SORRY FOR
Sorry for pulling you
out of the world of your smartphone
if only for a moment
to scroll
through these lines here
reading this thing
history will decide
is not
even a poem
presuming that
there will be history
and that world
outside your phone
but now
contained immediately
inside it
goes full Dr Stangelove
full we’ll meet again
total exchange nuclear
messing with
the service courtesy
end of the atmosphere.
LET ME
let me
make you
my masterpiece
a love portrait
to bring out
the ecstatic
best in you
painting
to the limit of my artistry
pushing
the envelope
of my craft
using this simple, humble,
custom-designed brush
LONELY PARK
am here
I am not here
my five cats
assuming I am here
which is
existentially reassuring
sunset on its way
three of the five felines —
Twinkle, Sasha, Panda Buddy —
scouting around me
powerful it is
this shared animal connection
assumption of presence
drums threading their way
through the village
seem to need
to find me
thumping bass
possibly from
the same location, same direction
hard to
get a
fix, judge
the distance
there is
always distance
am here
am not here
fit in
I do not fit in
am loved
I am unloved
am sort of loved perhaps
almost entirely
just sitting here, settled
my little room
getting cleaned
behind me
minding my own business
that business being
scribbling ideas
for the final scene
in “Demolition”
the novel I am writing
the world
turning
observing me minding away
curious about
the nature of
this final scene I do
believe
will clinch everything
scene in which I sit
pretty much as I am doing
right now
watching the world — if
not my world —
fall to pieces
BOUNDLESS
I am boundless
big boss predator
at the summit
of the food chain
extravagantly remunerated
on account of
my hunting skills
as if…
but if I were
the immense wealth
I possessed
how I would
deploy it politically
throw it around
get you to
cheer, and now, and
beg and scrape
and recite
praise poetry before me
no other sound
RED SHIFT
I am
getting
red-shifted
stretched out
and with this insane
elasticity
the laws of physics
laws of human society
changing
as space time itself changes
as idiots
get stretched out, magnified,
find themselves
in positions of power
owing everything
to entropy, to the twenty
first century
media miracle
of slavish stability
sitting dumbfounded as
it all goes to
shit around them
yet not
quite dumb enough
to go down
with the ship
easy exoneration
one of the true, necessary
blessings of absolute power
this red
shifting me beyond
the old
degrees of
acceptance this
practice requires
SNOW ON THE SAHARA
snow on the Sahara
crazy
as it sounds
were once grasslands here
far and wide as can be seen
but these
just niceties of
the catastrophic model
desert encroaching further
scurrying as we speak
through the Sahel
and we
forgetful children of
near extinction
walking products still
prey to aftershock
but
memory is blessed here
will edit out such nightmares,
annihilate them
leave us
suddenly sure
primally certain
boundless of being
never again to lapse
into
find ourselves
at the mercy
of uncertainty
sifting the signs
to remove
portents, omens
look only with eyes
that see
kaleidoscopically
snow
on the Sahara, need
to be there to see
THREE DAYS
he told us he would
rise in three days
we believed
but it was three days of
agony waiting
I wondered why three days
what was so special, so
symbolic, so crucial about
this particular duration
three days after his crucifixion
he did rise, did return
to give hope to the world
for then, if he
had not returned
what
hope for mankind?
what landscape of nightmare?
LIVE YOUR LUXURY
live your luxury
your life of luxury
would strongly advise
(were it not so
flagrant a contradiction)
that you
live
it deep
and so then, on the other hand,
let me warmly recommend
that you indulge
it shallow
revel in its shallows
as extravagantly as
can possibly be
no need
to feel the edge
anyway, anyhow
best repudiation
of that stupid FWN idea
of living dangerously
ALL OUR CURRENT
All our current
antichrists
happen to be worse by far
than the archetype back there
in the Book of Revelation
all our latter-day demons
more demonic in essence
than any cast out
in holy parable or
Biblical Tale
and these in
plain view or
under government top secret
but truth
will out
so just
scratch the surface
with flesh-cutting scalpel
used in sanctioned
medical experiments
on the maruta of
Pingfang, or the Polish women
at Ravensbruck
or, closer to home, the
hypodermics used in
the bastion of democracy
to inject the other with syphilis,
give people
their plutonium shots
hunting for the mirror
in which to see their own depravity
the immunity given
to these pioneers
true
demonic complete redemption
all our current antichrists
God bless them all this Easter.
EASTER POEM
despite the presumed blasphemy
sending the Sadducees
into the Mother of all spins
he did not deserve that
enemy of the State
spectacle of completeness
in both power and extinction
for what danger ultimately,
were you to Rome
history would show
you were
a great fit
for each other
the helping hand by
which all things dovetail
all is reconciled
and
yet
that time under the flail, feeling
the nails
the body crushing itself
under it’s own weight
and death
the luxury that poverty
might long for, slavery absolutely
craves
foundation of power
too integral to be
profferred freely
having to be
teased out as only torture can
that time upon the cross
when first we heard
from those who
saw
at the moment of
expiration, time itself gone
beginning of beginning
ending of ending
poems 2 die for