poetry – Page 2 – poems 2 die for

ROUTINE

Went through
my routine

they all
died laughing
saw some
rolling on the floor

after the show though
no one talked to me

went home to
my tiny flat
thought up
some great new jokes.

WHOLESALE

Saw you
with your lover
said “hello”
took
a photo
of me
the two of you
did

sent it
to me and
am looking
at it now

no longer
your wholesale admirer
but nevertheless
trying to
recall your
perfume

we were
both young then
vibrant, insouciant

so much
in love with each other
but not
at the same time.

SHARED

got the sad news
from you

that
I had died

wondering about death
if having
an after
it be premised

on a frenzy
of forgetting

wonder who
will be entrusted to
give your
your sad news

hope it
could be
someone who
loved you
as much
as I did

we about
to depart, detach.
disappear from
any hint
of a reality
we might have once shared

HALF-TIME SCORE

oodles of suffering
eating this icecream
without sprinkles

the icy cold vanilla
travelling down
a tooth nerve

but, hold your horses,
let’s get the half-time score
from the West Asia war
all those cruise and
ballistic missiles leveling
high rises as if
they were fragile confections

death feasting on the complicit
as ravenously as
with the innocent

death longing
for a war that
will annihilate us all
nuclear winter us
out of this,
bad joke of a time

SLICE

gave you
a slice
of cake

put it
on a plate

gave you
a slice of plate

and on
that slice of plate
I laid

all
my love and hate

THERE

there
at the edge
of wine-dark sea

justice and power
at loggerheads

power ganging up
determined
once and for
all
to crush justice
calling in
all an sundry

ash gray confederacy
of forces and armies
desperate to
cleanse
five thousand
years of history
wipe thousand years
off the map

and they have been
redrafting, redrawing,
rewriting everything

this is prime nineteenth
century in a
Jason Vorhees mask

maybe
before
one evil, stupid misjudgment
kills us

we will all trundle back home
call it stalemate
shake on a peace
to last until
new duplicity

there is no
decisive, definitive end
that brings honour
or any redemption possible

final resolution that
hope for justice deserves

GARDEN

hurry up
final brushstrokes
finish that portrait

write
that chapter
conclude your
epilogue

they say
shock and awe
sturm und drang
they are
going to
decapitate the State
it will be a quick campaign
over in hours

I am neither tactician
nor strategist
but I would beg to
disagree (always
overthink things
a curse that genetics
handed down to me)

but for you
I would give time
infinite time if
I had the power
and I feel
you might have
requested it

for what
in all you do
does the soul
not require?

when
our music is all
discordance, dissonant
chaos symphony

and me
in this chaos space
so at odds
with your careful
subtle
cultivations of tranquility

you
with your precise
place to stand, viewpoints
and perspectives

place outside
this poem
space of refuge
green sanctuary

everywhere
nothing but sweet
sanity – – lesson, message
example
for the world

but have you now
quietly captured
in my mind’s eye
(and apologies for
the trickery that
did allow
me to intrude)

watching you
at work
patient, careful, loving
every moment
knowing
the secrets of the soil
how to make things flourish

painstaking, just a half a degree shy of perfection (yet
on the right side)

a teacher too, but I observe
in awe
a lesson here, not
for me uniquely

but out there, right there
place of deserts and gardens
where
life could
not be more sacred

bodies of bombed schoolgirls
lined up in rows across
the sand
over four score (to give
it a Biblical number
a collateral quota)

faces covered (saving us
the trauma of
God’s maimed body,
disfigured image)

transparent truth
warning to
take care
with what you
make of God’s image

image you
carry into war

with prayers
for annihilation, banner
in blood-soaked hands

hurry
with your garden

last hope
we all have

TRIAL

thought you
would love me
if I were
brave as Achilles

had a body like
Apollo’s
not a blemish
not a scar

if I could
sing like Sting,
Robert Plant or
Pavoratti

or riff
like Django or
Jimi Hendrix
on the guitar

if I could speak
French faultlessly,
seductively, and
then write
like Proust
or Rimbaud

had the intellect of
Derrida and
the wit
of Oscar Wilde

and all this childhood trauma
that I carry with me
this toxic
family stuff
inside

you would love me
once I found
the instant
total cure for it

or battling and failing
to shake it, negate it,
integrate it
shape it
to true loving ends

you
would love me
for how hard I tried

SHAPESHIFT

stealth bomber
all the rage

but to be frank
prefer my surgical
strike vehicle
to be more
shapeshifter

my hypersonic missile
to hit lightspeed

my AI killer robots
to turn on tech bros

their wetdream brought
us to this conjuncture

when they come for us
God please,
write it
on the wall:
all the code we need
to talk them down

MAGA MANGA

was watching the
second series of
“Fallout” blown
away by the first

why the idea
popped into my brain
of scripting
a maga manga

an animation
to animate
good old boys, proud
boys and
good old Uncle Sam

crafted as a gift to
this great nation
in the style and with
the themes of
this media form
capturing the creative spirit
of those upon
whom
you twice dropped the bomb