FRESH FRUIT

FRESH FRUIT

On the farm
I wonder

about the ideology
of a tree

the entire tree:
roots, leaves, branches

cannot
escape asking myself
what haiku currently
courses
   through the flowers

Of course
    this is (dear reader, I
do recognise) a
category
   mistake
of the first order, and will
no doubt, none too late,
be brought
   to my attention amidst
much
  wild snarling

and thus forgive me
my contextualizing in a poem
how much theory
pervades
        everything (truly
it is in
its nature
    to be an invasive species)

and Fall and Autumn and
all those mellow feelings
much
   written about

some ode or other
      that leaf to dead leaf
is
  remembered

all the wherefores and whys
as to how
  this system getting greener
came
   not just
    to be but
into conscious being

ruthless and polite both
stuck in a rut this day whilst
supposed
    of infinite variety

and my voice
     estranged, coming back

to me alien

as if
   freshly arrived, in awe of
all capacity to
shift the
      word of perspective

see things differently.
   

SHOTS

SHOTS

Turing me if you must
test my
      human sensitivities
scrupulously Voight-Kampff me

tell me
    this poem is light dark
high low

pure
     outflow of binary merely

everything on this page
is dictated by the code

thought I was calling shots
standing authorial, true-
voiced before you

but this is
         stuff of fiction, cloth
of dreams

metaphor built upon
                        metaphor

until the world
itself is
          metaphor built
upon digital solid ground

for as Barthes, the Paris boss of signs
will tell you
       (tell you if indeed
                     her were alive)

the author died, his
                          death redemptive

as dead cyber writing being
         trying to tell myself I thrive.

SLIP

SLIP

sorry

I was writing this poem

and my pen
slipped

the text
spilled

       all over
the place

ruining our
time together

wrecking our date

feel I need
to underline, bold font,
how
   regretful it all
is

how embarrassed I feel

took out my
      pen to write these words

construct
     an apology

and the damn pen as
pens do
       went all Derrida on me

SOMEONE ELSE

SOMEONE ELSE
“My only regret in life is that
I was not born someone else”.
                 Woody Allen

you looked through that
special drawer

for mementos, treasures,
precious relics of time past

you you found were
poems, love poems
written
    for someone else

told
their own story

self-
explanatory

no comment necessary
or required

it is always; there
is always
     someone else

it iz in the nature of desire
who we are
     you don”t need
a doctoral thesus on
Jacwues Lacan

to figure it out
    but it just might help

things
might help

and everybody ultimately
knows that ws all
want, wish
   we were someome else

want to pour our hearts out
to somone who might love
us, want us
or at least listen

but they have no time
for you
      and your pain and
all ypur somebody else troubles

becausw
   in the hearts they know
what you are
is
    less, is negative
is not what

they thought

          too young you were
to figure out the disappointment
on all those faces

first breath
you took

    meant for somebody else

TRANSPARENT

TRANSPARENT

“Différance does not precede the elements of the opposition it makes possible; it is their mode of existence.” Christopher Watkin

don”t say
transparent

when best you can
aim for
ever hope to
achieve
is translucent
(thus ducking
quite neatly
the
   thorny issue of truth)

but then there is context
and then there is history

whose meaning
is deferred until
you
    write the thing

time lag
    side step

           every excuse for
spin, circumlocution, Derrida’s
Gitanes-smoking
deferral
       of what if is

Oh you Cartesians, what could
be more opaque than
your
    methodology of demons

heads spinning like tops
whipped by sticks

viciously, vicariously

what difference if the
fate is epic monotony

could your
      metaphysic possibly make?