AT THE PROLETARIAT CAFE
I dunk my bread
into my tea
dreaming of
designer coffee,
dark expresso
and world where
we are not your wage
slaves do
not fight your wars
fill
your cenotaphs
(those of us whose bodies
or parts thereof
can still be)
I dunk my bread
into my tea
nothing on the menu
Is what it seems
no one
speaks
can only believe
what we are sold to believe
OLD SCHOOL
I am
just that another
brick in the wall
that flew through
your car window
suffering at the school
where they taught wrong
physics
indoctrinated us with
false history
yep
school in apartheid South Africa
thing devised to
grab you by
the balls and
squeeze until you believed
all those teachers dead now
looking down from
supremacist Heaven so
horribly stressed
their wings losing
all their feathers
or just
turning eternally in their graves
.
EMILY
(a Dickinson/Leone mashup)
she good
she bad
and she
way beyond Tuco Ramirez ugly
(very
definition of Nietzsche’s
sense of beyond)
she the three –
way duel, three
pistoleros, shadows
one
self
the civil war graveyard
extreme longshot
close up
zoom
Mexican
stand-off of all time
EDGE
only a love descant
could be that beautiful
unless we consider
the melodies of death
whose
melancholic timbre
haunting finality
succinct
completion
all things considered
give
it the edge
DARK SIDE
“You have no idea
of the power of the
dark side.” Star Wars,
Episode V The Empire
Strikes Back.”
Garside
dark side
my sleek black
serpentine muse
surfacing with a list
of devilish assignations
from
deep beneath the pithead
me paying in blood for
these limited skills (can
barely call
them art)
but today a difference:
wraps me up, hauls
me off
takes me deep
down in that elevator
sheer
demon deep
leveling out there
whar she blows
other uses for these fingers
back-up dexterities
learn to
probe shadow, uncouple
shackles
take on board so much
blistering anger raging
irreverence
raving raging
words
ruins
runes
spreading chaos
across the page
.
stooping to levels
below the unthinkable
damned
to write horrors, delights,
infinite beyond
the gurgling sounds
a throat might make, doomed
damned
blessed
infinitely so
for all time
FIRE
I am fire
born just
shy of fire
when fire comes
to swallow
I am
now you see me
now you
fail to see me
stick turned
to embers
very
fast food
and your lips
bathed in capsicum
hellfire delicious
beyond
imagining
stoked
fired up
to hire and fire
your shit together
locked
and loaded
raring to go
round in the chamber
DUD
I sent you
my poetry
my book
of
failures
every single poem
a failure in significance
coming nowhere
near saying
what
I set out to say
wanted
to achieve
everypoem
a dud
by a mile, by
a hair’s breadth
thinking of your hair
all your
hair not
too
coy here
every poem a mission
a reach
question asked
connection begged
exquisitely
sometimes here perhaps
where not
accomplishment entirely.
CURVED (TOGETHER)
chaos dawned
fractals like schools
of forever spawning fish
did
abound
and with them
as summoned
Aphrodite
that absolute beauty
born of monstrosity
was born
(if birth is a word that at all
befits
her genesis)
time stretching
space stretching stretching together as
interlaced reality
everything stretching to
accomodate
run
with that pattern
and with Aphrodite
the universe really curved. with but
a single goddess glance
stone, rock,
sand
came alive, sure antithesis
to Medusa
she and me riding that wave tracking
that curved ball
roving
through left field (the grass
grown too tall for baseball)
moving all the
time
desire and its object
gold and
base metal chasing each other
ad infinitum Achilles
and tortoise
mortal and
divine
sacred and profane moving together
PERFECT SENSE
they returned
from the stars
less than
gloriously poetic
but who
we were we
to tell
expecting free gifts
not extenpore pastorsls
and sonnets
our highest virtue
being utility itself
their
ultra violet skin tones
and much
mutated fusion of
every dialect of English
made everything they said
every utterance
they made
much like their poetry
and what
they revealed of
their world
something doomed in our ears
to fall desperately short
of true
perfect sense
****
BACK TO BACK
here we find
an island of lost love
typical
single palm tree
distinctly cartoonish
two in fact
back to back
this is yours
that is mine
we no longer really
express concern or
curiosity
even think
of swimming the distance
after decades
of messages in bottles
seductive gestures, crude
gesticulations,
blowing kisses
waving
at each other
hoping
and praying
in our heads it has all
become too distant, we
are too far away
for anything
in our
former expressions of
stubborn desire
to make
a difference
,
poems 2 die for