poetry – Page 135 – poems 2 die for

REPUBLICAN

Oh, baby,
you are
so good
so good
to me

take me
to infinity
in a slow, stately,
crazy
turbo-
charged carriage

and we ignore
the clouds, the crowds,
have
no time for people whatsoever
no need to wave and smile
wave and smile
were we
the celebrated figureheads
of some constitutional monarchy

no we screetch and caterwaul
roar and cry

like king and queen, which
we are but
of our animal kingdom

the power to take and shape
and give
back equally

fair just re-
distribution no royal
could dream of

our sweet template for
complete republican

Oh baby
you are so good to me.

ICARUS INSTINCT

I barged into
the temple of
artificial intelligence

stormed out
after dismantling and
indeed liberating
a host of automatic
telling
and vending machines

flew up to the firmament
with the eye for aeronautics
of an ancient Daedalus
deluxe

soaring Sun-ward like his son
determined that the destiny
should be
becoming child
of the cosmos beyond which
no sense to aspire.

OFF AND ON

onoff
offon

everything flickering
in binary systems

philosophical dualism
thrown into
abyss of doubt

let me write to you
confide in you

channeling all that cybernetic
info that
needs to be channeled

after which
what need for repentance
if night of noise abounds

and chaos fractal
as we
write each other
narrate each other

co-author
fist in glove
hand in hand

full spectrum considered
from flatest of descriptions
to surreal interior
account

Oh
head reeling, top spinning,
all is ellipsis
topographies
of envelopment

spiralling in
and out

of control
entropy and prosodies
of free
and bound energies

physical and psychical
temperatures going up
and temperatures coming down

MONKEY BUSINESS

’68, year of the Monkey
what if there were
no Space Odyssey

no Moonwatcher to watch
the students of the Sorbonne
turn France
upside-down

overhead, somehow lost
in the inaccessible recesses
Overlook labyrinth
of HAL’S digital memory,

there is no
continuity error in space
no ninety degree offset
in every planetary alignment

no fabulous match cut,
best there
has ever been

and incredible other
incredible leap by
the Kubrick imagination

Star Child spawned of monolith
floating back
from Jupiter down to
our so shabby planet

to tell us
that the cosmos is our
mirror and our future

written
as if on a screen by
end of
the journey, last self
our evolution

pure promise of our becoming
true
immaculate machine

RATTLER

they kill
the ones that rattle
louder they rattle
more sure
their death
a fact

Oh, the rapturous ones,
you who do
murder all
these creatures

as soon as you say lord
I am your ambush preditor
whipping up
a juicy cocktail
I am determined to instill

and strike I will without warning
for you have sorted me
by selection

no doubt
you see
me as your devil
think
I could well just be
pure devil

this my utter evil nefarious plan
not thing
delivered unto yourself

FRACTAL

I am
a fraction of myself

I write
and my words go haywire
my thoughts
splinter

sorry, did I say, “fractal”?
I meant “fraction”

here signifier signified
losing
do much traction
wandering
off the track

the word game that
is consciousness is
forever process

already out of words, too
many for comfort,
a devil of a deal
to
select

and already by now
the devil much with me
impossibly
deep
within me

telling the compound tale of
moments, incidents
(much
sensory doubt, semantic
slippage)

forever fractious, terminally
forgetful
defining the case of
what all I might speak.

AWAY

friendly fire kills
without any
bad intentions

its bullets and bombs
morally superior

but let us pause
for a moment here
for establishing shot
and then
extensive tracking

as we go for
metaphor and
superimposition

passing all those broken
riddled statues
of Mary
and the Christ

in search of a man
called Wilfred, dead now
but formerly a captain

machine-gunned within
sight of peace and an
end of the war

correction, apologies, end
of the war to end all wars

pity we are late
for he was the all-
time expert in battlefield elegy

thinking
of butchered aid workers
he would know
what to write

he would know
what words to kill the lie
sweep away
convenient narrative

a Britsh poet himself
already long-forgotten
the art of a true-blue
true-
blooded imperial culture
to sweep such things away

STRIKE ONE

if the poem (this poem,
any poem,

freaks you, takes
you out

feel reassured
be happy that all
can call
it
collateral damage

for my part
condolence and
commiseration
that it
strikes you
out of the blue

as it is
meant to exactly

getting the retaliation
in early, serving
your revenge up
first

DOOM

it’s a ghost ship

still a bit
sleek keeled

but now
with a spectre
capital
at the helm

seeking out every
shark, Siren, Hyra infested
patch of ocean, not so
navigable
waterway

dragging us like as with Odysseus
to find that
fine razor’s edge
between Scylla and
Charybdis

but then
to get pirate-torpedoed
the moment
we pass through

and
indeed it is for the better
that someone do
torpedo that metaphor

put it
out of its misery

sink the link between
ship
and state

depth charge it to its doom

EMILY SYNDROME

stuck some poems
in a folder
ready for revision
(Oh,
happy day!)

left them not
so long but
long
longer than
intended

albeit without Sun
or air or
indeed watering
at all

so imagine my delight shock
and horror that
day of
days, moment
of reopening

when found the little bastards
to have thrived
and multiplied, some

even grown in size
to embrace the gamut
from
split little
atom through to
Pandora of expanding universe

poem growing up
prophetic,
apocalyptic

whispering, screeching
to the Universe

their
primal truth as mirror
and
testimony (dear
reader)

to all
expanding size