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

NEED FOR GREED

NEED FOR GREED

you thought
it would be free and fait
and open and competitve

not that all these pinprick
brain heads
    were attached
to the same
organism

metastasizing bigger than
the big bang
       until it couldn’t

until big crunch comes together
and singularity sucks down

a hole
    through which, who
can say

the mind of the universe thinks
up an infinitely better option

or slightly better one
    for for humanity to
evolve again

of course
      you will need greed

GARGANTUAN

GARGANTUAN

my room is expanding

I am expanding

everything is expanding
emptying out
taking up space

this, as I checked with my
man De Grasse Tyson

is specified by
the recipe
  
      prescription has it
                   nailed

(never using the word nail
without conjuring with the obvious)

you must check
          it is possible
if infinite time in an
              infinite universe

that you might
        have misread the message
or not
received it at all

on your lonesome out there
contracting contradictarily
or at least
      counterintuitively

heading down to a size
where subatomic gets huge
takes on
       features best
described as epic and
gargantuan

this everything notwithstanding
whatever will be
        
and so we must conclude
that right from the outset
was
   huge aspiration

room tearaway expansion
including both
        window
and door

and yet, as relayed earlier,
nothing seems to have changed,
all appears stable

world still the case in
its logical ways

as much as is deranged yet
perfectly in range

LIKE IT

LIKE IT

I like it when
even
   in full flow
(the joy
of flow)
you catch exactly
how your
mind works
how it all works

have your
self-reflexive
meta moment

finish the poem
with its special twist

and the Universe
(whether it is
              real or
simulation)
smiles and
           welcomes you
to postmodernity.

EQUATION

EQUATION

energy
is mass

and space
and time
are
money

me
I wasted my
time
studying
philosophy
writing poetry

so can tell
your what’s-the-
matter
    moment is
pure
   postmodern
spiritual existential

ennui of life in a
post material age

nobody
     offers a phosopher
a penny for
his
    a shilling for
her thoughts

or to speak
the value or meaning
of anything these
days

just nowhere
     for the human
mind to expand

and all
     that wasted
storage               space

FIGURES

FIGURES

figures
were fashioned

no sooner so
than they produced
brutal beauty

an angular ballet across
a square battlefield

the mind stretched to its limit
to master
     have complete power over

surrogate for war itself
and yet still the shock
and
     sharp self-
recognition
            in defeat

figures were fashioned

you could spend a lifetime
exploring, imagining

that entire
little universe that
accrues to them

THERE IS CHESS

THERE IS CHESS

there is chess
and then
there is
the Universe

a game of the fixed and certain
a machine for generating
strategic revision after
strategic revision
endless permutations
no game
ever the same

life and death and final
conflict
across a square board,
by another name

and beneath it all
this quantum ocean
softly fluctuating
dreaming
its dreams

the dream of chess
a beautiful one, a demonic one
a clear-cut straddler
of every division
between beauty
and nightmare

the pieces waiting
at your command

ready to talk their talk
ready to follow
the script

carve
you new pathways

the dark or light wood
moving across the board
pretty much
sub-
light speed

breaking the bounds
of hyperspace
navigating
the labyrinth
inside your head

CONSTELLATION

CONSTELLATION

assuming the feral position
in the loadshed dark
on my bed
with a dying cat
my
  beautiful dying cat

I cannot wait for two
weeks to pass and I hit
what just has to be
my final birthday

don’t give me
rebirth
      I would be
kicking and screaming against
the very thought
of consciousness
                  possibility
of coming back

not to be u grateful
not to disrespect life, that
                sacred most
magical
      of things

but thanks but
                    no thanks

leave me be for that trillion years
until the Universe is a dead weight
of iron and
          burnt out coal

and the last civilizations who had
their faith who had their dream
are
      long long gone

maybe
      like us they had their astrology
astronomy cosmology

their genius mettle. 
                      born under
the constellation
                        which loosely
translates as the dying cat