Tag Archives: reading

ANTI

ANTI

don’t like my poem?
is it
   a matter of form, style
or theme

or do you find itself
offensive
by its, and to your,
very nature?

Oh, if only poems
could be conduits to
all we feel and need,
and all
we feel we need
entirely!

you
don’t like my poem

well, I’m willing
to stake a bet
that my poem
doesn’t
like you either

much
like a true mirror

much like
Sir Isaac’s great law
about action
eliciting if
not demanding equal
and opposite reaction

perhaps
my poem
    exactly did not enjoy
the reading experience
suffered your
reading
         badly

put you the wrong end
of the spectrum of
enlightening being-read
experiences

on a readership scale
placing you
closer to
     muddy river pebble
than cut
and polished sapphire

closer to worker bee, even ant,
than to Apollo himself

IMPASSE

IMPASSE

you glance
at my poem

my poem
looks back at you
into you

you glare
at my words,
suspicion impacted

wondering
what lies beneath, here
we hit an impasse

no way to
resolve this
applying the protocols,
rules, regulations
of current civilization

unless image
by image, symbol
by symbol,
together it is
we negotiate this page

trade, vent, share,
exchange

for the sake
of the poem

refract, reflect,
rescind, do what
we both do best,
perform
    a whole number
full-on optics and chemistry

without these
no hope for any preservation
of mere mortal remains

AH, PROFESSOR

AH, PROFESSOR

ah Professor, Professor
your students
eschew reading

see books
(courtesy of TikTok
science fiction)
as things
wholly alien
set on
    sublime modes
of mind control
even
   devouring as
yet unwired brains

and some of these books
are fat tomes of sheer boredom
too heavy to
carry
   impossible to read

unless you
   mentally photostat
each page skimming
through them
at lightspeed

or have
   the entire text
condensed

into
blue pill
    or red pill

to crunch like a
jelly bean
flavoured to taste

AT LONG RANGE

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

INCOMPLETE

IMCOMPLETE

do not learn

we never
learn

what have we
learnt?
don’t hold back
just
   let rip

tell me
tell me!

look at me
pay careful attention
thorough scrutiny

all those years
gone to waste

sitting down

lying down

standing up

writing something
learning nothing

what in here
worth speaking?

out there
worth reading?

what
   good are books
when there are tanks
in the street?

indiscriminate slaughter
clearing a path house
to house

room
to room

every alley
every precinct

this book of horrors
as yet unwritten
as yet incomplete

one two
three               four;
             every paragraph

breaking
    every wall

QUESTION MARK

QUESTION MARK

thank you
for not inviting me
to your
prestigious event

not up
to your level
I think I get
the message

we poetic bottom-
feeders must
take what
we can get

but is it not
“true”, by
definition that
anything appearing
on this stage

part
of this show

is horribly compromised,
by no means
capable of
doing

what words
should do?