Tag Archives: poetry

BANQUET

BANQUET

welcome
to
my
banquet

as you can see,
the table has been laid

this place
reserved for you
alongside
my Muse (this
the naked
truth) and
here the wine
there
   the staples,

in
another time-zone,
frame of reference,
the piece de resistance
dessert
    and fruit

leave it to me
to bring
your journey
to felicitous conclusion

you leave
    full belly, charmed
satisfied
     though taste-wise

some of the nature of this
whole experience
                         liminal
verging towards
the edge of
safe and
     unchallenging
delectation

BANQUET

BANQUET

welcome
to
my
banquet

as you can see,
the table has been laid

this place
reserved for you
alongside
my Muse (this
the naked
truth) and
here the wine
there
   the staples,

in
another time-zone,
frame of reference,
the piece de resistance
dessert
    and fruit

leave it to me
to bring
your journey
to felicitous conclusion

you leave
    full belly, charmed
satisfied
     though taste-wise

some of the nature of this
whole experience
                         liminal
verging towards
the edge of
safe and
     unchallenging
delectation

SEQUEL

SEQUEL

so much
frightens us

fear
can hardly be
more pervasive

and me
on the couch
in your bedroom
spending the night

thought we
would read love poems together
but here we are
turned Hansel
and Gretel

you telling me
fairy tales
reading me
my riot act
of a bedtime story

suddenly something
inside outside
in the space between us
has turned enchanted forest

a war in the pub behind
the off licence, a sequel
of sorts
     over how, blood
gets sullied and
the State gets, poisoned

and as we all stream East
directives to
destroy
   every house
where there might
be gingerbread

horror
     not to be spoken
about
  worst species of witch
next tale
to be told being
a sequel
of sorts dictating who
gets
  a cuddle, what
orphans get dumped
go full sleeping beauty on
tragic trajectory

we
   counting the beads on
your ancient
rosary

entrusted to you for
wholesome protection
by someone’s tramp, vamp
much
    misunderstood
stepmother

and now
spectres from a
haunted past rising
up
  from their graves to
propogate the sugar
sweet myth.
of a delicious future

ovens for burning cakes
on an industrial scale

stuff
   of nightmare for us
to dream upon

now that hope for something
deeply, deeply shared
             has drifted so far away


SCRATCHING THE SURFACE

SCRATCHING THE SURFACE

so many demons, devils,
hobgoblins, djinns, zombies,
vampires, Nazis
and, monsters
              in here
out there
a whole confederacy
quite literally, symbolucally even

to count them
you will need
an abacus, a calculator,
a quantum computer

no end to
them
    and their untimely
proliferation

growing in
number, confidence,
politucal will
marching
in legion

good job
we got bombs, nissiles,
nuclear weapons
goung to need
more, far nore of them,
a geomtric progression

to deal
with this sea, this horde,
to do more, far more
a storm of mushroom clouds
no mere
scratxhing the surface

a monster problem
needing  a monster solution

the final solution
writhing in my monstrous brain
 

CAT BOX

CAT BOX

I was the cat
in Schrodinger’s equation

the old school French
nuclear physicists brutal
in assuring me
(quite wrongly) I might
not tunnel out
could not
tunnel through

and then
the 64 million dollar question
whether that decaying
radioactive isotope
definitely
had it in
for me

keen
to pull
the trigger put
me out
of superposition
see
what I would do

but when
box was opened
lid
was lifted
no dead cat, live cat,
cat
turned into
a jack-in-the-box,
but me
a fairly undistinguished person

if person
be the word
if people know these days
what constitutes
a person

beyond
the bone and muscle,
mucus and gristle, spongy
brain
that has
down to a fine art its
finely filtered
sense of
exactitude

yet stuff by the book
cannot wrap
itself
around

and so we must ask
with Beckett’s Malone where
does all
this scenery come from

and
this lucid stuff
that
leaves us
blind

dance of
possibles, probables,
and every dream of being

if you ask me
all boils down to
this
here catbox thinking

of which
I be spokesman spokeswoman
gender
neutral duly
appointed, as here testifying

MOONS

MOONS

huge eyes you have
big as moons
the kind
of moons

that outsize
their own planets
if such
a thing
were possible

if anything
between us were possible

force
of gravity, magnetic
attraction, quantum
entanglement
    playing havoc with
our detachment

forces, influences,
purveyors
of causality

plucking at my heart
strings (true
cosmic harpists)
steamrollering the
both of us
      until collapsing
into singularity

have no choice
but to embrace

huge eyes you have
big
   as moons already