhood or
silent spiritual homage
to H and L and
M his
   forebears and yes,
masters

meanwhile I am continuing
this badly scripted
life story
   my tale of desire
full of
twists and turns but
no story to speak
of itself

an iron wall
    dystopian stuff with
digital chip on
the shoulder, chip
in the brain patriarchal
body guards
stretching between my
heart and its object
wherever that
object, whenever it
should
   come into being

that the motor, engine of
everything should
be loss
   and distance, incompleteness
and sadness

great for Slovenian
thinker, South African poet,
though
    getting it down in all
its harrowing
complexity
      could be an industry
might
not
    keep your warm at night
(flesh
    of the faith to
deeply
    hold on to) may
not even pay the rent at all

JUST MAYBE

JUST MAYBE

maybe
if was just
bad juju

maybe you ran
into an electronic storm

your SUV cartwheeling
from zero to eighty
in two
     point seconds

one day
we should sit down
put our
   heads together
talk
   about it

that is if the Fates
let you live
your soul
      neither ascending
or descending
to
place of absolute rest
in a mind-
blowing shower

of hideous,
deadly,
fundamental sparks

MADAME FRANKENSTEIN

MADAME FRANKENSTEIN

hi Madame Frankenstein
you were
bolt out
of the blue

jolt
to my system

electricity is life:
     well our skynet cyborg
future could
not have proved that
more conclusively

and there you
all agog, in state of
supreme sublime horror
to see the face
of your
our
science fiction

of which you are
thd undoubted queen

BEYOND BELIEF

BEYOND BELIEF

poetry
is carbon footprint

it is my
considered impression
                            that

whichever way
you elect most carefully
to slice
     and dice it

Mr Wordsworth Wordsmith

poetry is truth
            raw heart-
beating truth

and so
     carry on regardless,
living your life of forge-
and-foundrey, lathe
and plane,
hammer and
chisel
       metaphor

I’ll stick to my position
close my ears to your
never
      gets new   no way
open to revision
(with
      surgical aural faith
grace and
precision)

stamping this on
all that I rhyme, all
you
   cannot recall,
still
   fail to see:

poetry is
truth
   
true
    imprint

poetry is that
        thing with

power
beyond belief

TWO POEMS


TWO POEMS
hole
nous

HOLE

there is a in my poem
a very fine hole,
a beautiful hole in fact

rain gets in
wind
whistles
through it

especially
when Mars and Venus
find themselves in
conjunction
or
  imtimately worse

please, if you think
you can fix it
if you have
the technology
or rolls
and rolls of tape

write to
the address below
I desperately
need it mended, need
myself mended

only then
might i be able
to start
  writing with
blind confidence
papering over everything

filling in the cracks
for instead of waning
as you
   might suppose

I feel he is out there
but also
within the lines
bending them
to his will
shepherding
    theit direction

waxing in power
the light suffusing everything

trash-talking all
that is
    askew
          tantamount
to an
apogee of
miserable insanity

hint of the infinite
constantly
   streaming through

****

NOUS

he writes cursively
and yet
concisely

knowing full well
how ripe the world be
to swallow
this tripe

and there is your consensus:
hear it mewl in unison
(child father
        to man but
not
  for this generation)

a gathering gathers: spin-
doctors, masters of character
assassination, doctors
of diatribe

all one tribe whose
genealogy
         is golden, palms
crossed with silver

commentators, phone hacks,
two-way
   radioed manhood
cursed non-
Shakespearean gentlemen

they can call a summit every
minute print the words
that should
      suspend
      everything

deary deary all so dreary
Professor looks so
vacuous right
now

luckily his pen has
the nous to
perpetuate itself

PROUDLY

PROUDLY

proudly
exactly at the moment
when angels fell

he
stood up

  on his hind legs

put away
monkey business, childish
                              things
dropped
   his prehensile tale

at which,
   clock started ticking
for all obedience points
accrued
    for infraction
points dropped

