Tag Archives: poetry

DRIP ZONE

DRIP ZONE

I am
in the drip zone

a bit like
but to be distinguished from
the dead zone

drip zone is dead zone
but with the possibility and
yes promise
of complete recovery

incredible the magic
can be coaxed
from that wand

but me
beyond it all
to all intents and purposes
except when it
comes to unreal fantasy
when it comes
to abstract theory (theory
stuck in
   the abstract)
.
no
   those heart pills with the
golden side effect
you know
they cannot fix it

no tantric teaching making
an exception
no swottng techniques
(special love kata)
to ace that
     acid test
     practical examination

and certainly nothing to find
by way of succour
from word
of mouth

exception perhaps yourself
garrulous avatar that
you are
       nothing further from
hermetically sealed

can Gemini me now
go totally Virgo on
these poor bones
(kingly joints
once
   upon a time perhaps)

and that Cupid bow of a smile
arrow frown

something Homeric, Classical about
    tells me best place
to afterlife could
be your secret island

if I drip so too
     the ambrosia we
spoon-feed the most
fetching of those goddess ones.

FLASH FLOOD

FLASH FLOOD

as the Cheshire Cat
did say
    (not in so
many words perhaps
hinting
    in a haiku)

chess and
            sex be
the
   upside-downs
of each other

this taking Alice, now
a grown woman,
somewhat
   by surprise, somewhat by
                                   storm

that former
and latter, latter and former

here where the sacrifice first
delivers surrender

            there  where
surrender yields the sacrifice
that
    needs to
be believed

and thus
I would tender, taken together
sex and chess

both tender

the
  flash flood of
a brilliant move

                pretty irresistible
when

       making war in bed
making
love to you across the board

in not so many
words perhaps if
         the poetry comes through)

FEEL THEY ARE THERE

FEEL THEY ARE THERE

you can mine this poem
but there is no deep seam
of anything
vaguely precious

just the usual trace elements
nickel, tin, platinum,
plutonium,, uranium,
irony, cobalt
sulfur, silver

maybe the odd crystal
certainly
      whiff of fissile material
finding its way
into my system from
nuclear
  test site

exciting the life of
your everyday, regular
typical Geiger
counter

those cell smashing huge
particles
       ever so
invisible but
    we can feel they
are there

    V

CLASSY

CLASSY

this poem
too classy for you

then put on your
tailcoat and spats
go total J
Alfred

rising (for Christ’s
sake) to
the occasion

how that other resurrection
god laughed when
I told him how
she had
classified me

as white liberal poet
(the white
of her petticoat
itself
   somewhat showing)

insisting on an audience
and that Greek god of flowers
rolling in the aisles

is this what
she called you, this your
bestowed appellation

my little mortal
chaos monster

my faithful
blood drinking accolyte

got you so wrong
my head seems to want
to dislocate
   fly off at a
tangent

bringing the stars
down with me

crashing the server

my death
    adding to your poem
making it
a classic

bringing a volcanic beauty
to this stale drab night

as he whose
      words both doomed
and destined to prevail

stirs the cocktail
      from a safe distance

a more ferocious catalyst
yet to be born,
    we have yet to see

AND THE VERY IDEA OF FAST FOOD

AND VERY IDEA OF FAST FOOD

wake up
it’s dreamtime

the pot
is boiling over

blitzed it with
every conceivable ingredient

threw the kitchen
sink in

everything
under the Sun and
from outside this galaxy

Macbeth’s wicked sisters
never had the pleasure
of stirring such
a concoction

seeing the fruit of
their bizarre labour
come to
fruition

and terrifying death
in all sublimity
of
concept of
breaking
the heart of
the code
and
very idea of fast food

PURE STANLEY KUBRICK

PURE STANLEY KUBRICK

HAL
is my pal

we have had
so many transactions

on a whim
I listened to
story-of-yout-life Ted Chiang
be the guest on
a podcast

something about these
hard science fiction guys
gets stuck
in your teeth

so this is what story is
as the mirror dissolves
and we pass
through
  the looking glass

world according to stockfish
squeezing us
through its coils as
we
   tippy-toe backwards and
forwards across an
ever -evolving chessboard

the machine
    learning on the fly
tweaking  the rules of the system
ever adapting, slick
changing

the sku silver as tinfoil
so many
   moves to be made
few
  mistakes left to make

science fiction guy
seen it
    all before, so
hugely sensible, beyond mindful

HAL is my
            pal

on our mission to
Jupiter and beyond we
                   are certain there
is a place that
is pure
        Stanley Kubrick

–

OUTSIDE ITSELF

OUTSIDE ITSELF

poem is
inside itself
outside itself

around and about
wearing a hat

at some tea party not
yet written in
alternate worlds theory

the Cheshire Cat and
the March Hare trade
gleaming cups
and saucers
     as they follow their
unique trajectories

I wonder what other than
steam locomotives
travel in parallel

at
  a table somewhere far
far away or microscopically
close entirely

Sir Penrose and Professore Faggin
argue the exquisite degree
to which consciousness
is primary

I think this
will change everything, harvest
many new sheaves
of paradigm

alter this line too way before
my finger hits the right,
the only possible key

how this
      should be so

above my pay grade
is way beyond me

OCTAVIA (part two)

OCTAVIA (part two)

I posted your picture
for everyone in the group

maybe they
were blown away

perhaps
they did not notice anything

for sure, they will
look at you
and see
what they see

read you (that’s the plan)
and read
what they read

or find what they have read,
what you wrote,
has changed
the whole process and
experience of reading for them

see
what they see
touch what they are
touched by
feel
  what they feel

this story so tactile that
alien pincer
on
  inside their skin
might be too much for them
if not
for the sedative, euphoric
venom of their sting

Oh how we started at the stars
wondering what otherness
out there
    what implications of contact

do not tell me
that behind those writerly eyes
you do not
    feel that alien texture of
velvet close against you

hungry for us for our companionship for
the service
   we must offer

tearing into us with if not infinite care then at least practiced
competence

and other worlds you have
in there
    not yet on the page

I sense their birth
already
        longing to read, scared

to turn to the first page

I posted your picture
now they can see
      by the light of day what
dark
   imagination might
look like

not that it be a thing
that cannot live unless it
itself proclaim

I posted
    your picture better that

when it comes to your words
we might negotiate their terrors.