Tag Archives: poetry

DARWIN 4

DARWIN 4

I like
to think of myself
of a Victorian naturalist
shot out
      of a cannon
into the future
through
space and time into
distant and
bizarre
      Goldilocks Zone

to find
myself
     taking a stroll like
Imperial British Gentlemen

walking on the
surface of an
alien planet
they
happened to
name after me

freshly equipped with
all my conversions

retractable legs, compound
eyes, downloaded intelligence
and full
hover capabilities
carrying me across the
needle-spine badlands,
the acid seas and lakes
of mercury

looking for
the planet’s raw nerve,
scouring every niche
for signs of
life, impending
intelligence,
hints of the biological

foundations of
new civilizations and
their
     inevitable cities
of deep, incandescent pain.

THERE IS NO

THERE IS NO

there is no
poetry to survive
the six million

poetry dies
a death
each genocide

spicy left-leaning
socialist philosopher
from Frankfurt
made that
point with
finality and
killer succinctness

no landscape
ever worth writing about
once
the bombers have been

tanks
churned their way through

ploughing through fields
that never
can
be ploughed again

until
that horror, that pain
burned
into memory

is
thing lost to time
can no longer remain

ARACHNE

ARACHNE

I implored
the goddess
for an advance
to cover my needs

willfully mishearing
she proffered advice regarding
my need for brevity,
to come to the point

write the scenes
in strict succession
creating characters
who could not
fail
   to convince

and thus, my fingers
immediately responded
inspired divinely

exploded at once
across the keyboard
worlds
    apart from my usual plod

pinging away, spinning tales
rich in revolutionary output
soon impinging
upon a critical mass

whereupon
    I dreamt such

a perfectly sound and logical
left-brained dream

much scissor snip snap
and fabric flowing
output growing

and the clothes by no
means invisible but
fit for an Emperor

consummately tailored
yet desperately clinging

whilst
     the goddess acknowledging
my supremacy in
the very shape
    ot this transformation
ss I
rappel, abseil, become
finest
      weaver of treachery

suspended by
the divine strength of silk,
my silk

and you now dangling, reader,
hanging on for dear life.

CAVALIER

CAVALIER

let them
bulld a chapel

weave corsages, prim
nosegays

see
where my finger points
out into the distance, just
on the horizon, vague yet
stark
   beginnings of a scaffold

yet this is
just presentment, this you
can relegate  Shakespearean style
to the vagaries of a bad dream

Lucasta’s posies have
little surface connection with
a lunge into hedonism,
living
     by the sharpness of
rapier, dagger,
long sword

which words
    sst themselves, deliver their
own bitter, toxic,
raucous fruit

out there forces
starting small, becoming titanic

great the heart that
survives this ice, amidst
all this
      cacophony,
      yields pandamonium

CURVATURE

CURVATURE

wholly complicit
she

observes how the light
dapples her desk

take a
counter to her
and
she will not
stop ticking

good sign!

neat how
just a word
from her physics Professor
can break this reverie
bring her
back to reality (so-
called)

him within which
expounding at length
on the cast-iron
laws of
repulsion, attraction;

the sheer number
of white-hot articles published
hourly, daily,
emanating
out of this machine

testament to how
slowly the Universe
has slowed down
(no quick
       big crunch less
than than
lovingly speaking)

still locked
and loaded, explosive,
                   keen on expanding

whilst the warmth
of that afore obliquely
hinted at
      solar radiation

runs up her arms
pours down her neck

leaving her
         ripe for anything

feeling never before so
cute and
astute, philosophically awake

ready to
deal with dark energies,
dark matter
across
    whatever distance

strip
back that veil

trace (her
very first blueprint)

the soul of her curvature,
all curvature
    as it makes its way

BY A MILE

BY A MILE

the
power of
poetry
is something

to be reckoned with
not to be taken lightly

as the sage put it (holding
on for dear life
     the abyss
looking into him
at
   the edge
of all sanity)

what does not
kill me
    making me
stronger

and by that logic
what a truly invincible word-
warrior I must have
become

to carry
so many scars

have borne
so many
       wounds

for each
scar

the slashing cut
of so so
many
rejection slips

a thousand poems
a thousand failures

that miss
     by a millimeter

sail past by a mile

LESS THAN FINE

LESS THAN FINE

wanted to write a
sexy poem
very
sexual

but the ink
prematurely ejaculated
shot out of my pen

wanted to a write a
very scary poem
ultimate scare

but the ink froze
my blood curdled
as it
    hit my brain

wanted to write a
very sentimental poem
terribly sad

but the
page got fluffy
all
   of a sudden
out of nowhere
went all
soft toy on me

didn’t want to
write an
elegy, my
elegy

a poem
on death
but you
twisted my arm
persuaded me I should

promising  me
you would give me
the perfect
last line

all those last lines of my own
though by
no means hopeless
less
   than fine