RECESS
Professor
Homogenous
Professor
Regress
I have heard
you
wax guttural
against the right
to protest
forgetting
your student days
unless
you never in fact
had student days
were born
and then,
immediately,
stepped, fell or
were dropped
(perhaps
by parachute)
into your
academic chairs
fully formed,
in forever recess
never hitherto
so greviously
and egregiously
exposing yourselves.
AFTER THE PROTESTS
after the protests
I was on your campus
looking for
the Department
of Denial
passed through various
scan and search and
barbed wire
checkpoints before
I was cross-
checked
and led in
and once in felt
myself
consumed by
an unearthly excitement
so keen I was
to meet the students, meet
the staff, explore what
in depth research
was here taking place
pushing the envelope of
Denial, Closure and
related fields
in the Human and
Scientific Disciplines
within
the all-new
Faculty of
Silence (thing of which
the new-look
university had
long dreamt,
best replacement
for the Arts and
Politics and Philosophy
but when I asked
in all eanest
to be directed there
they swore
we still lived in a world
in which such
ideas of grave
and obvious insanity
could not possibly exist
I said (for
my little part)
that was such a shame, a
terrible indictment,
hugely unfortunate
hoping that
no one should lose sight
of this vision supreme
MY CASE
sick in bed
2000lb building buster
fell on my head
out of nowhere
the papers passive voicing
the issue of agency
saying that
my skull thick
as concrete
no sign
of a brain
no doctor willing
to tend to me
there is not the
bedside manner
in the whole
of Christendom
willing and
able to
deal
with my case
BULLET POINT
from the perspective
of the ordinary
the everyday
every flawed human
beaten down
shorn of
courage
everybody
is in on it,
Hell, it’s
the way of the
world
drop
in the ocean
but from
the perspective of
Truth
that stuff
in the Bible
that thing
in Plato
it looks
a bit
different
here every
lying journalist
should be
shot
or hanged
along with
every lying
politician
made to
pay back for
the death and
misery
their lies create
the cost of the rope
the price of the bullet
I myself am prepared to negotiate
ALTAR
I came to your altar
to worship
check out the place,
speak to your God
and ask him
a few things
but a homily I got
and a dubious one too,
condemning all
barbarians,
is what
I did receive
painting the picture
for me
the one I am supposed
to believe in so
much
I cannot but see
but the picture did
not show itself, I felt
deficient in vision
all the gold everywhere
blinding me
leaving me
struggling for balance
beginning to sympathize
with the thought
that it
would be
better
burnt down.
UNLESS
Yes, what would I
what would we do
without you?
not a joke
and if a joke
not
such a good one
in all seriousness, you ask:
is there, could there be
satire in Heaven?
and me thinking
of loading the dice, going
to my grave
with my face painted
satire? Could it be possible
that they know
that tune
have that
music?
or are the strings of the harps
up there strung far
too tight?
if it is absent from Heaven
perhaps satire would
be conspicuously absent
from the other
place too
no place for criticism, correction
and logical exposure
when
all are condemned
torured
to the limit
for all eternity
beyond pointed comic comment
unless
WARLIKE
“Let me tell you something – black folks was never worried about anthrax because, half the time, we don’t open our mail no way. We might think that’s a bill. We might hold it to the light and go, ‘That’s a red slip.’ If you want to get us with anthrax, put that in a Jay-Z CD. That’s how you get us.” Aries Spears
Warlike, Aristophanes
stalks the streets
with pins
for the pompous
floats overhead
in a diigible
turning all
into buffoons
Oh, what a scourge!
did Zeus with his bolts
ever out-thunder
that laughter
crazy Dionysus
whose stage it is
must be deliriously amused
Apollo
less so
forks in the road
facists being told
strictly to observe
total radio silence
a deus ex machine looking
like it
could not
possibly fly
and yet
every one fears it
Aristophanes
Aristophanes
what kind of a name is that
for such a ruthless comedian?
come to think of it,
what kind of a name for a comic
is Aries Spears?
AT ALL COSTS
When your whole narrative
is a lie
whole thing, all
three acts,
start to finish
you have to defend it
at all costs
dig in, buld ramparts,
lay mines
they shalt not pass
take no
prisoners, no surrender,
you have no idea
as to what a terrible, unforgiving,
merciless enemy
the truth can be.
poems 2 die for