REAPER

REAPER
.
I sowed my oats
(whole, rolled, instant)

built an ark in
a time of drought
(deploying modern
hi-tec materials, paste,
carbon-fibre)

set my GPS to rapture to
navigate the
longitude and
latitude of
much
theological mess

sea of troubles
oceans of transition

came looking for your soul
heart of your true being
so pure
and, yes,
so pink

me hot for that
like blazing meteor
as I torch
the atmosphere some
dinosaur checking me out

my soul
much refried red
giant comparatively speaking

hot to the touch, sizzling
Carolina Reaper off
the Scoville charts

as I
negotiate your lips

ISA

ISA

who here
at this time, in
this place,
truly believes
that Isa was
a prophet, truly
a divine messenger?

that was seminal about him
(peace be upon him)
was not that
he saved souls but
spoke for the poor, spoke
against Empire
performed miracles, cured
the sick
        raised the dead

less that
he preached his own divinity
than suffered
    for humanity

less that history
has him exalted, than
the evil
     of our nature
                   claimed as
his
   text, in
his name?

عيسى (عليه السلام) نبي الله الواحد الأحد

GENERAL DIRECTION

GENERAL DIRECTION

my nose, proverbially,
close to the ground
keeping me grounded

blown by
the wind
chasing the Sun
I wandered around the farm

remembering my Hobbes’
theme of the brutish and short
life without sovereign authority
implicit social contract

recalling my Plato notion
of the ethical and philosophical
supremacy of
his ruling class

somehow I
slunk back into my idealism
thought
    should stick
with democracy on
(on this hallowed day
                    of election)

choose
    Dionysus above Apollo this
and every day

not to speak of those first
communities of the faith
before
   religion got Roman

this issue
of the State
      will twist you every
which way

from
   state of being, to
highest states imaginable

to Empires of suffering
that we all know too well

from YouTube and TikTok
and old apartheid memories

so much in
this mindset still
       needs exorcism I guess

but the green of the farm
so gleeful, intense
    after this sudden splurge
of rainfall

everything gaining height
growing (forgive my
ethnocentrism) out
of its socks

gaining height, accumulating mass
     giving my theme here
weight
sudden addition of
gravity

as is the general direction
(for this stage
       at least
whilst
time decrees it last)

CLOUDLESS

CLOUDLESS

a cloudless sky
stopped my scarlet red
Citroen
  to open the farm gate

cannot pretend to
understand the physics of
colour or
   indeed, the physics
of sky
you lost me as soon
as you spoke of wave-lengths
and light diffusion

but here we are (or at least, here
I am, your presence with me
somewhere
  between metaphor and
simple rhetorical gesture)

here we are
as if shielded from
the Universe (which is
the case exactly) virtue of
us being
    (no clouds
to distract me) right
at the epicentre of
a surrounding sphere, looking
out from
inside the skin, the translucent
skin
   of a beautiful blue ball

expanded to a size, a height,
that just works for us perfectly

reminding me
        as this time of ultra
advanced return
of feudalism
              of the music
of the spheres

with all that economy
with all that cosmology

nothing in a million years here close to
      that darkest conclusion

that things beyond this
blue bubble

moving away from us so fast
they are
beyond
all
   Doppler red-
shift
     beyond very
                  speed of light

and
so

back down
       to Earth as always
for
sheer preservation
of sanity, not

        let all this here
overwhelm me

wanting
those clouds back

wanting not to imagine myself
inside the skin
of anything

wanting
to just go
       where it is all heading
commit
to that glow

   light speed beyond
but (blessing of
relatvity) with it

one
    feels

                just
floating

moving in one’s mind
from
      incarnation to
incarnation

no desire
     to be laboured by

understand
the physics at all

RETURN

RETURN

sat by the oasis
dreaming of the ocean
dreaming of rivers.

sonetimes
water is everything
whole story
story beyond story

not your cockeyed
fable, an affront
to intelligence, all
our sensibilities

trying to tell me
it was delivered unto you
directly from Heaven
that angels had in a hand
in all the suffering
this has caused

so badly told, open
to simple deconstruction

the power that
truth must speak to

the lie
     so ingrained, expression
of that darkneds to which
front
beginning of time
we have
always aspired

but as for me
waiting at this oasis
for whatever inspiration

know how in this
business, words
                       beginning
to swim

line by
line
moment by moment

thinking, writing the river
the ocean

suddenly all talk
is of this great return

COUNT

COUNT

count
every atom

every drop
of blood

every grain of sand

count every blade of grass
how they blow
in the wind like
a feast of sabres
a forest
       of tiny spears

read
   these words
the desert itself
wrote for you
          (what an ear
the people of
the desert
       have for
the voice
     of God

absolute pitch
when it comes
to the poetry of the soul

read what is written
    read what
has been hidden

read the Sun, the stars
the Moon
       waxing waning
now
a perfect crescent

read
   and count

find a rhythm, your rhythm
calculate all distances
devise
     the algorithms
for perfect measure

ditto
and Amen

ditto and Amen

this tale continues
despite our failings, despite
                  our hatreds
out tragic divisions

the words of  the Sufis
written in the stars

connecting every blade
of grass
    drop of blood
grain of sand

ditto and Amen

every atom
count, read, measure

DEVIL IN THE DORITOS


DEVIL IN THE DORITOS

the chips
I am eating are
flaming hot
off the scale as
regards their
Scoville rrating

each chip not a chip
as much as shot
of concentrated flame,
chemical fire
   calculated to build
up to a spike
and then
   the endophins come
floating
first in a dribble and
then
    in a stream, a tide of
feel good
a one with the Universe
though a
   furnace is raging

you in the Himalayas, up
on Everest
     about to summit K2

on every psychadelic music
record cover
            a picture of nirvana
(state, not
Seattle grunge band)

and redeemed by the fire,
purged by the near
nuclear
    (thing built
by Oppenheimer there in
New Mexico) a

picture of you

STRINGS

STRINGS truth beauty the puppet moves, speaks I pull a few strings not my usual bag to first cause anything but when it talked slanted, funny, out of the side of its mouth I bore a hole through its wooden brain put a shot through its temple when I peepd through the hole not exactly suffused in wisdom or, since you request it, resonant with your symbolism guidimg to the light the overwhelming light