Karma

A wealthy young prince called Gautama
Loathed worship of Krishna and Rama;
“It’s inside you,” he said
But, once he was dead,
He was worshipped.... That’s interesting karma!

First published in Ambit, April 2009
Republished online in Verse-Virtual, February 2018

Life Extension

Religion leers:
“Join me, or you face death,”
And History jeers,
“Inevitable death.”
But Science still adheres
To schemes to postpone death.
The path of a thousand years
Starts with a single breath.

Published online in Bewildering Stories #746, 21 January 2018

Haiku - Young Man

Where's the young man gone
Who lived in mirrors so long?
Putting old masks on.

Published online in The Asses of Parnassus, 11 January 2018

Gods on Trial

Gods on Trial

When all the old gods go on trial, loud cursed
In the High Court of Public Thought Review,
Jehovah (tribal god of bronze age Jews)
Stands of his vast pretentiousness accused:
Claims he created Heaven and Earth
When he was born six thousand years ago!
(Can’t define Heaven, doesn’t even know
If there’s a difference between Earth and Universe.)
God of the Christians and the Muslims too!
Won’t do anything against the AI
Displacing all the gods. Thor in the dock
Scratches his bull-neck, Odin his empty eye,
Zeus his cock.
The gods are human, know they face death, forgotten
As any carven deity, buried, rotten.
Concerned, they fidget restlessly -
Only Jehovah, the least self-aware,
Storms he’s exempt, blusters with beard and hair,
Thinks his small tribe is all that there can be.

Published online in Snakeskin 244, October 2017

Body Modding

It starts with teeth, for even the healthiest:
Fillings put in, and “extra” teeth pulled out
Or realigned, the whole jaw moved about,
New faces for the kids of the wealthiest.
Tonsils, appendix, out. The stealthiest
Inject, use pills, every fluid reroute
With tourniquets, with tampons, condoms... flout
Flow, through to adult nappies. Atheist
As Science makes us with creative powers,
We add pumps, implants, radio, wires, chips,
Casually as tattoos, replacement hips;
Graft patchwork skin from humans, pigs, plants, flowers,
Joined in flamboyant Frankensteinish suture,
Racing against decay to cyborg future.

Published online in Snakeskin, January 2018

ON RUNNING AWAY

They may not think of it as running away,

But at 15 they:

Entered the convent and put on the veil

Got in the pimp’s car and became a whore

Enlisted and were given a gun

Joined the sect to work for free.

              Many never got out alive.

Never join if they tell you

What food you can’t eat (for religion, not health)

What clothes you must wear (that mark you as different and owned)

What music’s forbidden (even if no one else hears)

How your hair must be cut (for organizational reasons)

Run away!

They are stealing your life with their vows and their lies!

Run away! You are under no obligation to stay!

But running away does not need to mean attempting suicide -

From that too, many never get out alive…

O young people!

At 15 it is best, if you have to leave home,

To go overseas on a high school exchange for a year.

Almost as good (but short term)

Is to run to your family’s friends

Or your friends’ families.

But if you have to leave family behind

It is better to run off and join the circus

Or move in with an artist

Or work your way round the world on a boat

And to go from idea to idea

(This is the secret. Not to get stuck in any idea. The world is too large),

Than to live with the one-idea people

Who will suck your brain dry.

You may never get out alive.

Published online: Snakeskin 225, January 2016

WHEN KONRAD LORENZ

When Konrad Lorenz studied how small fish

Overcame lethal greedy tendency

By activating new dependency -

Called love - to build a larger fulfilled wish,

He clarified the dynamic sweep and swish

Of conquest across Earth’s wide land and sea

That gave to humans such ascendancy,

Watched warfare grow as in a petri dish.

War against Other creates Family.

The nut of war that no hard mind can crack

If opened would show God Life Blaze Attack,

Drying white hot deaths else left clammily.

So life says Outcompete! Outnumber! Breed!

Build Love of Tribe and State! Expand! Succeed!

Published online: Snakeskin 225, January 2016

AN ATHEIST HOPES FOR HEAVEN

There flows in my veins the most ancient of ardors:

Not power, or love, nor yet worship of God;

The fight that each tiniest baby fights hard as

Fought earliest man: “Understand!”  Pry and prod

With unquenchable flame of the world-disregarders

For Truth! – be it complex, destructive or odd.

If this fire is from Heaven, then Heaven I’ve earned;

So write on my grave: “This stone too shall be turned.”

Published in Shot Glass Journal, #18, January 2016

THE FUTURE AS CDG TERMINAL 1

The future is a long low passage,

Whitewashed, undulating,

A moving forward-flowing track,

No chance of going back.

The future has no message,

Its ads are guides only to the past,

Misleaders, redesignposts,

Echoes, undefined ghosts.

The future is travelled without presage,

Always onward, none comes back.

Predestination without destination.

Stationary or walking, you’ve no final station.

The future goes on until you get off.

