Tag Archives: satire

CONFLATION

CONFLATION

so much conflation
in this V For Vendetta parliament

it could well
lift off, fly away
like the Hindenburg
or the Montgolfier balloon

fly away
    to a sunlit upland
nativist Britain

one science-fiction secured
against any alien threat

for how will these tentacled
monsters in their
mother ships coming
to genocide
    and colonize us

in their leaky sinking
dingy boat
        fleeing the anarchy
we created
wars we started

just like anyone would
     (but being British,  they
look hideous to us)

HOUSE RULES

HOUSE RULES

there is no
poetry
about
this house

no fibre
in this room
    to speak of

just so-so people
who
     when the word
was elevate

when the word
was transform

were absent from school
dreaming the dreams
that children
of Empire dream

of securing power
of the ever so nicely
polite and
compliant backs

of the suffering mass
of the British people

MOREOVER

MOREOVER

got shot
at point-blank range
but you say
I ran straight
into a bullet

a good bullet
        moreover

one that knows
the difference between
right and wrong

a silver bullet, a golden
bullet, a Willy Wonka
eternal
     gob-stopping bullet

made by the great
celestial munitions factory

over the rainbow
before that got
shot to shreds

IF ONLY (LIFE WERE A TAD MORE POSTMODERN)

IF ONLY (LIFE WERE A TAD
MORE POSTMODERN)

They put the poet on reality television.

I did not get
to see the programme;
analyse the working
out of that proposition.

what was done
in the shower.

Caught on CCTV
for all eternity.

But I think I can hazard
a guess
how it pans out
as poetic expression:

the poet
dies (of course)
as a figure
of tragic exclusion

and the poem, given
space and time,
gets over its grief

rides out into the sunset
with a sestina side-saddle

and everyone, cast
and crew,
all set to
live their lives not
stoically but
much happily ever after

figure
they might need
a script
one where some
budding your therapist
pays off
the mortgage
attending to each psyche
with radical
depression therapy.

FOR BLOOD

FOR BLOOD

asking for trouble
telling me I’m
not allowed to, supposed
to think
       like that

as if I’m dead in the apotheosis
of Solaris
            Chris
Kelvin           about to be absorbed
by massive
              alien love

and so
     I throw philosophy, or its
kitchen sink equivalent at you
hoping to
        shift your
tectonic plate

Nietzsche warning about the abyss
but here you
go falling
       into it

silly me, silly person

must be
      a horrible species of
xenomorphic extraterrestrial alien

having
      thick satirical acid for blood

TRILLIONS

TRILLIONS

give them
a pleasure
treasure island

beyond
their wildest dreams
self-
    contained
far away
from the rest of us

where they can live out
their deepest aspirations
most intense fantasies

except
   they do

not have any

witness their only joy
to be accumulation
primary accumulation

as they build skyscrapers
and mountains higher
than any
    in the Himalayas

stacking trillions
of sea shells on the sea shore