reader – Page 3 – poems 2 die for

BET YOU

bet you
you read this wrongly

take it
the wrong way
to a wrong place
against
the grain

exult in your power
as supreme
bad reader

sorry to
point this out
rain on your
May Day parade
of tanks
and workers

but everybody
misreads me
it is my fate,
the flaw
in my system

story
of my life
that gets blocked
at the school
board

denounced
in the praesidium

even though
it is all
so unreal

a game,
a mystery within
a mystery

one of those
far-fetched, trying
to push the envelope,
post-
modern, self-
reflexive tales

recounted by the most
untrustworthy of
openly
unreliable narrators

way too
metaphoric of its own
good

mirror image
of the stupid sublimity
of all
cosmic creation

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.

HARD CORE

searching for
my inner Bukowski

scanning every word,
inclination

ruthlessly scrutinizing

fastening onto
all the scruffy, seedy places
where, turning over
some unkempt stone,
I might
just find him

turning
the tables upon myself
tables I can now easily
drink each
and everyone
under

sinking my last inspirational shot
to welcome first light of dawn

and
then there are the
creatures of night’s pleasure
I might now
feel
free to consort with

the boxes of cigarettes
stacked mile high
I should
suicidally smoke through

in
the name of art

burnishing an image
burning my trash
openly
on all and sundry’s lawn

that manicured lawn
cropped
close as a Brazilian

delight
in the mind as such

thoughts, hard
                 to the core just
spurt
   from my mouth

STRIKE ONE

if the poem (this poem,
any poem,

freaks you, takes
you out

feel reassured
be happy that all
can call
it
collateral damage

for my part
condolence and
commiseration
that it
strikes you
out of the blue

as it is
meant to exactly

getting the retaliation
in early, serving
your revenge up
first

EMILY SYNDROME

stuck some poems
in a folder
ready for revision
(Oh,
happy day!)

left them not
so long but
long
longer than
intended

albeit without Sun
or air or
indeed watering
at all

so imagine my delight shock
and horror that
day of
days, moment
of reopening

when found the little bastards
to have thrived
and multiplied, some

even grown in size
to embrace the gamut
from
split little
atom through to
Pandora of expanding universe

poem growing up
prophetic,
apocalyptic

whispering, screeching
to the Universe

their
primal truth as mirror
and
testimony (dear
reader)

to all
expanding size

FROST

I am like
frost on glass
on grass

frost
on your window

am much akin

I am
frost on the page
cold
and old

frozen
to the touch but

thaw
when you breathe me

stay with me a moment
that we both
start to
smoulder

both
learn to flow.

MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

Is this the poem
you have been monitoring?
Is mine
the face in the feed
from your spy satellite?

Are their words here
that triggered
your security
algorithm?

And, even if you
loved or liked this poem

are you
going to swoop down
and arrest or
assassinate me
in the middle of the night?

DUAL CITIZEN

I am writing you
this missive

conscious of the tiny
devil on my shoulder
winged like a bat
trying to
get my poem
to parrot
the rhetoric
that just steams out
of his mouth
hot Nuremberg style

meanwhile, the other
entity meant to balance
this duality
(put stuff in equipoise
to reflect
a Gemini moon)

creature angelic but
in semi-
state of rapture
leaving me to my
own
(and demonic devices)
as it flutters below
the ceiling chasing
less
than celestial light

and so, here it is, a
text which
could have been
more measured, produced
better
individuation

come to your reckoning, I guess
you will be caught
in
   and between,
unsure
    of where I stand
and where
      to put your feet

remember the truisms about
lining and cloud
(Blake’s
little imp)

silver where leaden
but all manner of danger
should
they beam pure gold

I tell you this
with heart undivided
yet
complete dual citizen

AND FEEL

they told me to write
fill
the page

I wrote and
I wrote

but the page
kept getting longer

tried
wtiting in circles
writing into
the mirror

but it
did not really help me

I wrote
and I wrote

page
keeps getting

longer

they told me to
write what
I see
and feel

NEITHER

what happens
happens

look at this poem
it may go
one way
may go
another

I may take it this way
you may take it that

both of
these roads considerably
less-travelled

only chance of us ever meeting
will be on
a road

neither of us picked