strewed the veld
with the detritus of
every hunter-
gatherer

         later agricultural event

leaving bones to
be picked
                  by such as
Dawkins and Harari

bounding across new landscapes
from horizon
        to horizon

virus
of conquest
so much space to acquire

RETURN

RETURN

I rent a
flower

am renting it
right now

rented one
yesterday

this one though,
is special,

before
petals fade,
colour
fades

need to
take it back
get a full
refund, perhaps
      even
accrued interest

good flower
good money

time waits
for no
     man

but this
is how we
make time

time
   (that strange
German sage
said it
again
   and again)

time
is illusion
a fiction

time
is
  return

in all
its horror
and beauty
  

SAME; DIFFERENT

SAME; DIFFERENT

my pain
    is not very good
at breasting
the way

whatever my pen
might say
     (so gotten
into the habit
of speaking
     for itself

talking
to itself)

stick me in
a foam bath and
then I should
relax into
this enterprise

weave my way through
word possibilities
             dodging
linguistic dissonances as
if they
were titanic icebergs

whatever
quantum fluctuations
float
   your boat

Hokusai moment
at which

to posit the implicit
connection between
metatextual
             and sexual
you may
well considet joining me

adding to
poem fun index

we could
   team up tempestuously

come up
with something fine
and expansive or

cut the writing altogether
(in our altogether)

SIX POEMS

SIX POEMS:
without batteries
masterpiece
tantra
scrapbook
the music
warhead

WITHOUT BATTERIES

insidious, the pun
destabilizes

mangles single-
meaning

in its electromagnetic
                        field

a field day having thereupon
I think of a goblin green
Vader Christmas

slipping down an industrial
smokestack for the children
who choked to death

on his back a pack of Death Stars
and other Sith machines
to toy with
and destroy the galaxy

luckily without batteries,
Skynet took them, the Matrix
took them

total the disappointment
whereupon for the
children of every executive

reminding us all
of former wicked times
of Scrooge economics
and monetarist deprival

and those who suffered
the feeezing calamity
of Christ”s birthday
reflected
     as it was in the tiny
suffering always
happy face
of Tiny Tim

meanwhile some Jew or other
in the British musuem
is slaving daily
    at his big
red book

we are
creative creatures, he writes,
not regretful
afterthought, surplus
liability
      
        image that is no.match
for such
dreams of
  transcendence that plague
our human imagination
(the ghost of
a Marley man financier
ghastly at the door).

****

MASTERPIECE

I read an
unusually bad poem
from a
Professor or so

worse
    than normal
but no ways so bad
that I might
quite involuntarly, mind,
require to
     gag, vomit, spit

which would have been
not a good look for me
given his
current level of
appreciation
(verging on
near total public
         adulation)

such pressure on me
unforunately to
favourably respond

that when I did in fact retch
(following
      line of least resistance)
I threw up
     a jewel

wonder of transformative
power of mind over matter

a gem
    of a vicious
     masterpiece

****

TANTRA

I drink
where the rivers merge

slake my thirst
at the delta

some ocean salt here
too which
I taste
    no mistake

a lock
on time
    when you
flow
with me
and we
locate our
psalm sustenance

behold
     something has
changed

      seems the sea is
surfeit

we have
long left the land

****

SCRAPBOOK

I am going
to repaint this town

in line
with how you
dream it
retell
its history

scatter sepia, reframe
as daguerrotype

invest with shade
of fake civility
wherever
     the whim takes me

nip
   new

in the bud
let

this be my enterprise
until faith
       in the lie

gets up one day
and quietly leaves me

****

THE MUSIC

there was no music
none
   to
talk about

then suddenly,
there was
the music again

and the Beatles
found it

learnt it played it
packaged it
         sent special
delivery
from turntable
           to heart

and there
        inside that music
there was
one Eleanor Rigby

who
   are went
           looking for

nobody
found

sadness of that
            fiction destined
to haunt

****

WARHEAD

I don’t know
about your brain

what kind type of
brain and
whether firing on
all cylinders

but your head
     did take
             your body
along
other day
went looking for
                 headwear

thought
      if at least looked
half articulate then
    the words might just
elect
to follow

but
nothing there your size
nothing
     but extremely bad
  
fit

seems
     your head
                   has sacrificed
rational brain for

warhead target selection
and
    guidance system

set with such hair-
trigger precision

best not
     ask you to speak