GUITAR
my telephone beeps
it does
not speak
it tells me
her message is here
was
holding my breath
but now
I can breathe
this is what she wrote
fingers that once
tippy-
toed now
dancing across
the keyboard
express
delivery
heart to
heart
(would those nimble
fingers were
here
plucking my strings
playing me like
a rock guitar)
HONEY
do not presume
to tell me
what
is forbidden
is the sky
forbidden?
the sea
the Sun
you
yourself
forbidden?
are all the things
in your book
of prescriptions
ultimately forbidden
what of honey
is that too,
forbidden
bees may sting
but the make it freely
as is the case
with honey, your honey
it is the sting
itself that makes it what it is
defines it as honey
and so please
before you
close the gates
shut
the hive
lay the mines
string the wire
as a matter of gentility do
tell me what is forbidden
point to
what is forbidden
in all this honey
that I might discover
taste
and judge
decide for myself
EDGE
edge is always brutal.
cutting
like a blade
.
this we know, how
it has
proved to be
.
in your history, my.
history
all our history
the blood on our faces
our hands.
what we have to share
there, look see!, the cossr
and beyond the cost
the lie
of the land
let those voices speak
they have
to speak
can tell a tale of what was
said promised proclaimed
and how
that all panned out
those with the feathers
and those with the powder
fire
and with steel
those with feathers dead
lost
before the war began
.
and we who do
believe we
have studied violence from
when it
first began
have the calculus of slaughter
down to a fine srt
fear
not a people alive but
a people’s demons
rising
with their death
displacing our demons
ot teaching
them a darkness
we
cannot defend
GOSPEL
gospel be
someone will find me
piece it all together
with metaphysical sellotape
some words here
proferring their services
as hooks
to hang things on
put you in the fabled position
to decide if it
is not
without value
perhaps worth saving
keywords here
in abundance
(but there again,
etymologically, what
is
a “bun dance”)
sounds erotic
he said
little fellow entirely
who speaks in my head
so much we
might call outerspace in
its ethical nexus
sun rising
wrong way round
something way way off
beam
on the horizon
the pages
fading (you thought
that stored
in your heart
your
digitized brain
they would
last all eternity
.hallmark
of a stupid
utterly dominant species
to get things
wrong
again and again
every thinker first
name Karl
harping on that thesis
POINT BLANK
Oh Mr Point Blank
I see I have a brand new
archetype
from lover and
magician
suddenly am
become
crone
hunched, crippled
in body whilst
the mind grows sharp
as a scythe
brutally clearer
seeing our nemesis
exactly
long before it is
here
how by the twisted
logic of our being
what
it needs destroy
how
it unfolds.
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
poems 2 die for