poetry – Page 18 – poems 2 die for

DOVETAIL

the days dovetail
they print out
dot matrix
dolphin death to life
life to death
across the tawny edges
of the bottle blue/green sea

stuff
out there arcing
in and out of the water
my life
so flat by comparison
when I want
to am asked to
speak up speak out
my squeak
of a voice drowned out
by crescendo of a wave
mighty
as those at Nazare

and to think, metaphysically,
long as, I can remember,
I longed
for fluidity

inclining
towards the deep, I searched
for quantum level
affinity

and now
the deep, unannounced,
breaking protocol,
coming to find me,

no idea
of the rationale, no

idea what this means

the days dovetail
someone out there
could be
so kind as
to dump to print

KINSELLA FILM

saw
that Kinsella film
got it into my head
that if I built
you a
dance studio
you would come

maybe an outdoor
open air theater
would clinch the deal

drag you
down from Heaven
the one up there
or one, or
even more than one
down here

place more fine
more Heavenly
created with
a loving care
almost equal to mine

AT DAVOS,

AT DAVOS

they all loved
your speech

sadly, I had missed it,
going full introspective
(had such
a hard on
for philosophical ideas)

and then
there was the warpaint
smeared a mask
across my face
with it

words flying at me slowly
half-heartedly
like blunderbuss bullets

need
a missile screen to
deflect them
golden
dome in my
brain AWACS in my pocket

sold on the need for
rigorous dissection,
deconstruction
of the spiritual segue
from
rupture
to rapture

when i
came back to myself
I saw you
pulling a crowd surf

every delegate
having lost it
gone 107%
apeshit

and poor Premier
Carney
still floating, sailing
over
everybody’s heads

not speaking the language
native to white people

telling it
like it is
staight brain
to mouth
no filter, zero intervention

fractured, incoherent,
as Mr Tommy Eliot’s
The Wasteland
was in its day

and so now
the rush
to reward, honour,
praise him

every Nobel Prize possible
every honorary degree —
institutions
tripping, falling
over themselves

to rewire
reinvent

install
the new Maga wisdom

screen out
every conceivable
Sophie Scholl
likely to rain
on this parade

SHUT

make
America
great again

send in
the Pied Pipers
with tear gas
and pistols

and pepper balls
too strong for tacos

shepherd, corall,
light
the big bonfire
square the
circle

make the flag big
exceptional, exponential,
bigger and bigger
stick it up
on a pole
tall as
an ICBM or
at least
puny cruise missile

expanding, contracting,
what need
Monroe, Donroe
doctrine
when flag shroud
swathes the planet

no more
    talk of inside or outside
Rams, Patriots, Broncos,
Seahawks
   there can,
must
be only one:
undisputed world champions
ball in
     the endzone, ball
always next to your desk

and
in the meanwhile, as
the spotlights
turn
on
themselves, do morph
into searchlights

stars
on the flag eclipsing
the real
stars
themselves

no sense asking
where the pipers
took us
what did
with our children

was the
suicide of grace, assassination
of elegance

took
us to this place
gate
closed, locks snapped shut

MEDUSA

stared into
the face of suffering

your
hard suffering
that turns
to stone

turned me
to stone
relief to
my soft
suffering

equality in
the transaction
turning us
both
to stone

and they we were
amongst, what she
we call them
that
host of statues,
perhaps effigies?

but there you are
reptilian, murderous,
no crown
of thorns to adorn
only headdress of vipers
spitting, writhing,

their eyes
trying to make sense
of my pity
my sorrow

only thing to
match
your anger

blow for blow
run with your wrath

JIMA TRUMP

Iwo Jima Trump
planting the stars
and stripes
on closest thing
on Greenland
vaguely
resembling Mt Suribachi

garnering Peace Prize, Medal
of Valour, and
Purple Heart
in one
fell swoop

Vance and Rubio
there
to reload him
feed
him ammunition

Donald J D-
day overlord
of glory

MAGA disciples’ delight so
ecstatically high
all of them
self-
pleasuring themselves
everywhere,
the sexy swine

hot jizz melting
the ice sheath, turning
this arctic island
basically
as sweaty tropical a paradise
as Mar-a- Lago

