writing – Page 8 – 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

JUST

poem is a
thing

one does not just
should not just
staple
together

wind, rain
solar flare
whatever the weather

whether enjambment
can just run
away with it
rhyme
superimpose itself
or superposition you
wave and
molecule in
relation to its pattern

breath blow
like electricity flowing
out
of a jug

magnetic pole, spin
see it be pulled and pushed
hither and thither

mussed up like
coiffure suddenly exposed
to what
storm can do

making it worse, much worse,
and thereby
intriguing reading

touching your chimes as
it wafts through your pagoda

appearing
out of nowhere, inviting
itself for
main course

settling down
prepared for sacrifice
ready
to give its all

pretty much
holding forth
holding the fort

conforming
to the topography
of your tiny plate
at your gigantic table

ZADIE INSISTS

Zadie insists
here lie
weapons of
mass destruction

vehicles
of terror

but I check my words
for the monstrous
genocidal
do not
seem to find them

no sign of bacilli,
nothing that
seriously Geiger counters

no anthrax
lurking
between the lines

no plague about
the launch itself
between the lines

no Bond PPK Walther
with screw-on silencer

unless
I am misguided
mistaken

and you see it, feel it,
smell it, taste it
hear it
all here

planning some small,
strictly limited, quiet
(and quite nonsensical
operation)

to eliminate some person
or persons

in the cause
of poetic self-interest

or the more entirely
delusional inclination

towards
liberating you all

whole of humanity

LESSON TO US ALL

my parents
stuck me
in box
to protecr me
from the world

also
one of their core principles
children should be
neither seen
nor heard
and loved sparingly,
as seldom
and as
little as possible
ezpecially if
sweeter and smarter
than they could
ever hope to be

stayed in the box God
knows how long
until Myers Briggs came along
told me
I was no ways such
an introvert, but a rampant
ENFP king cobra
extrovert

waiting for my moment
to burst through the lid
proclaim
my truth, announce
myself to the world

unbundle myself of all
the reams and reams of
relentless (if much
misguided) insistent creativity
emulating
my good friend, sometime
Muse, and fellow
box resident, Ms Sagittarius
Emily

whose cut-throat poetry, razor
images, a
divine lesson to us all

MEDITATION

I sit and meditate
think mandala
recite mantra

or, alternatively,
though not necessarily
in an alternate dimension,
I watch YOUTUBE videos;
play computer games

awaiting, patience
stretched to the limit,
the inevitable advent
of serious divine rage

in the form of accursed plague
or extinction level event

but more personally,
aimed at me individually for
my failure to act
in any meaningful way
to alter the course
we are on towards
unforgivable evil

these poor satirical efforts
less in the scheme of things
than slinging
a single pebble
take out the giant and
then every giant
in his gang

for which
one needs state
of the ordinance, top
of the line
defence systems

and the Devil
does not distribute
to just anybody
such intricate
technologies

has to
make

absolutely sure
they are not used for good.

THIS SPACE

found
or otherwise

you have no footage
of me writing, whole
creative process

you just have to
go with face value
take on trust

seems that no bot
wrote this
you think
as levels are
discovered;
let themselves
get uncovered

before, in
coming to
a reading,

you edit and
manipulate

impose
and frame
according to
best-
guess narrative

supreme
authority
over all
located in

this space

LINEAR B

the treasure is hidden
maybe they buried it yesterday
perhaps it was not
and will not ever
be discovered

buried as it was
at the beginning of time

but here is Homer
who threw his two
books at my head
as the goddess Athena
instructed

giving me
the choice between the epic,
the poetic, on the one hand,
and on the other, narrative story
via a story that is simply
the mythos
of story itself

having, for my sins and
pretensions, run with
the promise of this goddess,
eschewing the chance
to be loved or
figure of power, status
and wealth

for which
error in judgement
no Trojan war
in my lifetime, but
the enmity of Aphrodite
and
lack of
intimate touch

but back to the drawing board
and the key
theme of this piece

though Homer’s works oral
and recited

I am sure I read of scholarship
of text
voice reduced to word
in script
Linear A or B, perhaps
(given the nature of
this industry) all the way
through (American
pronunciation here
if you please) a
Linear Z

and me, unlike
my Father, so cyclic, so
non-linear

cannot
connect dots together, am
totally
unable to
draw a straight line

my Father sketching plans
to meet highest expectations,
serious
engineering requirements

and here I am, for
my part
a Nobody poet, almost
drowned
still journeying home

my words
running across
strict
line division, gallivanting
this way
and that way
flaunting, luxuriating in
the joy of
enjambment

buzzing like bees
(no
epic simile) all over the page

and so much I have
here
thrown out on technicality

that great 9000 Cyclops red
eye giving me
the wherefores
and whys

and me pulling the plug on
your blackboard your
whiteboard
T square and micrometer

searching
before we leap into
the arms of the Sirens, are
devoured by
Scylla, sucked into Charybdis

for what
the game is here, the genre,
the argument, the premise
the narrative

scribbled
somewhere on that board, in
its circuits and relays

somewhere buried there inside
in the floor beneath in
the wall behind

a treasure, a dark truth,
a secret

desperate to be lost
desperate to arrive

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ASTRAY