poetry – Page 195 – poems 2 die for

ONCE AND FOR ALL

was talking to you
but then
you evaporated
tried to speak
more loudly
but it was
to no avail

but what is space
anyway
but a construct
of gravity
when we are hurtling
in our group
of forty galaxies
towards some
great attractor
billions of light years
away in space

hundreds of kilometres
a second
how do you even
start to
wrap your mind around it
but for relativity
such a speed would
be impossible
to comprehend

and
the fabric of the Universe
expanding above light speed
about to strip
the stars
away from us
and all else

this and more
I get from skimming through
all those YouTube channels
finding an
alternate politics
to chart how deeply runs
the establishment lie

pictures of the war, of
slavering holy savagery

mind-bending theories
of our origin, identity
and destination

disasters to
end the planet
once and for all

I was going off and this
when they decided it
was right
and proper

a political necessity
to turn you
and your world
to ash and rubble

an insane vision
that somehow,
for my sins, I do not share

BATTLEFIELD

butterfly
fluttered over

the battlefield
trench war
combined arms
cyber war

tanks
versus chlldren

butterfly was looking
for someome, anyone
to give some
kind of explanation

but we
are humanity

we kill in the name of
all we hold dear

incapable of
the art of transormation

REPAID

anger
from above

anger
from below

and here it is,
their
meeting point

where all the debts
and offences
of our kind

get
monstrously repaid

DESERVING OF THE WORST

evil never wins
I said this and
evil collared me
demanded I be
silenced
as a self-confessed
proponent of the evil
of anti-evil
and therefore deserving
of the worst that
evil can throw at me

and I have watched
in horror the workings
of your great and good holy
chosen nation evil

watched
how pure
the sickness of its anti-
human cruelty can be

DESERVING OF THE WORST

evil never wins
I said this and
evil collared me
demanded I be
silenced
as a self-confessed
proponent of the evil
of anti-evil
and therefore deserving
of the worst that
evil can throw at me

and I have watched
in horror the workings
of your great and good holy
chosen nation evil

watched
how pure
the sickness of its anti-
human cruelty can be

DESERVING OF THE WORST

evil never wins
I said this and
evil collared me
demanded I be
silenced
as a self-confessed
proponent of the evil
of anti-evil
and therefore deserving
of the worst that
evil can throw at me

and I have watched
in horror the workings
of your great and good holy
chosen nation evil

watched
how pure
the sickness of its anti-
human cruelty can be

BY DESIGN

I like the designs
she came up with
the adaptations
to allow
us to survive

and so much more
stepping into a teal sea
under a soft violet sky

we find
we love it in this
alien ocean

together we flow
forgetful of time and

smooth and succinct in
the way we explore
our streamlined acuity
release
from gravity.

TOSH

I wrote a poem
in which Christopher
Columbus
steps ashore
and is
captured
by a reggae band

sent back to Spain
to convert the Catholic
Churcb
to the wisdom
of Jah

and Charles Bukowski
Jim Morrison, Jimi
Hendrix and
the Doors

managed to slip aboard

strangely, their
preferred destination
was the siave port
of Liverpool

Timeline

TIMELINE

Christopher
in this timeline

never makes it
to the New World
his ships got stopped
in their tracks
by metal flying machines
with stars on the wings
and the power
to sink his
every ship
in half a second

huge metal boats
surfaced from under
the water
which appeared to
have a few aboard who
could speak Spanish
or Italian

who told him
in no uncertain terms
to return whence he came

there, upon his arrival in Cadiz,
no one would believe
his story

and even under torture
the Inquisition in Madrid
could not extract
a plausible account

and, thus, in these
grave circumstances
determined he must be silenced

the thought of such
an advanced civilization
across the Atlantic
would shake
the Church to its core
and threaten the sovereignty
of every European nation.

FROM THE MOMENT

from the moment
Christopher set eyes
upon the New World
he was plagued.
by double vision

a world not
the world he had remembered
not the world he had anticpated
it shifted
in and out of recognition

something so exceptional
about this place

whispering voice of
the Great Spirit, invincible towers,
swathes of wheat

light and darkness, darkness
inside the
light

suddenly Europe a land forgotten
the tired and huddled masses

Christopher scanning
the Eastern horizon

wondering,
stocks and shares
permitting

how many leagues their
ships lag behind