Tag Archives: poetry

PHIL AND BEN

PHIL AND BEN

Phil and Ben
shootimg the breeze

like they are major league gods
on Olympus

but caanot
taste the abrosia
in their words

run
with their wisdom

history sure to show
how here, like so many,
they shot themselves
in the foot

with some weapon
of horrendous calibre.

ASSAULT OF THE REAL MEN

ASSAULT OF THE REAL MEN

they imagine
         their captain
be Leonidas

they the brave 300
out to hold
the hot gates
save civilization
from
   Xertes horde

who have
stayed at home
drinkimg tea, reciting slogans
and poems
holding  impromtu history lessons
unarmed, democratic
and anti-
imperial to the core

GALLERY

GALLERY

I paged through my AI art
gallery
whilst you were busy
working at your craft

reports flooding in
of genocide and
impending nuclear confrontation
not enough to detract
you from your task
of penning the perfect couplet
and then perhaps, who knows?,
sky’s the limit
a further lifetime might well
need to be devoted
to the first draft of
what holds so much promise
of one day becoming
a most exquisite haiku

shining like a jewel, a gemstone,
amidst all the rubble
and detritus
of what we once were
a beacon of light
to draw us together throughout
the years of hard nuclear winter

perhaps
    tattooed on skin and
thereby passed down
through the meagre generations
of survivors
  more effective as message
that painting
sculpture
could ever be

which very idea I put to
my AI artist
     in a flash of
miraculous intelligence
bound
   to come up with something
a little off-putting since
still somewhat aliem

yet wondous nevertheless,
worthy of its place
in my gallery
    never
    to be seen again.

LIVESTREAM

LIVESTREAM

I was
a walking stream
of consciousness

a stream of consciousness
walking with a cobra-headed
hard red-wood stick

treating myself to
a slow circumnavigation
of the heart of the farm

on YouTube meanwhile
much screaming & pontificating
about red lines being crossed
and slippery slope
to no tomorrow

tactical nukes even
as we speak ready for
testing
   being wheeled into position

men in their Strangelove
think tanks think
it’s just
  a game of brinkmanship
serious
high-stakes bluffing

and me in my Cassandra moment
thinking about the pressing
of that button
to remove the surprise
from smugness in person

it’s wonderful, what
it can do, what platform
it affords for
all career launching

a prestigious degree wreathed
in ivy league ivy

how in such hands, how
safer than safe their
algorithm would
wish us to feel.

COLLIDE

COLLIDE

you cannot
deploy a screwdriver
to fix
the world

will set you
on a collision course
with hi-tec
cerebral
    high minded people

intellectual
salt of the Earth

nor light you turn
to instrument more organic
warmer, softer
of shape less regular
(but in the same
ball park
when it comes
to visual metaphor
and the logic of dream)

a tried and
trusted mechanism
evolved over aeons

shuttle-slide into action
same principle as self-
loading but
hopefully more
symphonic

yes
and stumbling into
sympathy, empathy
let us consider
the heart that
lies at the heart
of all these hydraulics

lies
at the heart but hopefully
speaks the truth,
       it’s truth

so much in the joy of cataclysm
pumped into the air
that doesn’t even make sense
scarcely comes
in syllables

a waste of good carbon therefore
every breath here expelled

and that is without even
bothering to consider
the happy physics
of all those mouth-centred
mechanisms
fuelling such
soft collision

loosening, tightening
the screws that hold this all
in frame
    keeps the picture
together
twenty four seven
      or frames
per second

as metaphor much needed
in the heart of the night
some
    scarcely even poetic
fit just right

CROSSING THE 180 LINE

CROSSING THE 180 LINE

did a lovely
dirty with
this citizen
of the Netherlands

on the washbasin
over the edge
of the bathtub

Spanish style and
every other nationality
style that
this
  dream lover required

and
    the cinematographer
long been hiding deep
in my unconscious

knew his
or her stuff

perfect blocking, exquisite
lighting, startling use of
zoom
    and rack focus

and since
was the finest that sweet
Amsterdam or
port city of
Rotterdam might
muster

much canted lens Dutch angle
and 360 sensurround
whilst
    never crossing
                            the one
eighty line