poetry – Page 174 – poems 2 die for

SAPPHO

poem from my 2014 collection: Zero Gravity

BY INCLINATION

how many
angels can
sit on
the point
of a needle?

how many demons
can turn
on a
dime?

to which super
ability

do
you incline?

GLUE, CHEWING GUM, STICKY TAPE

glue, chewing gum,
sticky tape

its so fragmented now
how do we
stick it all
back together

without trying
to condense and collaose

one truth, one tale, one
way, a
single narrative

rammed down throats
with incredible pressure
(have
to go to
Sci Fi horror classic for
best available metaphor)

glue, gum
sticky tape

liberal application of
extraterrestial acid

NEED FOR GREED

you thought
it would be free and fait
and open and competitve

not that all these pinprick
brain heads
were attached
to the same
organism

metastasizing bigger than
the big bang
until it couldn’t

until big crunch comes together
and singularity sucks down

a hole
through which, who
can say

the mind of the universe thinks
up an infinitely better option

or slightly better one
for for humanity to
evolve again

of course
you will need greed

BELIEF SYSTEM

they fed
me into
a machine

no, sorry,
they fed all
my poems
into a machine

wrote the program
flipped the switches
thing that
cane out
then
was me

which they
Turing tested
nothing
circumvented

still
they remained unsure
reviewed the evidence
posed
fresh questions

which, I fear, am afraid,
left little confidence
in my total coherence

something
left
on the page
I believe

NO EXAGGERATION

chipped away
at your belief system
with a toothpick

attacked it
with a sledgehammer

to each his own
but do have
to believe
that there are places
where the thick, self-
reinforcing sphere

is eggshell this
and a strategic little tap
for better or worse
can no
exaggeration
bring it caving in

cave being in the context
a pretty astute metaphor

BIRD

bird asked me
about human intelligence

wondered how
when we got wings
we became
such murderous beings

dropping two thousand
pounds of ultra high explosive
on a child lest
she grow up
not having been
denied the experience

to think for herself
speak
the truth and other
incalculably bad things

SPECIES

time travel back
to ancient Athens
they made Socrates
drink hemlock
on the grounds
of corruption
lucky for us

the charge did not stick
we saw
through thst
slander, laughed
at that spin

not that we have
the capacity to do that today
when we revere our leaders
for the lies
that they tell us
buy into the fake narratives
as our matter of
life our death

refuse to believe anything
that is not illogical
and ittational
as testament to the devotion
with which
we contrive our decline

time travel back to Ancient Athens
like an alien planet now
so distant in
space and time

HEART

at your heart
you are paper
by which we
mean
worst kind of paper

by which we mean
paper as fictional relic
of its digital self

at it’s heart
you thought solid
core like
the Earth’s perhaps even
rare heavy metals

but
    there is nothing there
but vacuum but void
but
    infinite implosion
    so sorry to disappoint

but at core, in your
heart

you are
nothingness itself

not, to be sure, a silent
or quietly withdrawn nothingness
but one strident and violent:
essence
of bombast itself

stripped of logic and reason
immune to
fact, innoculated
against theory

will be
prove with a logic no
less than
catastrophic

to bring an end to
near a
planetful of us

so much at stake in every
denial of distress

BARBARIAN

BARBARIAN

self
and other

guy in tweed
explaining the magistrate’s
dilemmas of
Lacanian proportions

in that book
by that other guy, who
taught me
I believe, if
I remember correctly

(so much forgotten about
that younger figure
so much baggage
had to discard
stuff
ingrown I had
to excise)

and here I am
trying to come up with
a smart arse question
that
I hope will
stump the lot of them
their on the
limits of institutional discourse
challenging those linuts
even as
I appear to treat
them with regard

inside outside
wasn’t always so
clung to orthodoxy for
security when
could barely
string two words together

self and
other

no AK or RPG but
instinctively feel
am
now barbarian

shadow made real
apotheosis of
what once feared

am indeed I believe
far less question than
a kind
of solution