HOUSE RULES
there is no
poetry
about
this house
no fibre
in this room
to speak of
just so-so people
who
when the word
was elevate
when the word
was transform
were absent from school
dreaming the dreams
that children
of Empire dream
of securing power
of the ever so nicely
polite and
compliant backs
of the suffering mass
of the British people
LORD JOE
Oh great senile
lord of the world
you brain is a barn
in a hurricane,
a barn without
a door
the wind whistling, wheezing through
telling you
you need some structure
to your stupidity
and perhaps Amanda to
write and perform you
another of her
golden,
inspirational,
nonsensical poems.
MOREOVER
got shot
at point-blank range
but you say
I ran straight
into a bullet
a good bullet
moreover
one that knows
the difference between
right and wrong
a silver bullet, a golden
bullet, a Willy Wonka
eternal
gob-stopping bullet
made by the great
celestial munitions factory
over the rainbow
before that got
shot to shreds
HOW
how shall
all this remembered
find its way
into the the books
be retold
by the old folks
taught
in the clsssroom?
will this desperate spin
you are Hell-bent
on manifacturing
find its way from
your dizzy life-ignoring,
image-igonoring
brains onto
revered pages?
or will history be
your bitch
as truth is now?
DANCE
went to
a damce
mat at
a dance
danced
at a dance
fell
in love
danced
their dance
came
and went
from my
lifelong observations
never
danced again
things so
much happier;
simpler then
CHANCE
thank you for
sending me all
those weapons-
grade poems
in return I sent you
this end of days
story I am working on
entitled: The Day
the Earth Looked
a Bit Different
something does not
destroy the Earth, or
attack the planet
accidentally or
by intention
merely
plays around a bit
with our perception
desperate to save our
home world by
heightening our sense
that we
do not belong here
have little idea
what we are doing
and no real conviction
about who we
really are
undermining our current
compensatory drive for fixity and certainty
it is believed that this
unprovoked alien
interference and
attempted celestial
manipulation
may well be thing
to give us a fighting chance
MEASURE
measure that phrase
see what we might
distil from it
Oh the essence of that cadence
is elixir, to put it
plebian plainly
is music
to my ears
has a French know not what
syllabic ring to it
is pleasant of feel and
to the touch in exquisite extreme
would that I could write so:
be creature of delicate
supplement, careful balance
even as the world is shifting:
places where already breakneck
is even out-accelerating
and the page
the page
things seismic there, the text
spiking, falling, big fear is
cannot but
be flat-
lining somewhat shortly
as for the stage
much staggering incomprehension in respect
of beneath the boards all
tectonic plates
strike at the need to measure
but by then, of course,
too late too late
IF ONLY (LIFE WERE A TAD
MORE POSTMODERN)
They put the poet on reality television.
I did not get
to see the programme;
analyse the working
out of that proposition.
what was done
in the shower.
Caught on CCTV
for all eternity.
But I think I can hazard
a guess
how it pans out
as poetic expression:
the poet
dies (of course)
as a figure
of tragic exclusion
and the poem, given
space and time,
gets over its grief
rides out into the sunset
with a sestina side-saddle
and everyone, cast
and crew,
all set to
live their lives not
stoically but
much happily ever after
figure
they might need
a script
one where some
budding your therapist
pays off
the mortgage
attending to each psyche
with radical
depression therapy.
ESCAPE
cue: Steve McQueen
trying to jump the border
wire into Switzerland
on a captured motorcycle
things escape me
they dance away
or used to
but now seem
at this stage more
inclined to hobble
and I laugh
as I watch them
unable to match in
velocity the imperative
to leave
end of Empire, never
an embodiment of its
expansion but
anyone better
to deal with
its declination
conjugate the verb
to colonize, decline the
abstract noun
“imperialism”
that’s
its noun category but
nothing abstract about
its impact and
toll on humanity
Norman, Anglo-Saxon/Viking,
Germanic, Latinate
delve deep into
the linguistic roots and
there’s your
causality, there’s your
ideology
there’s everything on the line
at this moment of
impending self-
destruction primed
by wholesale denial
cue Steve McQueen
box-office dynamite
trapped in the coils
of impenetrable wire
FOR BLOOD
asking for trouble
telling me I’m
not allowed to, supposed
to think
like that
as if I’m dead in the apotheosis
of Solaris
Chris
Kelvin about to be absorbed
by massive
alien love
and so
I throw philosophy, or its
kitchen sink equivalent at you
hoping to
shift your
tectonic plate
Nietzsche warning about the abyss
but here you
go falling
into it
silly me, silly person
must be
a horrible species of
xenomorphic extraterrestrial alien
having
thick satirical acid for blood
poems 2 die for