MADAME FRANKENSTEIN
hi Madame Frankenstein
you were
bolt out
of the blue
jolt
to my system
electricity is life:
well our skynet cyborg
future could
not have proved that
more conclusively
and there you
all agog, in state of
supreme sublime horror
to see the face
of your
our
science fiction
of which you are
thd undoubted queen
BEYOND BELIEF
poetry
is carbon footprint
it is my
considered impression
that
whichever way
you elect most carefully
to slice
and dice it
Mr Wordsworth Wordsmith
poetry is truth
raw heart-
beating truth
and so
carry on regardless,
living your life of forge-
and-foundrey, lathe
and plane,
hammer and
chisel
metaphor
I’ll stick to my position
close my ears to your
never
gets new no way
open to revision
(with
surgical aural faith
grace and
precision)
stamping this on
all that I rhyme, all
you
cannot recall,
still
fail to see:
poetry is
truth
true
imprint
poetry is that
thing with
power
beyond belief
TWO POEMS
hole
nous
HOLE
there is a in my poem
a very fine hole,
a beautiful hole in fact
rain gets in
wind
whistles
through it
especially
when Mars and Venus
find themselves in
conjunction
or
imtimately worse
please, if you think
you can fix it
if you have
the technology
or rolls
and rolls of tape
write to
the address below
I desperately
need it mended, need
myself mended
only then
might i be able
to start
writing with
blind confidence
papering over everything
filling in the cracks
for instead of waning
as you
might suppose
I feel he is out there
but also
within the lines
bending them
to his will
shepherding
theit direction
waxing in power
the light suffusing everything
trash-talking all
that is
askew
tantamount
to an
apogee of
miserable insanity
hint of the infinite
constantly
streaming through
****
NOUS
he writes cursively
and yet
concisely
knowing full well
how ripe the world be
to swallow
this tripe
and there is your consensus:
hear it mewl in unison
(child father
to man but
not
for this generation)
a gathering gathers: spin-
doctors, masters of character
assassination, doctors
of diatribe
all one tribe whose
genealogy
is golden, palms
crossed with silver
commentators, phone hacks,
two-way
radioed manhood
cursed non-
Shakespearean gentlemen
they can call a summit every
minute print the words
that should
suspend
everything
deary deary all so dreary
Professor looks so
vacuous right
now
luckily his pen has
the nous to
perpetuate itself
PROUDLY
proudly
exactly at the moment
when angels fell
he
stood up
on his hind legs
put away
monkey business, childish
things
dropped
his prehensile tale
at which,
clock started ticking
for all obedience points
accrued
for infraction
points dropped
strewed the veld
with the detritus of
every hunter-
gatherer
later agricultural event
leaving bones to
be picked
by such as
Dawkins and Harari
bounding across new landscapes
from horizon
to horizon
virus
of conquest
so much space to acquire
RETURN
I rent a
flower
am renting it
right now
rented one
yesterday
this one though,
is special,
before
petals fade,
colour
fades
need to
take it back
get a full
refund, perhaps
even
accrued interest
good flower
good money
time waits
for no
man
but this
is how we
make time
time
(that strange
German sage
said it
again
and again)
time
is illusion
a fiction
time
is
return
in all
its horror
and beauty
SAME; DIFFERENT
my pain
is not very good
at breasting
the way
whatever my pen
might say
(so gotten
into the habit
of speaking
for itself
talking
to itself)
stick me in
a foam bath and
then I should
relax into
this enterprise
weave my way through
word possibilities
dodging
linguistic dissonances as
if they
were titanic icebergs
whatever
quantum fluctuations
float
your boat
Hokusai moment
at which
to posit the implicit
connection between
metatextual
and sexual
you may
well considet joining me
adding to
poem fun index
we could
team up tempestuously
come up
with something fine
and expansive or
cut the writing altogether
(in our altogether)
SIX POEMS:
without batteries
masterpiece
tantra
scrapbook
the music
warhead
WITHOUT BATTERIES
insidious, the pun
destabilizes
mangles single-
meaning
in its electromagnetic
field
a field day having thereupon
I think of a goblin green
Vader Christmas
slipping down an industrial
smokestack for the children
who choked to death
on his back a pack of Death Stars
and other Sith machines
to toy with
and destroy the galaxy
luckily without batteries,
Skynet took them, the Matrix
took them
total the disappointment
whereupon for the
children of every executive
reminding us all
of former wicked times
of Scrooge economics
and monetarist deprival
and those who suffered
the feeezing calamity
of Christ”s birthday
reflected
as it was in the tiny
suffering always
happy face
of Tiny Tim
meanwhile some Jew or other
in the British musuem
is slaving daily
at his big
red book
we are
creative creatures, he writes,
not regretful
afterthought, surplus
liability
image that is no.match
for such
dreams of
transcendence that plague
our human imagination
(the ghost of
a Marley man financier
ghastly at the door).
