Tag Archives: poetry

IF ONLY (LIFE WERE A TAD MORE POSTMODERN)

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

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

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

TRILLIONS

TRILLIONS

give them
a pleasure
treasure island

beyond
their wildest dreams
self-
    contained
far away
from the rest of us

where they can live out
their deepest aspirations
most intense fantasies

except
   they do

not have any

witness their only joy
to be accumulation
primary accumulation

as they build skyscrapers
and mountains higher
than any
    in the Himalayas

stacking trillions
of sea shells on the sea shore

BLOOD

BLOOD

I whitewashed
my poem

silly me
I got all my facts wrong

good job
the mainstream
media was
on hand
to correct me

poet nobody
cleans up his act
at least now
I might make
some kind of
headline

worth the whitewash
restoring the page
to its pristine blankness

worth
all the effort picking
up the body parts
mopping
    up the blood

ACTOR/DIRECTOR

ACTOR/DIRECTOR

we came to
your open-air amphitheatre
to watch your
play

but were baffled
by all the mirrors
and smoke (so
much smoke)
and the optical illusions

hideous
optical illusions

further, we must also
confess to being terminslly
confused when it
came to identifying
the genre

obviously historicsl, with
a strand of absurdism
and much theatre of cruelty
      (not to speak of
the spuriously apocalyptic
       religious revelation stuff)

we could not believe so
many of the characters, the
actors, the production crew
and the audience
met their end in the firsr scene
first act, the number
in steady escalation

until no one remaimed
the bodies piled high on
and around the stage

no encore
no one there
        for the final curtain

and no less a great loss,
        no sign anywhere of
the original script