Tag Archives: writing

TWO POEMS (FLOOD; LUMINE)

FLOOD

poetry should
come
in flood

to be
any good

he said, this
bar room
brawler, boozer
of the word
            did

and who am I
to pick
   a fight with him

(what kind of
Charlie would I then be?)

and truth be told
hate the very
thought of once
more into
the rewriting, yet
more drafting

the thing with a mind to
resist, go
   where it secretly insists,
be the
very soul
     of entropy

and here we are
draft five, six, eight
or seven

express elevator down to Hell
it feels, no
             stairwell to
                            melodic heaven

fast and furious
        brain to paper

nothing lost
       perfect tbirty seconds

and me, slaving away to
                                  be
contrapuntal, speak
counter-
    argument

wondering, dear reader,
dear reader

how so many of you
                 so so quick
to come
      to snap judgement

make slick quick poetic love
to the smokey
     soul of this man

who would not have
you touch the poem

until it
    scresms at you

insisting
     on birth
insisting on life

        life on the line
down with an offer you
dare not refuse

****

LUMINE

you wound me
up like
a clockword

gave me
an extra turn

then pushed
me to the limit

harder a taskmastee
more cruel
in your tutelage
than Tarantino’s Pai Mei

but when
    we broke that limit
my limit

brought me back
from a death

that bird sang a song
sweet fluting lyric that

touched
     the firmament

A DAMN

A DAMN

always
in a rush to
publish

sometimes I leave typos
all over the page

sometimea my
typos
themselves
have typos

sometimes I wonder
when I write

where the Hell
is the poetry
where
is that thing
the poem

not in the world
and apparently
not
on the page

maybe
I should go look
for it

maybe we
should all go
look for it

try to figure out
what the Hell
has happened to it

go
find Dante
he
   being the
expert in
such matters

hear it
from  hia own mouth
hear it from
all those
voices

the blessed
and the damned

how
   small poetry has got
allowed
itself
to get

barred from Heaven
closed off
from Hell
lost
all its real estate
kicked
off its land

nothing big left
to talk about
nobody listening
no
imagination
inspiration

so just shovel that shit put
it
out there
have to
put it there regardless

put it out there
fast and
furious
      wrap, drench
the world in it
before it dies
entirely

no time
to worry about
this and that
the dream
of certainty
delusions
of perfection

the time
for care
and concern
has all but
vanished
is long-
time gone

no worry about typos
lack of rhyth, rhyme
missed meaning
what
does not
scan

no one
gives a fig

no one gives a damn

OF THE FITTEST


OF THE FITTEST

I like the way
you shot this scene

but what
does it mean
what does
it mean?

why this blocking, these
camera angles, this framing?

what does your cinematography
do for, what is it
doing to my poem?

so much you have to
surrender to reach
a wider audience

sacrifice gleefully, even
ecstatically,
for
  your art
to
survive

AT LONG RANGE

AT LONG RANGE

poem
is
inside out

just
so happens to be

when you
frame it
in a certain way
it’s going
to start to appear
most upside-down

but
   wearing this poem
out of range, at
long distance

hard for you
to see the target let
alone loose
a shot at all

and spooky Wolfgang
Pauli being
in the audience
actually, in the
very front row
plumb in the centre

not going to help
your echo location
in size
shape or
form

what with all those
quantum entanglements
and collapsed
wave-fronts

every
moment of delivery
makes me think then
dream of
    standing before you
in an alternate universe

where without the
uncertainty of your
mode of
    analysis, manner
of reception

there is no point
to this game at all
I