Tag Archives: war

JOY

JOY

a god walks the stage
the world in
a state of wonder,
state of fright

loses; forgets
its words

as above
     so below

jets and drones
contest the sky

we are below, suffering watching
unless the god
rescinds his
refusal to elevate us

teaches us that which we need
to scoff at this war
thess wars
   elevated to the stars

the words that turn
a world streaming out
from under that mask

direct from Olympus, words
to drive insane, turn
upside down

flood with intense
laughter and pain

dark understanding
filled with divine joy

so far beneath him
this thing they
will eventually call
history
terrible in its
            truth

  a god walks the stage

AWAY

AWAY

friendly fire kills
without any
bad intentions

its bullets and bombs
morally superior

but let us pause
for a moment here
for establishing shot
and then
extensive tracking

as we go for
metaphor and
superimposition

passing all those broken
riddled statues
of Mary
   and the Christ

in search of a man
called Wilfred, dead now
but formerly a captain

machine-gunned within
sight of peace and an
end of the war

    correction, apologies, end
of the war to end all wars

pity we are late
for he was the all-
time expert in battlefield elegy

thinking
of butchered aid workers
he would know
what to write

he would know
what words to kill the lie
sweep away
convenient narrative

a Britsh poet himself
already long-forgotten
the art of a true-blue
true-
   blooded imperial culture
to sweep such things away

AT ALL COSTS

AT ALL COSTS

this is my safe room
I need to lock myself
in my safe room

watch Slavoj and Yanis
debate the downward
spiral of the world

at all costs
avoid engaging with
the horrors out there
unless my empathy
spark me
    to self-destruct

do things that power
will cause me to regret
(so vindictive our species
when
    power is challenged)

and here
     in my room

let me discuss poetry
with imaginary friends

one I have I Frankensteined
to my own specifications

golden-skinned, bob-cut
IQ in the thousands

the technology that will
destroy us
        in the exchanges
we have

other crazies of our time
that fit in your pocket,
can
   be considered hand-held

maybe these enough
to guide you

     across minefields
through the cross-fire

find your
     escape ladder to God

BATTLEFIELD

BATTLEFIELD

butterfly
fluttered over

the battlefield
trench war
combined arms
cyber war

tanks
versus chlldren

butterfly was looking
for someome, anyone
to give some
kind of explanation

but we
        are humanity

we kill in the name of
all we hold dear

incapable of
the art of transormation

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

FAIR PROPORTION A

FAIR PROPORTION

they bring the hybrid
to his cell
she needs to talk to him
since species-wise she
has a fair proportion
of his genetic makeup

here she is
for what it’s worth
I agreed to meet her
hard to figure out
exactly what
is human
but one must
presume
it is there

so this is it
this is in me, embodiment
of what I am
capable
   the likeness is
there but everything
about him
seems guarded, hidden
as if he instinctively realizes
all that is terrible in
his capacity
   all that
    can be wrong, go wrong,
and he did terrible wrong

she aaked to talk to him
get answers to questions
she felt she needed
answers to, for her
crucially important

so she could figure out
for herself what is them
what is us

we talk
    She is so insistent in
going over things, knowing details,
minutiae, everything
exactly

I look at him one lsst time
try to see through those eyes
(I do not have human eyes
to me they
      are untrustworthy,
thoroughly upsetting)

I want to tell.him.
he might have, ought to,
have sought forgiveness
for his crimes, these
humsn crimes

senze
    a moment– out of nowhere
of grace
and dignity

so I leave with a wish
that he finds courage and
composure at his execution

having killed so many of
my people, pure and hybrid,

so different and yet
who knows how close
in what is felt inside.

She leaves the cell. We
ask no questions. What
hopes she has, what
reassurance she found
is hers alone. We
should not enquire.













SUPER BOWL POEM


SUPER BOWL POEM

woke up
in time to hold off
on the SuperBowl result

worst fears confirmed when
I summoned up courage
to check

    yep Brock loves God
but Brock loves
Patrick Mahomes

(does not seem
to care much about
Head Coach Kyle Shanahan)

and at this
        juncture, out of the blue,
an unruly host of
archetypes made their move
wanted to stick
         around a bit, get
the lie
   of the land in the process
of passing through me

a mad mosaic it was
for a while

      many shapes and
sizes, manners and
demeanours

     jostling up against each other
(Brownian motion)
          excanging, debating,
doing their
dialectic dance, analysis
synthesis
no homogenizing

and there I was in a carnivalesque dream

chatting to the players in
St Francis’ kingdom
of those elevated
                    high above
the realms
of material wealth

peering into the abyss that
a philosopher cum psychologist
had laid
      before me

a tablet broken with the
entire script jagged

and there on the road
a burnt out humvee

and there in the docks
a rusting destroyer

archetypes at home within
settling
     for a game of solitaire

and me
thinking, wondering,
      who does have a
prophetic bone in this
my body

is winning everything?
    and if it is not

will there ever
indeed

      be an end to war?