poetry – Page 46 – poems 2 die for

OVERNIGHT

I am desultory chicken boy
coming home to roost

chaos joker dancing
in the pale moonlight

anarchic fellow
crowing long before the dawn

scarred I am
my features are

sacred beginning: crashed
the party hurtling headlong
headfirst
from the boot
of your cab

bouncing off windshield
back into the Underworld

life in your
luxury lap to
utter amazement of all

my Queen of Hades
dancing
to inherit the Earth

cocksure
this is the life that was meant
Herr Will-to-Power
these the roads most
follow

to dig up
overnight

BALL

ball rolled down
a chuté

shot out
a spring

sure
thing

and me Mr Uncertainty
only ever
graduating to
Professor Still-
in-Doubt

Oh that clockwork
chocolate marionette soldier
holding the line
never
breaking ranks

when the ball that the Universe
let itself be scooped
into
enters our system
collides with
our planet

will all or gods confer
debate pooling their powers

the Sun sad to see
any of his vast circle
of siblings and
children

summoned and judged
assigned the fine
hairline
cosmic justice of
planned
extinction event

LIGHTLY

dove flew
(24/7
at her beck and call)
down from
Olympus

quicksilver service of
his divine mistress

she needing
a word, more
than a word with her
misfiring genius

also
express delivery a vial
not of regular old absinthe but
crystal-precious ambrosia
not just
once but twice, thrice
carbon filtered and
scientifically
distilled

his eyes still smarting in recoil
from her last light show

before she decided
to conclude mutual proceedings
in standard mortal
Helen of Troy form

whatever and
whichever way to
be diced

she
not to be taken lightly

jazz of her in full worship glory
too much for
me to bear

MOON

only a spring recoil away
from evil in motion

truly malign action
genocidal event

for which
technology off
on a whim serving as the
great multiplier

distance from the blood
that sticky sweet to
the touch
never gets washed off

but what
the eye does not see

the heart can Enola Gay over
stay fuzzy, misdirected

as from over the hill
over the horizon

they send the first strike
that removes all the worry
of retaliation

and there it is
engine of war, motor
of history

carting us off over
a shameful moon

LONG NIGHT

let me walk you through
the length of a night
the breadth of a poem

sorry if you so surely Shelley
about the nature of rhyme

miss a beat, grimace
flutter as the lines stutter
not Homer blind but
pretty much a
stick-shuffling cripple

trying to make it through
short days
long nights

when you so cookie-cutter
about everything
dial in delivery
everything on the menu
from hot to
G spot

long night love afterglow
basking in luxury

let me
cuddle my pen

dishing you
this trash

SUCH THINGS

supply
demand
greed

shackles and
sheckels

we got a whole
market economy

but what
the downside, what
the tightening tariff

tell me now
for I was born of woman
am part of that insanity

but now
for my sins
though still wedged in
am edging my way out

tunnelling
towards the light
I never truly
believed in

scarcely a scrap of paper
to my name
to record
what I feel here

instinctively, by Nature
(Reason to
catch up later).

words begging
for attention

kiss my ass to that bliss
which I
never earned anyway

you tell them you tell them
what we started with
such hope

dead from imagination

NOT TOO FAR-FETCHED TO BELIEVE

no not
quite the perfect
device for
reaching consensus
producing acceptance

no fault of
the poet, one
the poem must own;

reflect only
the art that failed
to inspire left
much to
communicate

the poet so much
rejection heading his
her way during
the course
of which lifetime

poem
the only compensation
and yet here
it fails
(not too far-
fetched to believe) No

SCRATCH

that’s rich!

a hint
of measured, justice apocalypse
is the thing you missed

blues mingling with reds
contending
with purples

strikingly: so much so
that you miss the fine writing
on the wall now
spreading across
the sky

all at sea, the logos screwed,
politically, economically, socio-
logically

counting on the prescience of
index, rolladex,
all your database systems

as the waves roll in tides change
continents tilt currents shift

bringing you fully up
to speed
fully up to scratch

IN MY JUDGEMENT

that you
be not judged

did
knowingly
and willingly
break a chocolate bar
to give, to share

that you did.
to donate to the commons
break a taboo
trespass a place wired up
fenced off

cut into parcel size chunks
that some might
(in my
judgement
parenthetically)
have a slice
enjoy their smidgen

hold
title by bithright, perpetuity
(more
than mere meagre acre)
their Heaven on Earth

WITHOUT

and here we feel at liberty
to demarcate

this being
your inside

and that being
your without

and this the abject lens
mirror, magic window
through which you
extend
regularly pop up

twin slit key
to the secret of your loco entanglement

here one minute (but who’s
counting) no-
where
to be found the next

and me
still tunneling (China
syndrome in
this
subtext)

yet always return
from gone with the flow

your inside my outside
spin opposite
position
flipped