Tag Archives: satire

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

AND BUTTER

AND BUTTER

you butter
your bread
with genocide

got genocide
sizzling
     on the stove
take it with
milk and three sugars
the taste
to sweeten

swing your fat arse
into the studio
there to pontificate
argue
      the toss
(toss
    the argue)

that genocide, by
very definition,
ia a crime
      against humanity
that can never
be said to exist

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