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

BY GEORGE

BY GEORGE

by George he has
won the election

by a thumping
gazzumphing
tub-thundering majority

Dundee’s master
of words, knife-thrower
by vocabulary
a voice growling like
Churchill
from the benches,
resonant, indefatigable

leaving those who battle
to string two
words together

at a
loss for any of them

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

BLOOD

BLOOD

I whitewashed
my poem

silly me
I got all my facts wrong

good job
the mainstream
media was
on hand
to correct me

poet nobody
cleans up his act
at least now
I might make
some kind of
headline

worth the whitewash
restoring the page
to its pristine blankness

worth
all the effort picking
up the body parts
mopping
    up the blood

DRY

DRY

there is no everyday
there is no ssme street

everything has
been disconnected

there is no
same old

go home
pretend that home
is still as you
have always known it
nothing
    has fallen into ruin
nothing has been resprayed

watch all the cheap
global disaster extinction
level event
    end of the planet movies

you can get your hands on
an election is coming

you will need
to drink the drinks’ cabinet dry

BATTLEFIELD

BATTLEFIELD

butterfly
fluttered over

the battlefield
trench war
combined arms
cyber war

tanks
versus chlldren

butterfly was looking
for someome, anyone
to give some
kind of explanation

but we
        are humanity

we kill in the name of
all we hold dear

incapable of
the art of transormation