truth to power – poems 2 die for

WHICH IT DOES

thought I would
become the kind
of poet

who owns
a coffee shop
sits quietly
drinking milky
cappucino after
milky cappucino

observing the customers
penning interminable odes
tiny haiku

seeming, to the casual observer,
part of the furniture,
at one with the decor
thing
of the arts
with aristocratic veneer

not viciously satirical
exponent of anarchism
defender of Gaza
taking on
all comers as
if the world depends
on it
which it does

I have developed a cottage
industry
revolutionary practice
out of this mistaken identity

WHY?

why beat the shit
out of them?

surely
with your massive
military industrial complex

your have
more refined, tech-
savvy solutions

or because
since universities began
in medieval Arabia
and Europe must
you go dark
ages on them
besiege these encampments
like you are Temujin’s
horde

ransacking for forage
throwing defenders
down the battlements
all to
show and
tell lesson them
how Plato’s children
and great grandchildren
should scholastically behave

FOR THE RECORD

won’t pretend
to be on the right
side of history

too old now
to make a diffetence
or for anyone
to care
whose side I’m on

for the record,
I support your protests
for justice, freedom and
against this
horrendous
suffering inflicted
on human beings; love
your expression
of humanity

this for the record but
realize my old world
the world
that assaults you, maligns
you

is now
beyond the pale;
has outlived its purpose
(did it serve
any purpose?)
has outstayed its welcone

so when
(act of mercy) wheel me
over a cliff down
into the ocean in
my wheelchair
best bundle up this old
dead corrupt world
with me
wheel it over as well

“Let me tell you something – black folks was never worried about anthrax because, half the time, we don’t open our mail no way. We might think that’s a bill. We might hold it to the light and go, ‘That’s a red slip.’ If you want to get us with anthrax, put that in a Jay-Z CD. That’s how you get us.” Aries Spears

Warlike, Aristophanes
stalks the streets
with pins
for the pompous

floats overhead
in a diigible

turning all
into buffoons

Oh, what a scourge!
did Zeus with his bolts
ever out-thunder
that laughter

crazy Dionysus
whose stage it is
must be deliriously amused

Apollo
less so

forks in the road
facists being told
strictly to observe
total radio silence

a deus ex machine looking
like it
could not
possibly fly

and yet
every one fears it

Aristophanes
Aristophanes

what kind of a name is that
for such a ruthless comedian?

come to think of it,
what kind of a name for a comic
is Aries Spears?

THANKS

thanks for protecting me
against evils known and
unknown

possible abd impossible

real
and imagined

and even
imagined-imagined

thank you for protecting me
from my self, all my
avatars and handles

thanks thanks thanks thanks
thanks
but no thanks

I’m too useless, uneducated, over-educated, uninformed,
misinformed, disinformed,
to know
anything anyway

do what i am
supposed

do what
is required

follow the plan
execute nicely and neatly
alomg the dotted line
tick my tock tick
the right box

be the perfecr customary
idiot you can package
in brown paper

send off to
war (just saying, just
saying!)

prime human material
ready to be exploited

smothered
in your love

suffocated
with affection

and now technology
world of
science fiction horror

alien
event horizon

thanks
but no thanks
thank you for protecting me
from it

must say this
demonic technology

was only
a pleasure, a joy
in this shit life you
do manufacture

milliobs of us
zillions of us
having fun, being
creatuve
feeling the same way

not feeling all
that mind control, becoming
other, changing shape
changing form
as our world turned pink
and then red
and then,
as that poison did its work,
complete Chinese
Communist Party

wonder what
we can do
now its gone, Devil
loving hands
idle

need a new vehicle to
go same-same to
ridicule this nonsense
throw
your democracy
back at you

mock, scoff, laugh, sing,
dance, ridicule

tell a little
needle sharp truth
to ridiculous power

GLADIATOR

OVERKILL

OVERKILL
“Eloquent, oracular;
A volcano heard afar.”
Shelley, The Masque of Anarchy
(poem on the Peterloo Massacre)

Ah, my beauties
here is poetry
where it has always been

first past the post
(postmodern, pissedmodern,
posttruth, postnuclear,
postapocalyptic, post-
whasoever)

play of language: you realize
of a sudden that deep
down in
your tin heart
you have to prevent it

look at the danger: exhibit A,
very drowned poet

his young pregnant wife
dreamt the future as monster
private parts monster
(as they all are)
scratching at her window
demanding
life, consciousness,
not exactly Turing tested but

she scared
the life out of us, this
virgin snake did cosmically,
with what
ex machina she
duly came up with

such overkill
need to nip it in the bud
radical danger of metaphor
surely
needs its own -dectomy

the threat of crucifixion
along every highway
and byway
resurrected again

something the billboards
really need, are crying out
for

real spectacle
behind them.

WE TOO

we love to
play the language
game
we two do
come at greasing
the signifier
not
from different
poles entirely

my games with sound
and sense
more about
foregroundimg other,
difference, perhaps
a touch
of deviance

yours
(if I might
proffer
this distinction) about
what is established, believed,
holy ordinary,
sacred same

how we can get
          the narrative to
go full
python
    swallow the facts
(crush in its coils any
                truth inconvenient)

and of course, after my little
pointless spiel
boredom, dismissal
the worst I get

the guilt that comes
with bad poetry

not, as in your case, if I
dare suggest

every kind of sick and
unconscionable paid-for
complicity

that
shades us into dystopia
thence living Hell

Tag Archives: truth to power

SANCTION