Tag Archives: satire

SLAM DUNK

SLAM DUNK

mindset to mindset
not yielding an inch
not conceding
a point

leaves me confused
as to whether this is
chess or all-in
  -wrestling
we find ourselves
confronted with

with chess no rips and
tears and broken bones

deadly
    serious this game

hardly spectacle: so
poorly choreographed

posture and
        bluster

in the same league hardly

BROOM CUPBOARD

BROOM CUPBOARD

broom cupboard
you have the rigour
and acumen
of a broom cupboard
and not one
that anyone in
their right mind
would consider
spacious

no, this cupboard
is so tiny
best it could do
would be to hold
a brush or two,
though admittedly
more could be hosted
if the broom and brushes
were in fact broken,
which, in your case,
they naturally are

and so we must come
to your intervention
a strange mixture I felt
between the necessarily glib
and striving
to be profound

if it were served as sustenance
it seemed neither solid
nor in any way, by
size or shape, nothing
that had not been pre-,
paid or especially selected
to give the support
the ranks of the mindless
seem to save
for their own

no fat suet dumpling floating
in hot greasy water
is the best
cuisine analogy I can
dredge up for you

watching that fat imperial face
dole out imperial ideology
as if history
had stripped your
divided nation

down to a plane, perhaps
a tank
and a boat or two

not the right backup stuff
for tough talk premised
on old battleship diplomacy

pop
goes the pop gun

in any
real confrontation with
the rising world
they sweep clean
your talk is doomed

BARBARUS


BARBARUS

I watched the debate
(if you could call it that)

moderated
(if you call it that)

by program host
Piers Morgan

watched in awe
the cool demeanour
of Professor Finkelstein

wish I were
that impervious to
ad hominem attacks

could behave like Norman
not Conan the Barbarian.

IN BED

IN BED

in bed
thinking of fairy tales

bed being
best place for
any kind of fairy
tale

inclusive of
child, adult and
seriously classified ones
the ones that
reveal
   the wicked witch is
not dead (reports of
her demise
strategically exaggerated) and Empire is
          forever always naked
just  trick of
the light
        and indoctrination that
goes by the name
of education

that we see
     what we believe:
Empire and Emperor
(its pure
    embodiment) is always
richly attired
  and powerfully adorned

no fear that this change
because fairy tale is the
dream of
all that abides
       supremely happy ever after

above history
beyond change

BUFFALO BILL HITS THE CIRCUS

BUFFALO BILL HITS THE CIRCUS

was at the circus
but the tent fell
down
    swamping poets,
academics
and other clowns

maybe the pole was broken
no way steadfast Shakespearean

perhaps
     Nietzsche’s concept
of evil which
I did lately relate
   offended every deity,
was tempting fate

a direct dereliction
of poetic duty

speaking of which
         when those poets
copped it
not much, to use my TS
word should be
bewailed as
    having been given
much
    lilting solipsism there
sweetest narcissism

stuck in
    their own heads:
what it
means to be
        this sort of man
what it means to
be a woman
    what poetry must
become in a Zuckerberged world

and
     what magic deserted when
we got skinned

those bodies even more
dumb and devoid of stuff

no
magical coat for me thenn

GODS

GODS

great
we got our journalists
picking his pockets
tapping his phone

if we
get enough dirt
on him
    can use our pages
to persuade him
not to
   talk about kingship
stay away
from such plays

and that one
who would phosophize us
away
    from our set and staid
and hegemonic ways

would
    think us
inside out and
      upside down

we got the video, had
it photoshopped, PR
refined smudge
            and smear aligned

shows her at her worst she
could ever be (though
neither so
    bad as you, or I) but
good
   enough to bring
her down

any one who thinks (gender
aside) is
         a worse-than-perverse-clown)

why
    do they think themselves
above all who
think what
they are
         told

why else this business? Why else
the rollers
        roll

serving you your world up
on a plate, we tell it as
freedom but
   we all know
            its fate

you
are
   what you are
and what
             we designate

so
   test us out
            why don’t you?
just give it
a try

nothing we cannot belittle
nothing we cannot dare not
cut down to
    basic size
who would have thought
crudity and super-
ficiality supreme
human virtues
who could ever have imagined
we couls write an all
new ten commandments
use all our
   new-found political
pressure to
sell them
     in the market before
entrusting them to God

you cannot challenge it
we are
       perfectly set
in our mindset

lie
is truth

and
slimy and obese-
brained though we
may well be

beneath this tawdry
bleary mortal flesh

we are gods
we are gods

     test our powers
     you will come to believe

TANTAMOUNT

TANTAMOUNT

I stumble
into the temple
past
the guards
and moneylenders
who appear
not to notice

my, how fruitful and prosperous
— a billion, trillion times fold

since
the time of Jesus

and there
in the inner sanctum
I behold a trinity
Pennywise, Baron
Harkonnen
and the hydra-
headed great
of Merkava

brooding on something
hatching their joint scheme

lucky, in fact,
our blessed fortune,
that all this
amounts to
all this
be tantamount to
is a
meaningless dream.