****
MASTERPIECE
I read an
unusually bad poem
from a
Professor or so
worse
than normal
but no ways so bad
that I might
quite involuntarly, mind,
require to
gag, vomit, spit
which would have been
not a good look for me
given his
current level of
appreciation
(verging on
near total public
adulation)
such pressure on me
unforunately to
favourably respond
that when I did in fact retch
(following
line of least resistance)
I threw up
a jewel
wonder of transformative
power of mind over matter
a gem
of a vicious
masterpiece
****
TANTRA
I drink
where the rivers merge
slake my thirst
at the delta
some ocean salt here
too which
I taste
no mistake
a lock
on time
when you
flow
with me
and we
locate our
psalm sustenance
behold
something has
changed
seems the sea is
surfeit
we have
long left the land
****
SCRAPBOOK
I am going
to repaint this town
in line
with how you
dream it
retell
its history
scatter sepia, reframe
as daguerrotype
invest with shade
of fake civility
wherever
the whim takes me
nip
new
in the bud
let
this be my enterprise
until faith
in the lie
gets up one day
and quietly leaves me
****
THE MUSIC
there was no music
none
to
talk about
then suddenly,
there was
the music again
and the Beatles
found it
learnt it played it
packaged it
sent special
delivery
from turntable
to heart
and there
inside that music
there was
one Eleanor Rigby
who
are went
looking for
nobody
found
sadness of that
fiction destined
to haunt
****
WARHEAD
I don’t know
about your brain
what kind type of
brain and
whether firing on
all cylinders
but your head
did take
your body
along
other day
went looking for
headwear
thought
if at least looked
half articulate then
the words might just
elect
to follow
but
nothing there your size
nothing
but extremely bad
fit
seems
your head
has sacrificed
rational brain for
warhead target selection
and
guidance system
set with such hair-
trigger precision
best not
ask you to speak
AT ZERO GRAVITY
no soul
just
a hole
and me falling
fast out of
dense parent
childhood
like Alice
without
a parachute
until, trick
of physics
I hit
zero gravity
feeling myself
unplugged, unsupported
choice words
hurtling past me
seemingly from
pen and
paper from
the immortal
Ms Dickinson
and me
trying to catch,
hold onto that
before I go
meteor, comet,
full asteroid
burn up
in Wonderland’s
realm of
alternzte science
wild
surreal curved
atmosphere
TED
…as if the stone’s mind came feeling
A fantasy of directions
“Pibroch”)
it is a Winter truth:
every
library is
a mausoleum
every poem
a tomb
I think it must have been,
if memory serves, in
an old revamped cotton
trade building
that I sat amidst a throng
of hopelessly
eager Mancunians
devouring your every
brooding, grizzled,
Yorkshire syllable
seemingly homespun, yet
distinctly Oxbridge academic,
web of
sturdy twine
each thick, visceral, seed-
spilling phrase
falling like iron
parables
on every kind of ground
Mozart, shark,
hawk from a handsaw,
you were
obviously speaking
of yourself
as we all do
(be do)
metal scraping white ceramic
outside
I am released into the gravel air
pause
for a moment to think of Sylvia
****
old stone
older even than
the cathedrals of conquest
my ancestors
built everywhere
petrified
as to what I might find
I too fish for archetypes
rustic rivers, industrial canals
stuff down there for sure
with more
skewed history than
sets of pram wheels
dull green-gray these waters
of artifice
nothing gurgling yet
we
were no doubt told
means to
our emancipation
***
my grandfather buried here
think he
might have cultivated
a bit of interest
in the craft you
were here espousing
my boys
were the poets of his war
the ones
who died writing, or
returned
to ditch their medals
at the river bottom
common trade
common seam
painful
perpetual
clear as the first sharp
thought in the mind of a stone.
poems 2 die for