Tag Archives: poetry

SPIRITED AWAY

SPIRITED AWAY

was stumbling through
the glowing embers of
downtown Cape
Town South Africa

so much of the collateral human
damage vaporized by
the strike from the SLBM

which got me thinking
(last thought I would have
as the insane Rad levels
began to get to me)

thinking
that if anything war
has taught us
dissecting a cat
is easier, more egregious,
and worse
a Sin
than performing any
such dissection on
an innocent human

at which, I guess,
you would tell me

no one
is innocence
power is everything
we get
what
we deserve

this I would loved to
debate with you at
my old university
perched
   below the mountain

but I hate to think what
remains of that edifice
at the epicentre
of the blast

I’m pretty sure
it got spirited away

MR MOUSTACHE

MR MOUSTACHE

Oh Mr Moustache
king of the filthy lyrics.
wah-wah guitar
and free speech

throwing sonic
bombs of complexity
at stupidity

there with that f-you
stare in a dress on
that infamous record cover
strictly commercial only
in it for the money
              tuning
the beauty
of our discord

I wonder why your satire
never quite flattened
your targets like,
to be frank, those
zag-zig
        moments in
your outrageous punch

Oh Mr Moustache
if you stab us
do we not jump?

KOI (for G.)

KOI (for G.)

hope this message
reaches you somehow

just to kick off
the world has become a darker
place since you departed
odds on now
we are going
to wipe ourselves out
in nuclear war

stopped by your old place
much had changed, your
inimitable spirit and vibe
long departed
          and I thought of
your fish, those koi
gliding through their pond
in your front garden

had a conceit of myself
speaking to them but
they did
        not appear to hear any voice
or I must gave missed their answer
sound travelling air to water
one medium
to another

who knows what get’s heard,
distorted, filtered out?

what message is received
        what gets missed and
travels on and
on
   destined to expire or
carry on forever

life still chugging along
      a flash of silver scales
beneath
     the surface

I wonder how they saw you
   how much
         they remember now
       

NUKE

NUKE

I sense
your guard is down

at long last
it is the moment for
which I have been waiting

I am the dark secret of the stars
about to manifest
in the high street
in your back yard

targeting each and everyone of you
since they first broke my code
found my formula

I am your consummation
devoutly to be wished
I am
your longed for apocalypse
in fissile person

I am everything you wanted
the embodiment of everything
you promised yourselves

I have
always been your fate
rather now
than too late

I am what was written
what you tell yourself
is the truth of scripture

am
your special place
what was always
inside you

and now I find you sleepwalking
brainless, dissolved into shadow

believe my task is done
have done my duty
can now rest in
beautiful silence

bury my power
for another few million years.

POET IN THE RAIN

POET IN THE RAIN

the rain sizzles
poet splitters
a few syllables
dissolves, melts

flows somewhere
as liquids are wont to

meanwhile
(for a billion meanwhiles)
the cosmos carries on
business
      as usual

same old laws
that birthed us, did
us in
   upon which we
came to depend

unless
     things changed, shifted gear,
found a different trajectory
whole new
direction

could
     have fooled us

no one around to document, observe
no one left to tell

IF THE OCEAN

IF THE OCEAN

if the ocean
is anything to go by

abundance
of life forms can
be no garden
of Eden

that sincere English gentleman
categorizing beaks, making
all the measurements

seeing a big picture no one
had previously seen
purpose working
   across a timescale unimaginable

dead on lucid
the mind evolved to see this
peering into the inexorable
mind and
     heart of life

throwing all those arbitrary
constellations into an
extremity of quandry

playing havoc with all our
tales and fables,  deepest
metaphors of design

CASCADE

CASCADE

sometime I don’t know when
feels beyond anywhere

where cosmic logic demands
we should meet again

let us
live the moment on it’s own terms
forget the past

forget all that crazy quantum stuff
about parallel universes
alternate histories

not even how it might
have been had we
got things right

where
    with beautiful timing
a right word was said

the rest
      thereafter just

cascade
     after cascade

LOOKING FOR OUR OWN BUKOWSKI

LOOKING FOR OUR OWN BUKOWSKI

we rule
the world in rugby

so why should we not
rule the world, the Continent,
the galaxy
    with our Bukowski’s

was
the premise of a reality show
and now I am hurtling
in a van
     fresh from the airport
looking to find our own Bukowski
combing the bars, scouring
the shebeens looking
for a soul out there in
as yet ungentrified Cape Town
able to
       distil door and
alcohol into poetry

to drive us rhapsodic
with his laconic drawl

will we find him?
will we find him?

trying to get
hype-machine into
top gear to
drum up a hype machine
inflect those all
so precious ratings

thinking of the format
as we drive
   thinking of every
future episode

pots of gold at the end
of this wholly contrived
quite
    amazing rainbow

can see
those lips moving in
my mind’s-eye camera
as we  chat even now