Waste Man Dem - excerpt

Slipping as a bundle into the amber lights Both giggled, a blurry sight Small pocket of echoes That scuttled, wrinkling the silent roads.

Each turn of Angelina’s head tickled

The intricate filigree tinkling

Like a strummed harp.
Her ears glittered, sparkling.

Smoke billowed from the stack

Thicker cloud against duff cloth

Bricks blackened and the brittle roof
Held a parliament of twitching Rooks 

vi

Cass was a silversmith

When with artifice she made the gift

She said to Icarus “This design is too delicate

The threads may break

However much care she takes”

Icarus fell, rested

A bowed sag that heaved convex

Concave with each cycle of his chest

As he breathed.

The thief and kingdom's contraption - a fable

The poor thief knew
In the palace was a contraption
That controlled the whole kingdom.
So the thief stole in and took it
But couldn't make it work
And knew not what the thing could do

And so was not king
But a poor thief in a broken kingdom.

A bit (c. 2013)

Why whip your horse ?
It is a bit
And bit taught
Seeks flight
Away from ever present strikes
The hedges whip
In wilderness where dwelled
A rudimentary happiness
Now in this space
The horse is lost.

Somewhere
There is a broad path
Trod by well shod hooves
The kind of which I cast
Aside, now could surely use.

Phimaximissimo hummed - Waste man dem

Phimaximissimo hummed
Pondering the imploding quasar
How the charges summed
And what would be said by the neighbours

Phimaximissimo's pole was hot
The shifting troposphere a distraction
From the composition of knots
The neighbours expressed their dissatisfaction

A qualia of cosmic quipu
Transited an entertaining arc
Phimaximmismo pondered what gravity it outgrew
With flourish, appended a signature mark

Phimaximissimo stretched tectonics
Pulled a slight contraction mid-north
Wondering whether the appropriate tonic
Would be an extended lava bath

A fable not of bees but wasps

Perhaps it was focus lost
On what edict can enable
To argue and evade costs
Forge and falsify the labels.

That rules were not
What made all virtues tools
But wool to shroud
The eyes of fools.

Bend, burn, blind, bury
Backwards rules will turn
Be off with all the money
Before the slow law learns.

That in a world of plenty, greed
That in a world of beauty, lust
And so it was a fable
Not of bees but wasps.

The egg does not know

The egg does not know
From whence it hatched
Yet still shall unfold
The pattern etched.

Just as the gull
Will peck a red spot
On a beak
This infecting bot
Will never learn it leaked.

Phiminitto's emergence - Waste man dem [draft]

 A twinkle
A star spot flicked on
A single ray shone
On Phiminitto
A source of life was home.

~~

Into Phiminitto's starry spot dropped
A crimped metal circle
There were colours painted on the metal
A crown? A fairground ride? A bottletop?

~~

In the starry spot, the sharp shine
Of plastic and a wooden sole appeared
The metal circle's angle rang a chime
To Phiminitto a sweet orchestra to hear

~~

Sometimes the ray from where the wind blew
Would transfix Phiminitto
The round black edged revolving circles Phiminitto knew
Their metal frames and bright colours would come and go.

~~

The movement woke Phiminitto
Aligning with the influx
Digesting the regular radio
Something that tasted of muck

~~

The spot from where the wind blows shone
The round black rubber, red outline
Rolled on, black, white and another one
The first was a little behind its time.

~~

Phiminitto shifted under the currents
Relaxed, feeling capacitous
Considering what the weather was
The smaller shape became apparent.

The pilgrims parasite

This plague of pilgrim's parasite
To run for God or behind walls to fight.
What with reason we have divined
Is signs of self-defined divine in mind
Now blinded to a future bright
By flames of burning steppe alight.

This plague of pilgrim's parasite
That parses argument
Propels us argonaut
With urgency and agency
Through lattices argent.

This artificial insect God, its compound eye
Has not the resolution to see truth from lie
Nor in all the data reams
Distinguish history from dreams.

This is an earth that bares its teeth to God
Once defied rationality, now remystifies all odds
Scratches sacred scripture to re-epitaxi tracts
Sculpting neural graffitti and twisted brain hacks.
Some claim, without venom, to have coiled snakes around the rod
The pilgrims parasite now travels iron shod.

Frankincense and chaos

I shall put the shelves you pulled down the street
In the back shed to bring order, organisation
You left more, an always.
Frankincense and chaos append you in thought
Like the Egyptian Plover
Tooth pick in a Crocodile's bill
Wilful, joyous self-demolition
It must work so well in desert air
The pungent scent that touches your gum
Equivocal, enticing.
You left the Queen of Hearts, with faster to run
Forgotten so much
As in art, a master of one.

The tail that wagged the dog

It was the amp that agitated
The bug that bred
In the hair that itched
Of the tail that wagged
The dog.

The Free Press

They fought and fled
In shackles died
To have books read
And town hear cry

To make print free
Words cut and dry
So all could see
With their own eye.

And yet is seems
Under the Sun and Sky
The free press now
Were cheap to buy.

Sonnet for the start of false spring

The sun has left frost dust on bonnets, rooves
The bright morning will bring with it false spring
Buds of calamitous ignorance prove
Curious sheep at the abbatoir opening

Cast of this act speak barely a murmur
Still information falls like a monsoon
Gutters, swollen, are steaming with rumour
Hive mind, herd sickness, their place have assumed

The caravan of packets blossoming
March Hare, Maladie de Primavera
A tail not captured in its telling
Which in speaking makes truth but the rarer

Once again harsh hailstorms in lost April
Will strike tender petals off the apple.

Tensors for Karma

Eye's seared by sparse clouds blink.
This narrow world, the thread
The unspooled past
The tangled ball on which all pull
Unfurls through mist that lies ahead.

Through tensors
Can we produce Karma
Calculated where we believed gods lived?

Can we impute the interests of all over time
Is our mathematics insufficient
To extract the complex coefficient
Must we pretend all dance a single separate line?

Would the world be calmer
The right people tenser
If through sparse clouds
We used tensors for Karma?

Hurkle-durkle

Make all this cold dawn darkle
Work and all its hurdles curdle
Murk cuddled feathered covers
Lover curl my hurkle-durkle.