satire – poems 2 die for

DANTE

and there
at the very centre
of Hell

we find
Dante

tortured for eternity
for libelling those
above his
station

the justice perfect
the irony beautiful

everything in accord
for one whose wicked faith
could not
comprehend

that the Universe
has its golden favourites
who
should always
be worshipped, venerated
by those for whom
they are
their betters

the writers
of the law
always
above and beyond the law

on this angel and devil
could
not be more
united

it is
their common understanding,
their jealously
shared faith

TAI CHI

I saw you in those
Facebook AI generated
Tai Chi adverts
desperate

to shed that belly
and the sixty pounds extra
some Tai Chi exercises
promising
    if not the elixir of youth
at least some
potent Eastern
magic spell
      to drive that faltering
wife back into
your arms
     all-a-greedy, and
from other women, at last,
many a covert smile

but body aside
it’s the brain, your brain,
turned futile, gone
AWOL, that
we most
need to fix, with
poetry
I do think, poetry
best for this

sonnet before bedtime
and when
it comes to world
of smarts, a miracle soon
in sight

reversing the
ratio, restoring
the balance
between
supply and demand

(zero
supply, infinite demand)

AT THE UNIVERSAL EMPORIUM (OF UNIVERSAL EMPORIUMS)

too many stick-legged statues
things on plinths

it is not
as I remember it
nothing like my old haunt

unless the harbingers
of universal emporiums
within universal emporiums
are not
statues at all

far
from it

here I am wandering
between the chapels and stalls
following my nose
hunting down
hints of
imperium

calculating
how much cement
and marble
it will need
they will need

how many rolls
of fabric too
to craft
a tapestry

tapestry wide
long enough
to record everything

cement-coloured people
springing up
out of nowhere
animal,
vegetable, mineral

once they had
hoped to, promised to
evolve,
become transformational

the dream of thinking
the dream of making

hard to believe
it was once centered here

epicentre of focus
sweetest cosmic algorithim
all disappeared

WE

what we hear from you

We are
all human beings
one species

you are human beings
like me

what we want to hear from you

We are
all human beings
one species

I am
a human being
like you

please tell us
you can tell the difference

otherwise
this word “we”
makes no sense at all

WHAT I TOLD THE SUPERVISOR

WHAT I TOLD THE
SUPERVISOR WHO
ADVISED ME MY
EDITING WAS
SUBSTANDARD

yes, ruefully,
grudgingly
I do admit it
this time
I messed up

maybe i’m
not cut out for it
perhaps
I should
stick to
what I am
good at, or
then again
try something
different

take poetry.
   there we have something.
comes naturally
to me
   possibly one
of the best
in the country
sort of
    like my
first language

for I seem
to suck
at editing, though
maybe not as
shit at it
as you are
thinking

not as
shit as it
as you are
at
teaching

being a bitch
and a teacher
seems
a bit of a
mismatch

don’t
seem a
good
fit

kind of, if you
can forgive
me for saying so,

need
some humanity
to get
through to
people

no, run
with what you
are good at

interior decorating,
playing power games,
arrogance,
        cooking
(though there the
worry being
     you may well poison
bodies
as much as you
poison minds)

RESEARCH METHOD

if I see another research onion
eye-balling me
from the page

I think I might puke
possibly in many coloured layers

why not
a research orange?

or, better even, a
research banana

best of all
research pineapple
you eat
your way up through
the fruit until
you reach the spiny leaves

hard, tough,
that’s why you need
coding software

or a Likert Scale
choose one for good
two for bad and
three
(obviously) for
ugly

now we have finished
this poem
please be assured your
responses
will be

kept confidential
protect you from punchlines
to this and
other jokes

suddenly hitting you
with terrible laughter, mild
amusement

things outside
your paradigm
that mess with
your categories
and other bumps in the night

got
your onion

be
sure to hold it tight!

FRAGRANCE

arrogance
your fragrance
of choice

(euphemism alert)
the android that frisked you,
sidetracked you
these
last few hours

having Turing tested you
to your briny limits

blew you a fake
farewell kiss

snort that one
with some white powder
will make you
feel better
get you in the mood
for nursery rhymes

shame you are become
so iconic
last home for humanity
out the window

I see it now clear as the
pain, existential doubt
in any
Jackson Pollock

this is the best that the fruit
of Eve’s tree
could give, stoop
crawl
roll over backwards
to provide

arrogance is
your fragrance

it burns
like hot white phosphorus

lingers
like airstrike napalm

ELONGATED

let me not
lower the tone
by cracking that
old. crude
buffoonish
cartoonish joke

you know the one
you don’t need to
retell it
get myself into
a hole by
repeating that awful punchline

linking hereby
Elon’s glorious Martian terraforming
to the ultimate two syllables
of the oddball
sixth planet
(you do
know it’s name
mos
Greek god of
the Universe)

hole
wormhole
must consult with the late
Professor Hawking
to get the 411
on the physics of this matter

things
    on the verge of
the age of Aquarius (ruled by
this 90 degree off-beam
vertical-spinner)
could not
be
   more anomalous
(and this
the ruler of
my
   rising sign as , I am
sure the reader
                  must agree. could
not be more obvious)

supposed to usher in
the brotherhood of sisterhood of
woman and man

not this
   brotherhood of billionaires
owning more money
than the
stars in the galaxy
(so to
   outdo themselves
owning
   the stars in every galaxy)

suddenly much musky
this transcendental wealth smell

but this
is all about Mars
planet of the gung ho, most
masculine red war God

not this
mad maverick whose
moon is Miranda
(most moderately maleficent of
all my former
lovers)

but once
terraformed, fully
terraformed

ripe for creating
fresh mythologies

Elton might
just figure
it a glorious sight to see

some discarded orange
blue white wafting in the
first dawn
Martian
breeze to inspire the
new settler inhabitants

(though doubt it will
survive
the first
midnight hurricanes)

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

IN THE FAIRY TALE

no the little boy
in the fairy tale,

didn’t stop the world
screaming the bare truth
the nakedness
of a beloved
Emperor
we had no wish to hear

no he screamed
like a Stuka releasing its bomb

that the Emperor
is riddled with holes
inside and out

and there we were
scales falling
from our eyes
desperate
to stick them back

hear
the old nursery
rhymes again

sweet corporate censored
rap