Tag Archives: poetry

IF JM COETZEE HAD WRITTEN THE ILIAD

An old poem, decades old, was originally published in New Contrast and then in my collection, but one that seems particularly relevant at this moment in time (conquest, civilization, war, atrocities). It also implicitly warns teachers about trusting their students, they might just, as with me here, start to think themselves too big for their own boots. Smartest, most generous and inspirational human being I have ever met, this poetic perfidy of mine notwithstanding.

LET ME NOT

LET ME NOT

let me not
overlook the spectacle

climbimg
   your mountains

swimming in
your river

drinking
from your pools

but
  having lost my
breath, almost
swept away

let me
    find my feet
feel
   grounded again

find my lips your lips
my mouth your mouth
our two
    bodies

climbing, descending, rising
falling

      a fit so neat so
sweet
so
    s in splendid

for a night where time
gravity
      forgot themselves

nothing on Earth
might separate

INVESTMENT

INVESTMENT
(poem for Gary Stevenson)

I smile at you Gary
from the bottom of my pram

though I’m
not sure you would
bet on me
find me
a good investment

I think you
smile back
(though what do I know
about trust
and the people and
the world
out there that
awaits me)

you seem
a good soul, generous
smart, a good enough human
as humans would
appear
to go, not yet
done a risk analysis, calculated
the percentages

my future out there
moving past, looking in

pram, ship of state, all
the same to me now, feel
the germ
of an Odysseus (what
seas
to navigate?)

are you Achilles, Charybdis,
one of the Sirens,

figure of myth, truth and
shadow Homer of my future, just

stopping by for a
quick, blind, taste
of the future,
sublimely

quiet peep in.

OVERKILL

OVERKILL
“Eloquent, oracular;
A volcano heard afar.”
Shelley, The Masque of Anarchy
(poem on the Peterloo Massacre)

Ah, my beauties
here is poetry
where it has always been

first past the post
(postmodern, pissedmodern,
posttruth, postnuclear,
postapocalyptic, post-
whasoever)

play of language: you realize
of a sudden that deep
down in
    your tin heart
you have to prevent it

look at the danger: exhibit A,
very drowned poet

his young pregnant wife
dreamt the future as monster
private parts monster
(as they all are)
scratching at her window
demanding
       life, consciousness,
not exactly Turing tested but

she scared
the life out of us, this
virgin snake did cosmically,
with what
   ex machina she
duly came up with

such overkill
   need to nip it in the bud
radical danger of metaphor
surely
   needs its own -dectomy

the threat of crucifixion
along every highway
and byway
      resurrected again

something the billboards
really need, are crying out
                                   for

real spectacle
        behind them.

VARNISH

VARNISH

he vanished
because he lost
his varnish

the gloss
fell off

end of the licence
afforded to clown face

debate now raging
openly, covertly,
between
    reflect
and refract

pitting the opaque
up against
the transparent

no space in this world
of everything hidden,
full disclosure

for the serious serial
beauty of the translucent

the mystery if the word as
it conjures killer fact

hard to
     live
         where condemned
to reflection, purity
of copy
     completeness itself

WEREN’T WE?

WEREN’T WE?

weren’t we
supposed to hold
up the mirror
to human nature

not let it fall
splinter, shatter

crash and burn, break
into a billion tiny
diamond-bright pieces

jagged shards, blood
soaked, blood
painted, bloody

never to be fixed
never
       to be returned
never reclaimed
never restored

all those bits of light
dancing in the Sun grotesquely

hold
up the mirror
to human nature

who the fuck, nowhere
near his right mind
came up
     with that idea

(go not pass go
        leave the planet
sail steadfast, venture into the cosmos
               cross
the galaxy

not, never
in a trillion lifetimes

nothing out there
     to mirror what
we
   might well be)

weren’t we?