BUKOWSKI
the old typewriter
is trying to seduce
Bukowski
endeavouring
to drag him to her table
across the room
so much inertia
here
to conquer
and words he needs
to write
clogged up toxins
he needs
to get out of his system
and balance
the creative lassitude
of his celebrated life
OVER
I killed you
as act of political revenge
which upset you
and shocked me when
you protested
your innocence
later
give and take and negotiation
and more give and take
and more and
more of the latter
the situation changed
no more thought of murdering
each other
over matters political
happy that
recourse to such violence
could only be the result
of neglect or jealousy or
bitterness
of a far more
intimate, homely, face-to-face variety.l
in the
final (by which
we mean
human) analysis
Killing each other for or over
love not seeming so bad.
We might
honestly kill each other
for the joy and
Hell of it
again and again,
THIS PLAY
I came to the play
in suffering
Hamlet this night
sure to be my guy
having pencilled him in
but no sooner ghost-talking
guards appeared on the parapet
then down in the audience
war broke out
between those who
swear by
William of Stratford, and
those who proclaim
a new king
by name of de Vere
sad that either way we
facing some
serious anonymity
which is hard for any writer
but perhaps par for
the greatness course
I am told these poor folks
put their whole
souls into it
and next time you scan
not a single bone remains
spiritual, symbolical, material
not a shred
of connecting evidence
it’s like the stuff
wrote itself or
ethereal hand
blessed the page
no chance here to debate
learning
versus innate craft, the role
pain played in it
of trace of the causality that
produced this irreplaceable shape
and there we are
watching, dreaming
as it
all goes down without us
pale reflection of being
perhaps not even
bridge
best we can be, bridge
broken or
magnificent
Hamlet
dead again
as always
In state of acute longing some suffering,
I came this play.
KILLER
daleks and poets
it is the old antagonism
they have their bombs
and wire and goebbels-bibles
we have
our metaphors and
satire that can kill
and now we are free range
and open targets
better we genocide
them “the people” say
but
we are sitting
on ancient weapons,
your words
rallying to our cause are
exposing your
bleakness
rebelling against you
even
as you speak
(if you call it speech)
and
come to think of it
cowboys and aliens
in the sacred spot of their
crash landings
this is a juicy antagonism
turned connection
the cosmos putting this
planet to
strangest use
(a poem
here
never
make the news)
DALEK
inside every
Dalek
there is a beautiful creature
both male
and female
you just have to
do
some rewiring
tweak
the binary code
MR GLADWELL
Oh Mr Gladwell
I am playing chess
writing poetry
writing poetry
playing chess
playing
poetry
writing chess
my brain has become
a RORSCHACH blot
there
is blood all over
the board
strange body fluids
all over the page
wanted to be a kind of genius
but I’m dissolving into
nothingness
Mozart composing symphonies
still at the breast,
working out
the arias for his operas
from within
his pauper’s grave.
GAME TIME
was playing
a Lovecraft boardgame
with my
most treacherous
best friends
spilled brown breakfast sauce
across the table
in homage
to the author
whose dark, bleak, nihilistic
conceptions
giving us such fun
DEEPER
you dug and
dug and
dug
to find your true
self
your deeper
self
thing is, though,
the self you found
deep down there
would scare the bejeezus
out of Cthulu that thing
B ALL (and end all)
what’s the monolith?
and what’s a monolith
doing here in our
simple
B movie?
did you, my extraordinarily
intelligent darling
bring it onto
the set
write it into the script even?
seeing eye to
digital eye
communing secretly, talking
telepathically
in binary code, arcane
subtext, hidden
hieroglyphics?
stretching yourself to the limit
to receive the advances
of super-
advanced alien
higher consciousness
to higher consciousness
(raw) red eye
to (raw) red eye
parallel line
to parallel line
biomechanical to organic
in endless feedback loop
UK OK (not so very)
still solid
(courtesy of Victorian
architecture)
crazy high aquaducts
(now exactly what
do they do?)
university I went to
down main road manchester
freshly
returned from
south africa
settler colonial
(apartheid to
god knows who else
and me
and you)
but on that diet of dismal
how stuff going to grow properly?
how stuff going to flourish
when for best moral fibre
getting
force-fed gloom
red, white, blue
flag should be slate grey and
colour
most exploitative
see your politicians now
scared at the thought
people
might
have their
own ideas
university down oxford street
(or was it road?)
taught me something
about the
economic of F and K
(plaque proclaims
them
the previous tenants)
anarchy
OK OK strawberries
spoiled, by
this time
was
the late 70s
ust rattle your cheap jewellery here
and I’ll
imagine
in falsetto
less than happily singing along
poems 2 die for