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
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.
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
poems 2 die for