Tag Archives: power

OFF THE SCALE

OFF THE SCALE

the Sun
beamed through my window
only to
take issue with me
scorch the files
on my computer

leaving me desperate
to get a handle on
electromagnetism

so much fire out there
in here
    as chatbot and I
argue the toss
over philosopher
Catherine Malabou
and other
anarchist thinkers

wondering about
the Sun’s role
in authority, Apollonian
regal power
       and how that
might avail itself
to tyranny

especially the kind
with solar ring of confidence
branded by beaming smile

THANKS

THANKS

thanks for protecting me
against evils known and
unknown

possible abd impossible

real
and imagined

and even
imagined-imagined

thank you for protecting me
from my self, all my
avatars and handles

thanks thanks thanks thanks
thanks
             but no thanks

I’m too useless, uneducated, over-educated, uninformed,
misinformed, disinformed,
to know
anything anyway

do what i am
supposed

do what
is required

follow the plan
execute nicely and neatly
alomg the dotted line
tick my tock tick
the right box

be the perfecr customary
idiot you can package
in brown paper

send off to
         war (just saying, just
saying!)

prime human material
ready to be exploited

smothered
      in your love

suffocated
with affection

and now technology
world of
        science fiction horror

alien
event horizon

thanks
     but no thanks
thank you for protecting me
from it

must say this
demonic technology

was only
       a pleasure, a joy
in this shit life you
         do manufacture

milliobs of us
zillions of us
         having fun, being
creatuve
feeling the same way

not feeling all
that mind control, becoming
other, changing shape
changing form
as our world turned pink
and then red
and then,
    as that poison did its work,
complete Chinese
Communist Party

wonder what
     we can do
now its gone, Devil
loving hands
                  idle

need a new vehicle to
go same-same to
ridicule this nonsense
throw
   your democracy
back at you

mock, scoff, laugh, sing,
dance, ridicule

tell a little
needle sharp truth
to ridiculous power

STALWART

STALWART

one day
not upon a time
the plants
elected
to row straight

electrifying with joy
stalwarts everywhere
every
  treacle-thick politico
in
wotlds known
and worlds
unkown

fairy tale
and the political
racing
to conclusion
running in parallel

Oh happy day
exclusion of the middle
extermination
of the extremities:
it’s so
   axiomatic, lowest-
common-denominator
raised to the heavens
square
    root of zero
dutifully delivered

and in the woods so
much smoke
the trees so
covered in soot you
cannot see the leaves

but
Pan’s man, fabulous
Guillermo has
set a fantastic trap
they are
bound
to fall into

surrounded by thorn bushes
in the light of their shadow

you could not
do anything to look
more enchanted
       surpass the mystery

conjuring up
a string of images

                    burrowimg in
wormknv deeo

teaching us how
                  to align, accept
the imperfect, rough
and smmoth

how to accept what is
for what it is
       become part of
the picture

native to this place


OVID IN EXILE

OVID IN EXILE

in the Senate
on the Forum

they are not talking about it
no one is talking about it
Ovid
  is in exile

the young Emperor
Augustus, formerly Octavian,
friend to the poets, patron of the arts

has blotted his copybook,
sent Ovid
     into exile

no headlines, not a
scrap of graffiti
to record this event

too much truly momentous
on the horizon
to let this
      sublime moral moment
undercut, let alone
overshadow
the great transformation

civil war over
the Caesar legacy entrenched
for who knows how long,
even the most conservative guess
will kick off with
a century or two, a good
few centuries

an Empire has been born
and Ovid missed its birth
for Ovid
       is out of town

and, to be honest, who
really cares,
   gives a damn about the impact
of this on his poetry

lately become
what was promised, always
                                 promised

as the statues go up
to enshrine the new image

Ovid is in exile
and Rome and its fictions
transformed as expected
                continue to be