Tag Archives: satire

A WORD

A WORD

forgiveness:
now there’s a word

the dead
   do not forgive

cannot
forgive

memory is frozen
in that cold posture

in time
     with time

the living
might forgive

but the maimed and
mutilated

theirs’ is a horror
beyond speech

THERE BE

THERE BE

there be satirists in the land

rare, ’tis true,
but nore plentiful than dragons

and Oh so easy
to avoid them!

not an issue
to learn to steer clear
of their usual habitats

can dodge
       them readily

neither lithe, nor elusive, like
Australian brown or
African black mamba

and nowhere near
as outright venomous

step over them freely
my brothers, my sisters

though they
        hiss and may strike

nothing to fear here at all

SIDELINED

SIDELINED

trying to sideline us
even beyond the margins

trying to close us down
crimp this space
so we can’t
say
   anything
to each other

conflating what we
have here
     what we here explore,
revise, deconstruct, analyze,
extend,

with what machine-handle
wood block slogans
you are ratcheting up
in that
      pre-industrial cogs and
wheels
machine you exaggerate
in the history
of philosophy
and psychology
that you call a brain

bringing us down
to your level

level not just flat, one
dimensional

but steamrollered until
the molecules that
bind
     hold-together
cannot give any more

SOUPER

SOUPER

it is the souper
souped-up cup

supermen ubermensch
teams of eleven Messis
eleven Cristiano Ronaldos
each managed
       by eleven Pep
Guardiolas

no offside law, infinite
omniscient VAR

four quarters, half-
time penalty shoot-outs
everyone wins but
survival of the fittest
massive
      reigns supreme
most gladiatorial of
all festivals of galactico
                     
those about to do
do salute
             load of their shoulders
now no stupid
qualifying
     the algorithm determines
and (above all) relegation free

giving the people
the fans

exactly what
they have been told to want
(who says you can’t get
     exactly what
                         we want?)

no boring overthink
of structures, formations,
systems, tactics

in fact no such thing
as tactics at all

      the numbers
determine

FOOTPRINT

FOOTPRINT

your brain is
suffering the side effects
of El Nino

there is too heavy a
carbon footprint in
the cerebral cortex

fossil fuel deposits
there are there but
should not be
touched
until fossilized further

but the whole can be used
just like camera to get
critical snapshots

so we can do a cross
and longitudinal section
analysis

          to determine what
across a lifeless mental desert
are the
      climate change short
and
long-term effects

FEAST

FEAST

Thank God that guy Pope
never put me in his Dunciad
or any other
South African poets there
for that matter
which is a bit
beyond belief

long since Roy Campbell
Wayzgoosed everybody
from Cape Town to
Durban to Maritzburg
Joburg and Pretoria

enough idiots with pens
and processors around now
to make
any such revival
a royal satirical feast.

QUESTION MARK

QUESTION MARK

thank you
for not inviting me
to your
prestigious event

not up
to your level
I think I get
the message

we poetic bottom-
feeders must
take what
we can get

but is it not
“true”, by
definition that
anything appearing
on this stage

part
of this show

is horribly compromised,
by no means
capable of
doing

what words
should do?