Tag Archives: satire

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?

HOMEWORLD

HOMEWORLD

a lot of tourists
came to our planet

behaved despicably
threw their weight around
(which in the case
of creatures from gas giants
could be truly immense)

worst of all, as to be expected,
were the various species
of humanoids
and worst of these
were this truly abhorrent
species
       from a planet called Earth

who gave us no choice
but to strike at their Homeworld
and eviscerate their leaders

since it is in the nature of
this species to choose as
their leaders the greediest
and most depraved
and insensible amongst them

without which
we calculated

this species had a future
might have
     some kind of chance

THAT WILLIAM BLAKE CHARACTER

THAT WILLIAM BLAKE CHARACTER

saw that William
Blake character
on social media

disagreed about the war
had a few sharp words

fresh from this exchange
looked him up
found
   not a word on Wikipedia
save a reference to a character
in a Jim Jarmusch film

which seriously flustered me
for I had got this notion
into my head
   about this far from prototypical
radical
      early nineteenth century
English Romantic poet

but seems it is all a myth, a false flag,
huge disinformation

which 
     stands to reason,
for if there were really
a Songs of Innocence and
a Songs of Experience

think how
different the world would be

EXERCISE

EXERCISE

you cannot go
into a classroon
proclaim to
the kids

today, children, I have
something lovely
for you to do:

today
      in class
we are going to get
creative

have
real fun, drawimg
painting what
      the soldier saw

or sculpt a little diorama
or create a tiny script

and then
     enact it

as a play, or maybe film
the play or maybe

a black and white or
technicolout film

we have
           so much red paint
it’s going to be spectacular

buckets of red paint
for you head
                to toe
to slosh around

an exercise for all of us
to forever remember

death is the scene
            death must

never forget