MR GLADWELL
Oh Mr Gladwell
I am playing chess
writing poetry
writing poetry
playing chess
playing
poetry
writing chess
my brain has become
a RORSCHACH blot
there
is blood all over
the board
strange body fluids
all over the page
wanted to be a kind of genius
but I’m dissolving into
nothingness
Mozart composing symphonies
still at the breast,
working out
the arias for his operas
from within
his pauper’s grave.
UNDESERVED
take it away
take this away
keep
well to yourself
I refuse to read rhis
we refuse to read this
you have nothing
to sell
you havs sold everything
this poem is immired in
bloodshed and murder
holy lies,
false propaganda
the slaughter of poets
right next door, through
the barbed wire
right outside
your secure (impossibly
insecure)
contrived
golden cage
take them awsy
these poems, your writings
this so-called poetry
forgive me
forgive us
if we give them
the contempt we feel
where you tell us images,
symbols,
metaphors
we see
only blood, find only
complicity
no matter how much you
tell yourself
do everything human
and barely human
to convince us
it is
undeserved
and so
plesse go
we csn suffer you no longer
take your sad, broken
failure of
a Muse with you
and
just disappear
MANIFESTO
I am
the Mike Tyson
of poetry
go straight
for a knockout
best
pound
for pound
what’s that you saying
dissing me
at the weigh in?
sorry can’t make
head or tail
of it
seems you
just walked into
an uppercut
someone who is a real
backstreet badass
did
smack you
in the mouth
and there in faltered
your tactical plan and
halcyon vision
fell
by the wayside
third
knockdown
and out therefore
on a technicality
I studied this art
from Homer to Ezra
know
all these
technicalities
you may say
I am completely au fait
with
every tone and trick
and
ruse in typology
seamless it be
my artistry
which is
why you not seeing it
later
enlightenment, illumination
but for now:
lights out!
HITHER
I wandered through poetry
thought I knew
this place
well
looking for wisdom
looking for humanity
my outlook by
no means negative
though by no means
expecting
wonders
miracles, transformation,
soul-shaping
life-
defining metaphors
and sadly I must add
conceding
no possible hope
for love
which is exactly where I found you
chatting to my Muse
(why is
Muse never lover?)
man
most well-measured
not a syllable out if place
but your
voice
your voice
I do not hear
perhaps it is just too
comfort-zone, risk
averse
agrophobic
when it comes to
to the beyond, the boundless,
our freedom
in a nutshell
shattering it to smithereens
with the force of
poetic pressure
and perhaps
the poet too
perhaps
we should stay contained
work like
jewellers do
in miniature
for this is a dangerous age
bad time
for words
and I, for my sins and
pretensions of
truly sinning
have wandered so far
of course, too
far away thus
with
grace
let me leave
you here
for who
would now come hither?
BREAK
so much fragility
things collapsing
falling apart
nothing as fragile
as a poem,
however
even
the lines
break
LISTENING
am listening
waiting to hear
what you
have
to say
all ears
but do not ask me
to press this numbered
button or
the other
as if a golden time
will suddenly dawn
wealth
will be released
if largesse came my way
would not know
what
to do with it
ditto
kindness
outside spray of flowers
drooing from a tree
steal all
my attention with
their cerise intensity
such that
words get re-defined
beauty in my
linguistic ineptitude
poetic
incompleteness
press one for
whole picture
two for duality
if you happen to agree or
strongly, poisonously
would adopt
a position
entirely contrary
as contradictory as any
reader might be
LITTLE LIZARD
“The Tyrant Lizard, the most incredible monster in history. Sign this release. Anything happens to you, we’re not responsible. Those dinosaurs are hungry.” Ray Bradbury, A Sound of Thunder
I am a little lizard
in a time of final, feral dinosaurs
they shut down the children’s library Mr Bradbury,
where I first read you
i think that they imagine
if they lock the doors
they burn ideas
children it seems
do not need, should
not have
their minds expanded
no sublime terrors to
enrich the joy and horror
of their being
if I ask them regarding
the evolution of mind,
the fulfilling of the species
they tell me
this is not my place
this is not the time
bite
and swallow
there is no legend of a carnivore
greater than the nation
and my dead end is
a supreme blessing
to those who dictate
the terms of all illiterate life.
ONE DAY ON MARS
Mars bars
Mars bars
the man has been
eating far too
many
Mars bars
his brain
is reaching
escape
velocity
reading too
much Martian poetry
I blame you
Mr Wells, blame
you Mr Raine
blame you Schiaparelli
dug
all those
canals
in is brain
and above all,
I blame you Mr Bradbury
filling his head
with Martian mushrooms,
telepathic Martians
losing a war
of colonial conquest
most basic parallel
with Earth history
a writer
strolling across
a desert
plain
munching
on a Mars bar
(overhead the irregular
shaped
Phobos and Deimos)
might feel compelled to make
Sent from my iPhone
HEY POEM
hey poem
structurally
speaking
are you
wrestling? are
you
striptease?
looked for you
in Barthes mythologies
did not
find you
maybe you are
not a part of
any
system
of signs
have
nothing to do
with culture
at all
poems 2 die for