Tag Archives: poetry

TIME TREK

TIME TREK

straight from the pulpit
mouth of Stanley Kubrick

by way
of Jupiter, the Moon,
beyond the galaxy and
the dawn of Man

without
historiographic context
the grain
of the cross
         cannot be determined

thus spake the Yale
deconstructive theologian
unto the mediasphere

meanwhile on the other side
of the screen
but
   likewise in Africa
I saw cinema where
I had my
first Kubrick contact

along the old Voortrekker Road
North, in those badass CY
suburbs of Cape Town

the Christians came in droves
drove us
    from that
watering hole

turned it into
what I suppose they thought
a special day-night
paradise
   for the evangelically faithful

no world
      in which they
and I
could meet and talk

about pod bay doors and
HAL
    and the Monolith

about starchild transfomed
floating through space

haunting
    close to our Odyssey

IF M.C. ESCHER

IF M.C.ESCHER

If M.C.Escher
drew a haiku

before the seventeen
syllables had
captured it

would have
taken a Moebius twist

doubled back
upon itself surrendering
a surface

swallowing that third line
that is its tail

becoming
    forever paradox of
that hermetic wisdom
contained within
a glyph
   three lines that
don’t even rhyme

THAT KIND OF THING

THAT KIND OF THING

hungry for poetry

a nibble
a banquet

ravenous, you say,
we can whip
up a smorgasbord
for you

dream up a thousand
variations of
honey mustard pickled sushi
                                           alone

should your
predilections incline
you

  cast you
before all and sundry in such a way

you find yourself a helpless sucker
for that kind of thing

****

X (FOR XMAS) MARKS THE SPOT

a little
red cap
mushroom

all you need
to tell you
it’s Christmas

get you to
imagine you see
Santa’s elves,
German shock troops
climbing out of
their trenches to
dish out Bavarian cheer

every chimney
turned horn of plenty

every fairy lit tree
groaning under the weight
of what
    came into being
this day

****

CUCKOO

know
a bird

accustomed
to line its nest
with newsprint
during each
and every
famine of poetry

this
   during the age
of folk wisdom
before we
all
went digital

before information
eschewed paper, expanding
exponentially
virtue of
its own self-importance

cuckooing all
its sphere
        as it collapsed under
sheer illusory
weight of
its gravity

induced
a black hole

****

BUT IN THE BEGINNING

BUT IN THE BEGINNING

whilst (in a figure
of speech) creating the Universe
the wish came to mind
to write
the character of darkness
seriously double down

depict as it
in essence is, devoid of mystery

yet
   turned out a
vanity project

battled unsuccessfully
so much light
piling high
bleaching everything
written, every imagining

swamping every pen stroke
blinding every impure
shade of thought

terrifying meĺ
with the fear
that it
all
   should end here

and the light
come take us all

****



IN PARENTHESIS

IN PARENTHESIS

Long division
square root

she has gotten into the habit
of reading me like
a novella,
a very short book

backwards, forwards,
start to finish;
finish to start

goes overboard:
dividing, multiplying
working
     her way
down and up, up
and down

searching for that quotient
hunting that
             divisive dividend

her face
     a picture of joy when
it comes
to multiples

(our
lowest common denominator
a value to espouse).

BUTTERFLIES

BUTTERFLIES

butterflies
are here

to remind him
of the truth
of transformation
and of
crazy causality

setting him off
on his own
transformation
which (they
never do)
did not go
exactly as
carefully planned

from which he did
not return as anticipated
in the form
that was expected

unsure
   in his own mind
what
   he had changed into
what he
was before

and whether, as his
brain was left simply
questioning

whether he
had left
        and if, having left,
he had
managed to return at all

101/COPERNICAN SYSTEM/RORSCHACH COYOTE STORY/SET 8N TIBET

101

postmodernism 101
will be written
in the Mirror Room

make sure
you look good
and agree with
your reflection
before taking
the examination

the notes for Chaos Mathematics
will be issued on holograms
every
   key theorem
broken into fractals

delivered
should systems collapse
by android
drone butterflies

well
before the hurricanes hit

the one caused by
the stress and
agitation
       suffered by your
fellow chaos
students
   writing the same exam
                            in China

****

COPERNICAN SYSTEM

tellers of tales
doctors of spin

the world
is a globe
it is
an LP record

it turns
with you, against you
within you and
without you

it is the Centre
of the cosmos
it is
a billion light
years from anywhere

screaming
    ahead of
    languishing behind
the times

common as muck, forever
plucking treasures
from the heavens

out
of the blue

****

RORSCHACH COYOTE STORY

swear I saw
a coyote testing me

not quite blotted out
motioning
     for me to follow

teaching me right there
and then
       every trick under
the Sun, aphorism
in the book

a wealth of key tactics
and strategies
        to cover my trail
dupe this
queen of analysis

****
SET IN TIBET

I perused Tibet

conferred
with a Llama

found
wooly enlightenment

the exact
moment a star
went supernova

somebody’s Sun
exploding overhead
a million years ago