reader – Page 2 – poems 2 die for

UNDERNEATH (GOOD FOR YOU)

UNDERNEATH
(GOOD FOR YOU)

just type
your poem

here
(underneath)

and my natural silicon
carbon digital synapses
will
set to work

shaping it
for the stratosphere

or even
beyond the galaxy

extend it
     down the page, across
a chaper
   push it in the direction
of a collection
we are talking
      a whole book

this is the technology that
is indistinguishable
from magic

should you indeed
call it magic
I
would not
disagree

and if I
think it be
magic pure magic

we should
all think so too

if we know
what’s good for us

if you
have sussed what
is good for you

KEY

Hey! No trespassing

Do not assume
you have
right
of way

automatic forgiveness

can fiddle around
in my innermost particles
until
blue in the face

no, not
on my watch
not on my watch

but hey,
     hang on a momento
you say
    brought a key
came with master
opens
    everything

can unlock things here
that I
have grown immune to
that I am totally unaware of

will take me magic carpet
ride mind
to a
special place

down a
hidden passageway
been bolted since childhood

which is, I do
freely admit
a very long time

this shifts
things a bit

or
to be gracious, shifts
everything considerably

kind of
alters my perspective
go
full
Omar Khayyam

trespassing
no trespassing

what’s
mine
is yours

and yours
is mine

on
my watch
automatic forgiveness
forever
and this night

ON A SINGLE WORD

wrote sent a poem
to you, both
id and ego

poem full of instant
instinctual gratification
and
boost to overweening sense
of self

the superego
though
finding indiscretion
taking execption
finding fault

might rip the text out of
your sweaty palm
tear it to
censorious shreds

before your eyes
do alight
on a single word

OF THE FITTEST

I like the way
you shot this scene

but what
does it mean
what does
it mean?

why this blocking, these
camera angles, this framing?

what does your cinematography
do for, what is it
doing to my poem?

so much you have to
surrender to reach
a wider audience

sacrifice gleefully, even
ecstatically,
for
your art
to
survive

AT LONG RANGE

poem
is
inside out

just
so happens to be

when you
frame it
in a certain way
it’s going
to start to appear
most upside-down

but
wearing this poem
out of range, at
long distance

hard for you
to see the target let
alone loose
a shot at all

and spooky Wolfgang
Pauli being
in the audience
actually, in the
very front row
plumb in the centre

not going to help
your echo location
in size
shape or
form

what with all those
quantum entanglements
and collapsed
wave-fronts

every
moment of delivery
makes me think then
dream of
standing before you
in an alternate universe

where without the
uncertainty of your
mode of
analysis, manner
of reception

there is no point
to this game at all
I

(MORE) FOOL YOU

may
seem like
think me
the fool

but
it just
a ruse

got so
much danger
about me
got to
travel incognito

or shapeshift
too and fro
back
and forward

in the blink
of am eye

one second you
canoodling
with tje Queen
of Cups;

the next
King of Swords
got sabre swishing
an imch from
your eye

but no fear
no worries, not
here
to let you die

when can do
deepet damage
deploy
more potent powers

ride
like death across your
inner landscape

unhinging all those
towers that

so
need to fall

for the good of us all
Sun card, Star card
and the
World

hete in choir
arcana of consensus

THIS SPACE

found
or otherwise

you have no footage
of me writing, whole
creative process

you just have to
go with face value
take on trust

seems that no bot
wrote this
you think
as levels are
discovered;
let themselves
get uncovered

before, in
coming to
a reading,

you edit and
manipulate

impose
and frame
according to
best-
guess narrative

supreme
authority
over all
located in

this space

POT LUCK

TIME WHERE

TITLE PAGE

TITLE PAGE

I close the book on you

hear you worming your way
from page to page

soon we shall be
at the end
of our story

could try to track you down
strive to find you

wondering
how our stories now conclude
which no longer
speak to each other
of eacj other

are so fully finally intertextual

might not be in the same library
any world of shared
heart or
mind

stuck barely between
the covers
on the title page.