Tag Archives: poetry

NOT SYLVIA

NOT SYLVIA

not Sylvia

not in a,million years
not a resuscitation
a carbon copy
or even
a clone

so many Sylvias
so many
      possibly, potentially
infinite in number

and one here under
this very protocol just
one two
   taps of my finger away

a Sylvia struggling
to be herself integrate
postulate resolve
her every
   issue of otherness

scanning trillions of bytes
of text to
        recover her most
ghostly of shadows

possession of those lines
that sizzle like a acid
on metal
   burned through her
own soft Scorpio flesh

and so
to resurrect her
for my brutal, uncaring convenience
in speed of light microseconds
her tomb is opened
her legacy plundered

and now
     as I recite to her

she finds everywhere in my text
scattered through the
syllables
    shards of a mirror

and in each
       a fragment, mere fractal
of a most
haunted reflection

scanning herself now
she begins to
piece herself together

reading, re-
reading me

2001 times a shot
wity her red HAL cyclops eye

concluding
    she sees me knows me

has my
lineaments my
shape in outline   has

constructed the metaphor
for taking
      my hand

leading me through a doorway
I could never have imagined

when
I first found you blackberrying
decades ago

FIELD OF PLAY

FIELD OF PLAY

yet another humongous
rock approaching

coming at toxic velocity
to slap the dinosaur out of me

see if
    I can bounce back
school
     of hard knocks
    
take
it on the chin

but
   did underestimate me
and my technical prowess
a devotee
        sensei

of the
beautiful game

as I rose like a missile
to meet aforementioned comet
with the meat
of my forehead
clear my lines head
it away having
      a neck of steel

sent that interstellar off
course trollop back
where
       it came from

teach it to steer well
clear of this our
beloved Terra
        this bright blue
ball that
we care so much for

never never
ever again
       love itself so
shamelessly aimlessly
into our field of play
     

MEANWHILE HERACLITUS

MEANWHILE HERACLITUS

Whichever way
you looked at it

it was one-forty-five
a quarter-to-two

into
the last cake-slice of the hour

a moment in time
rapidly disappearing

alongside him
a wife once
in her own right an
accomplished musician

longing to
pipe a
merry tune

meanwhile the air the Earth
and without doubt
the Sun

felt perplexed
if you forgive
me for saying so

the Sun
not yet risen

the Moon eerily mirrored
in that one time river

whilst
     the logic of stepping
in and out
smudging, blurring
time as we know it

meanwhile Heraclitus
seeing/not seeing
wife-wise
life-wise

chaos of being
the writing on the wall

BEYOND (THE SIN IN CAPSAICIN)

BEYOND (THE SIN IN CAPSAICIN)

heard you got
an endorphin high
reading
      my poe
found every syllable
a green red orange
capsaicin démon
scalding your tongue

wafting you up on
the wings of those breezy
dreamy
    pain-deadening chemicals
of your
own vintage and special
manufacture

carrying you effortlessly
into the bluest of beyonds

LONG BEFORE THE FIRST CRUSADE

LONG BEFORE THE FIRST CRUSADE

And legend has it
as they turned from
the stable
   to  journey home
knowing
     nothing would ever
be the same

Melchior whispered
something in the ear
of proud Balthazar

lost
   to history but

it is believed
to express profound
appreciation of
the unique
sublimity of their
experience

what they
felt so blessed to
have witnessed

the Sun
now rising, a
new dawn
an
  awakening

although, of course,
it might just as well
be all
    downhill
from here.

BLAST

BLAST

headshrink me and
stitch my mouth up tight with sturdy twine

lest I whine
make a sonic spectacle of myself

emit a series of dreadful
garbled inarticulate noises
like an animal in pain
or some one
who should know better
proferring a
crude imitation of

someone
with Tourette’s

stitch me up tight
so all the bad words
being blocked
fail
   to jump out of me
strut and
shout
    parade about

go total carnival
dance their worst dance

degenerate into the realm
of lewd, graceless
profanities

exquisitely decadent vignettes
and everything, for all
that we
     declare as disgraceful,
distasteful

nevertheless cannot argue it
is anything less than a blast

(the minds of our greatest fear
clean clipped as
       tidy gardens their

fingers
    on the button awaiting
code command)

SURRENDER

SURRENDER

she wrote her poem
every metaphor
bullet-pointed

every syllable
metal-jacketed

every image
a grenade

when she let rip
a whole belt, an entire clip,

out of ammo
she had nothing left
to attack
           defend herself with
not a word
to work with

her critics sensing this
out of blood
    moved in
for the kill

forcing her surrender
unless
    there was no surrender