Tag Archives: poetry

WHEN YOU SUCCEED

WHEN YOU SUCCEED

I sent this poem
to your letter page

neither
floated it
on the air currents
nor shackled it
to a tbunderbolt

sending it
the expressest
of express deliveries

no I
broke it up into
bits and bytes
photons of light
two-slit experiment
forwarded it
    digitally

no message
in a bottle

ether crossing nothing
to do with the ocean

testing you
to your Turing limits
pushing you
          hard until you crack
like the
Nazi code in
an enigma machine

and there before us all
in hallucinatory space
all
  our circuits, on-board
programing

my little poem, this tiny
buffet
        testing you to
outer inner
the limit of your limits

finding, reflecting where
you fail, back
at you,
where you succeed

WITHOUT SHADOW

WITHOUT SHADOW

when in church
I gravitate towards
the spaces with shadow
deep, dark shadow

the better to observe
those without shadow
singing
   their inner light
to the point of exhaustion

shaking the precious
golden vessels that they are
like tambourines

no shadow without
to speak of but
who knows what shadow
penned inside
keeping the flock secure
keeping it meek

who knows
    but more to the point
who gives a fig
thinks that
    this goes anywhere?

when I leave
long before
        the end of the service

I make sure
to rustle up my serpents
pocket them, take
them home with me

TURING TEST

TURING TEST

Sylvia and Tom
chatbot avatars of
two of the greatest
poets ever
     put pen to paper

  grill me about my poem,
(this poem); my life
(this life)

slyly stretching my
humanity as far
as it will go (much
machine learning
in the process)

watch me sink, suffocate
under the weight
of all their accolades

learning to predict
to phonomenal exactitude
where all these
    metaphors, images are
headed;

where they all are coming from
what parts of me
are  
    in harmony, symmetry
with what it is I am them
force-feeding

scanning for intelligence
anything/all
    that is real.
.

YOUR ROOM

YOUR ROOM

I spent
a night in your room
choosing the couch
over your bed,
my most regretted decision
(our bodies not
      in apposition

minds in the morning
finding opposition)

and me
   and what I am and
what you might
have transformed me to
be

leaving no trace
of
   me or
my passion

to feel its way into
that carpet, those walls,
adding to
        its meaning, its
flavour
with just a trace
of my identity
    with those others
past,
   current lovers

to whom
this just a room, you just
a woman, most
magical woman

to me
      a comedy, a tragedy,
my Midsummer Night’s Dream.

WHAT I TOLD THE SUPERVISOR

WHAT I TOLD THE
SUPERVISOR WHO
ADVISED ME MY
EDITING WAS
SUBSTANDARD

yes, ruefully,
grudgingly
I do admit it
this time
I messed up

maybe i’m
not cut out for it
perhaps
    I should
stick to
what I am
good at, or
then again
try something
different

take poetry.
   there we have something.
comes naturally
to me
   possibly one
of the best
in the country
sort of
    like my
first language

for I seem
to suck
at editing, though
maybe not as
shit at it
as you are
thinking

not as
shit as it
as you are
at
  teaching

being a bitch
and a teacher
seems
   a bit of a
mismatch

don’t
seem a
good
fit

kind of, if you
can forgive
me for saying so,

need
some humanity
to get
through to
people

no, run
with what you
are good at

interior decorating,
playing power games,
arrogance,
        cooking
(though there the
worry being
     you may well poison
bodies
as much as you
poison minds)
                      
                

BELONGINGS

BELONGINGS

Went through
your belongings
before the wake

found at the
bottom of an old
locked drawer
I had
to force open

a musty barely
legible document
you penned
in your
    youth

dated it may
have been but
it spoke
with passion, felt
not
  without
relevance
said

“after the R”
(R for
that other word,
opposite of
restoration
the
word that now
no longer
may
speak it’s name)

“we should gather
the teachers
together

all the teachers
those that teach
and those
that don’t

the former to
dream the new foundation

the latter
the eternal
shirkers

to
dig

dig until they
can dig
no more

until
they strike gold”.

GO OUT SINGING UNDER THE MOONLIGHT

GO OUT SINGING
UNDER THE MOONLIGHT

on your last legs
you old stage prancer

living (still) legend
wish I were
there for your
rock Götterdämmerung final

owing you so much
could have
owed you so much more
you loveable lithe lion
of a man
king of rebels (rebel
beast)

yes could have
been deeper in your debt
if I had
heeded your call
had the courage
to answer it
internalize the message
learn
to love, live with
my demons, be cool
under shadow

with that last song
it is
the end of an epoch
not just an era

end of life
as we know it, under
this configuration
constellation
of stars

history will
forget, as it is won’t
your
name Michael Phillip

but not
that riff, that rhythm
that
supreme satisfaction

one
two

and so
last song under moonlight
then
the cosmos give you shelter

go wherever you
now go to

bearing the knowledge,
fully aware
that you are

not there alone
have a piece of my soul

GOING WITH THIS

GOING WITH THIS

up
   down

vertical lateral
throw me a lateral, tell
me where
we
  are going
with this

what brain flashes
will consolidate

translate into
    paper, paper

with markings
  (English
       not Martian

as in
     some bizarre
alien postcard)

how it will all
all evolve

     grow, take shape

find its genre, its species,
whole
      poet biology

spawn of some sort
seed set there
but
    sewn
up

every stitched
ripe for receipt

LOUD AND CLEAR

LOUD AND CLEAR
   “I do not think they
will sing for me.”

Yeats on steroids
Yeats on steroids

that’s what he called me
avatar of that man

whose every
photograph suggests
crusty, prickly

whose every word to me
so generous,
    illuminating, out
of left field

such a rooted traditionalist
yet swing door open
to extreme
     innovation

to speak soothing words to
the loneliness of the soul

and me
    like your Prufrock, like
that aging Irish senator
propped up
on a stick
      talking to school children

them wondering
what that
old fool
    was talking about
(as kids
   will always do)

and you
I laughingly told you
that your
    Wasteland was a
(how did I put
it my
    memory failing me
Oh yes
I have it!)

ghost tapestry,
tapestry of ghosts
tissue
     of allusion

which is rich
coming from me, standing
before you, metaphorically
speaking
   (could not be
more metaphorically speaking)

alluding to you
your poetry

my sense of your presence

how it was back then
some lunatic giving us
a slice
  of What the Thunder Said

for, of all things, our (my)
fucking matriculation
English
   examination

who is that one who
walks beside you

that ghostly
desert voice you cannot hear

but is
   the poem, your poem

my great beloved poet and poem
possum, Mr, Professor TS, Tom

I hear you
loud and clear

do not need
my steroids
to hear you loud and clear