thermonuclear – poems 2 die for

APOLLO

rocket
to the Moon

rocket
saying Hi, dropping
into my
back yard

bringing my own
private star, billion
degree
Sun

same rocket
rocket
men
rode to the Moon

(bouncing, buggying around
scenic drive
one small
step for man)

same as the one that
took out my house, my
tiny lawn

like the eggs on the stove
I was cooking when
it came
to pay
a visit, pay
its respects

popping, exploding in
that red-hot thermonuclear pan

I was
well and truly Sun god fried

either
we have forgotten
everything we
have ever learnt

everything we
were ever taught

or we didn’t;
we simply went insane

LIVESTREAM
.
woke up
minutes
before
the dawn

still alive
so made
some coffee

read the news
being livestreamed:
no nuclear
war in the laat
quarter
of an hour

quiet
hosannas
and hallelujahs

hope that
despite our
terminally insane
rulets and
leaders

the world might
just survive
the hour

sunset:
the Earth and sky
bleed into each other

and as the Sun sinks
it wonders if all will
be blessed to
see him rise
again

be witness
to the glory of another day

having once been
so naive to
confide in us
that essential
truth, its
primal secret

whose release
has brought us in
terrible imagination to
this
moment of balance
where our entire fate hangs,
could not
be more precarious

in our
unwrenched minds,
own failing hands

I was confiding
in my friends
the insects

all the true scientific
horrors of nuclear war

when you came down
like a missile
from up
on high

demand that I shut
my mouth, cut
all such nonsense

speaking through a translation
device
this being a head, a father’s
head attached
to a stick

and then, since our debate,
was going nowhere
you opened up
on my tiny
friends
with a state-of-the-art
multi-
barrelled weapon

firing
millions, billions
of rounds ripping up the landscape

but fortunately
my friends being so small
took
out such precious
few of them.

playing chess

whilst our liar leaders
think about war
at the summit
of their lives

you don’t have
to be Bobby Fischer to
win

a nuclear match
           just a matter of economy
and who makes
the
    signature
      sacrifice

        puts it all out
there
      tempts into an atomic
      no-holds
barred
         pawn gambit