Tag Archives: poetry

LET THE SATIRISTS

LET THE SATIRISTS

Let the satirists arm themselves
with.357 magnums
and Khorammshahr missiles

using expanding hollow point
and cluster ammunition

time to
defend themselves
against gangsters
local and global
indigenous
and international

who have never
throughout all of history
taken criticism, mockery kindly

hence
the need to arm all satirists
if any exist these days.

NONE

NONE

this is a shadow
written by an echo
written by something
that itself ended up
shadow on a bridge
smudge on a wall
not as text
etched  into steel

burned into bark
as the tree suffered
words of fire, image
violent as lightning
revelling in the power of the word
now there are none

AGAIN

AGAIN

How is it
certain questions
have no answer

how is it
we
are
nothing like
the same

together again,
back to back,
face to
face

so different,
wholly other

no memory of ever
having done this before

and yet
     tell-tale signs, traces indeed
of previous encounters

you and I
         reaching out
to put to the test the very
idea of the hopeless

so divided, set apart
by distance in era,
disjunction
in
   space-time

and yet here
brought again to this
proximity to
question everything

infinite possibility
impossibly contained?

WOLF AT CHERNOBYL

WOLF AT CHERNOBYL

Winter and
no roadside picnic
no Tarkovsky disturbance at
the heart of the dreamscape

I am
pack-driven  running wild with
the wolves at Chernobyl,
wild with
my gold
and black genes
streaming through the turnstiles

I am
myself a wolf
become
one by default
mutation, transformation,
transubstantiation

what was latent in my blood
found alchemy, became real
surrendered itself
to this project
of reclamation

running hard, running true
as softly
            yet faster
than you would have ever
thought it
everything
gets effaced

and in truth, to your eyes,
as we
    luxuriate in the silence
move so
muffle-footed, we must
sound like nothing, look
like ghosts

appear as the icons of
every irony of your presumption

threading our way through
the wreckage of your hubris

shock
   of the horror, which
in your misunderstanding of
your power
                 you unleashed
upon yourselves

I am
wolf at Chernobyl
outlined against
       the stark
whites of winter

        I am creature of
these forests whose message could not
be more clear.

WAIT

WAIT

Wait
until your eyes adjust to the light
for adjust they will

look at this
what we have here

is it not
like a planet metaphor
with inner
meanings, outer rings

Saturn
     in her full regalia
nothing saturnine

until
   you get up as close
as we are now

and here you lock on
with all your technology
literal antennae

that hunger for resonance
that transcends species, outlived
race and colour

no idle promise
from some mad mystic or
their posterity text
that we
might become one
know ourselves
know each other

somewhere here
there is a beyond special
moment a forever now
searching for you
trying to find you

let
  that quest
to squeeze every bit of life
out of words and things,
out of
      oceans of language

run
   a blind course, suffer
in vain.

FUTILE

FUTILE

resistance is futile
(for which truth
we must forever
thank the Borg)

but in the face
of overwhelming odds
let me
    proffer

this
poem

(was here, I swear
but mysteriously disappeared)

of no
    real value
it would appear

despite the fact
I gave it everything

CAME LOOKING

CAME LOOKING

fuck that Chinese sci fi
writer telling us
hunters in the forest
better keep
our heads down

went out on a mission
looking for holes
in Fermi’s paradox
determined
to investigate them

sent out
my own little message
faster than time
itself possibly
arriving
before I sent it

no curt text engraved
in gold
    giving whosoever
the specs on our
divine image
    target co-ordinates
and
  John and Paul for
the benefit of Mr Kite
if you
   find a stylus, play it
like a
   LP record

no I commissioned every
quantum computer
to access all
our truth, across every
alternate universe
construct the
    definitive manual
guide to
   our impossibly complex
whims and
wiles             philosophies,
systems and
psychologists   no
danger, no sweat

no dark forest vibes
by the time
front to
      back
top to
bottom they would
have made
their calculations
imbibed our text

we would
be long gone

would be long gone
(three body problem
beautifully solved
solved beautifully)

UNDER

UNDER

I almost drowned
way back,
decades ago

survived (obviously)
but suffered
much water damage

took on
so much water
always drifting, never
an even keel

now
fear immersion, the very
thought of absorption

and here I am now
26 degrees East, 26 South,
before climate change,
incessant rain
it used
    to be semi-desert

trying to write a science fiction
tale
    about a human atomic
powered submarine
navigating a vast
unknown ocean, ocean
on an incredibly distant
alien planet
        not going anywhere but
got a title at least, that
being “Under”

writing it as a riff
on Verne’s 20,000 League
tale of
the Nautilus, whilst
exploring the mythology of
my Western and
Eastern
   astrological signs

almost drowned on
board a ship (whilst
the irony seems
exquisite, technically it
was the Atlantic
that came
for me
    and, after possible
divine intervention, simply
changed its mind

this
    on our way to a new land,
new home
my Father thought
best for us

beautiful country with
a dark, iniquitous history
about
   to get darker

and all
   through my life, Atlantic,
Indian, Benguela, Mozambique-
Agulhas

those waters
out to get me
        constantly out
to infiltrate, swim
through

my brain 
        having me respond in
ways to rational human
being can
comfortably respond

daring me
        to speak the truth
of coldness, darkness,
of the abyss

having me say things I
would not
let myself say

the text
of “Under” still not
finding its page.