O AMANDA

Oh Amanda,
I have you
in twenty
twenty hindsight

gone
totally
retrospective

just to
see
just how
badly you
recited us

how much not
just off key
off track
but mistaking
the climate

leading us off
in the wrong
direction

not climbing
the hill but
on death
descent down
the mountain

you there inspiring us
with hope, false hope
stuff
of bad ideology

in your sun yellow dress
beautifully assured

and
battling down
those slopes it was
all ice,
all winter, death
by exclusion, excision,
by bullets
through
the side
window at
point blank range

and the house
on the hilk with
its shining city
hoisting
an old hated, feared flag,
as bulldozers knock
down
and everything gets
restructured

need space for
the ritz whilst
homeless
go hungry

ghouls at the ball, macabre
how much space
they need
to dance and
twirl
and plot human structure

should have been
severe on yourself before
flaunting your
skills
before us
Miss Gorman,
should have checked
your subtext for
masquerade

and so
why should we climb
that hill
since we can buy one
elsewhere
greener, cheaper

take one out there
for ourselves
we write good poetry,
exceptional lines really
that
nothing
can compare with

the sun setting on that hill,
your hill

suddenly
I smell abyss
and feel the slippery slide

INCOMPLETE

there I
am
smile being
wiped off my face
the huge
being wiped
off my face

always
a price to pay
wear
and tear
always
a tariff

your face
falling
shares falling

I can see me whole life
in those dips and spikes

one to one
with my
cardio rhythms

if it
is all theatre,
masquerade
lets

my soul
become
pure ego

in the mirror
up on the screen

brash and burnished
over-inflated over
extended

dog day in
day out
dusk to
dawn derided

sad sack of a case
could not
be more

incomplete

UPON US

outside, in no time,
the rock heroes
were pitching into
new and
old school philosophers

meanwhile,
inside the auditorium,
a voice was straining
even to reach a whisper
to instruct me
in the art of
thinking, doing,
being
beyond all duality

and you and I,
once acolytes,
found ourselves
titanic,
possibly primal,
and
yet
distinctly
out of kilter

essence of oil
floating upon
essence
of water

two tiny boat lanterns
sailing away from each other
no hope of far shore

and outside
that battle
producing no
decisive victor

stalemate as outcome
splitting of spoils
division
of points

the stars gutted to lose
all reason to celebrate

joy in
harmonious union
triumph
of will

nothing therefore
to suggest
need for nice
sacrifice

as if
the gods even care

as if
mythology is real

and
blessing

be upon us

TRAJECTORY

stood on the huge iron wheel
mounted on the outside wall
of the Manchester museum
of science and technology

cops, bobbies, driving by
at my instant of transgression
so I froze in arm-outstetched pose
dead ringer for that image
sent into deep
deep space by NASA

which made me, perhaps
still makes me (with my
PhD on satire)
pretty aberrant cog
in any like-clockwork
social machine
living at that time
in the historical house
of Engels (agreeing
ever more it seems
with the raw
redness of his theme)

John Lydon and his
backing band volcanic
at that time
defining
the sensibility of
that scene

wheels spinning in
my head
anarchic thread
Confederate cotton

my people of the
mills and
steel engineering

structure, order
chaos
(fatal fractal) just
around the corner

wheel
still spinning
probable, possible
counters aligned
naughts and
crosses
binary system

in the
resolution of where I was
am my
current solid
state (super) position

heading, hurtling,
not going quietly but
like arrested protestor
kicking and
screaning

dialectic
of my trajectory

standing on that
huge iron wheel
sudden
flashback
from my future