I won't. I will not to get off.

Published: The Rotary Dial, Toronto, January 2016

THE FUTURE AS EVENT

The future like an avalanche

Is roaring down the sky.

If you’ve prepared no hiding place

Then be prepared to die.

You never reason why.

The future like a question mark

Is scything humankind.

If you can see, then handle it –

You’ll be cut down if blind.

The future doesn’t mind.

The future like a giant wave

Is heading for the shore.

If you can ride that wall-like wave

It’s no wall, but a door

Into forever more.

Published: The Rotary Dial, Toronto, January 2016

HAPPY LOVE

Midnight making moonscapes of you on my mattress

I bounce across you in shadows and one-sixth gravity—

One-sixth gravity, and five-sixths levity.

Published: Rat’s Ass Review 2016

JIGSAW HEART

My heart's a jigsaw Eschered with small hearts:

Poets: Donne, Arnold, Hopkins, Eliot, Cole – 

Ancestors: captured, wed while on parole –

Family: formed from wandering in wild parts –

Bits of my heart. A house, view of the sea –

Rain-lilies, poincianas, jasmine scent –

Azaleas, goldfish, owls, field grass rain-bent –

Cafe on loud street – quiet library –

My jigsaw's nearly done, a work of heart!

But where’s that long-lost girl-shaped piece…

Lost, it prevents the whole, prevents my peace…

I circle endlessly for that lost part,

The missing statue for the purposed plinth,

That girl lost in some Escher labyrinth.

Published: The Lyric, USA, January 2016

EIGHT LEGS

Odin had a spider

In a web above his throne.

“Out!” he said; it came to him.

“And up!” he said; it grew.

“Legs go this way, legs go that!”

The wind began to moan.

Odin touched a spur to Sleipnir,

Through the storm they flew.

Published, Anima, UK, No.2, 2016

THE EXHAUSTED MINE

In the hard granite of a human chest

Love’s small explosions blast a cavity.

While pumps and sluices clear ore and debris,

Miners create a cavernous heart divest

Of wealth gone out. There may at times unfold

Sad tales of miners trapped by falling stone,

But life demands the risky work go on:

This treasure chest of granite’s veined with gold

The world demands be brought into the light.

A huge cathedral of the spirit’s left,

Caverns of empty worship, dream-bereft,

The treasures claimed by others as their right.

But flecks of gold still glitter in the gloom,

The heart remembers glories in its tomb.

Published, Anima, UK, No.2, 2016

GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME

The wide world has its glories

In a rich complexity

But sitting watching the sun set

Is good enough for me.

Canada has six time zones

From sea to sea to sea

But one tide lapping where I sit

Is good enough for me.

The muezzins in the Saudi mosques

Wake all to pray and pee

But a rooster crowing in the bush

Is good enough for me.

And Singapore is lush and green

And managed prettily

But scrub grass and a sandy beach

Are good enough for me.

All – good enough for me.

Published online: Snakeskin 225, January 2016

DARKNESS

I miss the dark.
Nights pitchblack as pitch in the seams of the planks of boats on a starlit sea,
When you walk in a garden
With hands out in front in case you walk into a tree.
Moonless nights
Where stars let you grope over rocks at the beach with blind eye -
And then the moon rises
Like the sunlit reflecting rock that it is. Then you can see. Can see why.
Why I miss the dark.

Published online: Snakeskin (UK), November 2015

RAIN / ELIZA

I love the loud rain on the tropic roof

Telling me I’m warm and dry.

But the house doesn’t last forever –

We have to work to repair it always, always.

I love the quiet breathing of my Liza

Telling me she loves me even in sleep.

But –

Published online: Snakeskin (UK), November 2015

PORTRAITS

Easy enough, the people in the park,
A subway addict, or some screaming child:
Knock off five lines from some chance-heard remark,
A tic observed, or mood or clothes gone wild.

A longer piece for loves, coworkers, friends,
People you’ve bonded with, played some life game;
Can’t be so flip – unless the portrait bends,
Fictionalizing thoughts in formal frame.

And closer to you than your own bed mate
Is, tougher yet, perspective and full view
Of parents, more than threaded through your fate,
They’re warp and weft, the loom, the weavers too.

So, last of all, the golden trophy shelf:
That great and grand grotesquery, yourself.

Published online: The Poetry Porch, October 2015

IMPLANTS AND BIOTECH

These are the scarecrow years
When frost tears glisten
On molded and painted cheeks, beside ears
That no longer listen
Being more deaf than dead
And hearing only
Through implants and inputs into the head
Bonily, stonily.

Fears come while certainties lapse:
Fears of the dark,
Of abandonment, monsters, uncertainty. Now (perhaps)
Some Schrödinger’s shark
Divides cosmonaut, cryonaut, chrononaut
From those who can’t trust
The unknown, are ill-taught, or die without thought.

Thrive on change, or be dust.

Published online: The Rotary Dial, Canada, September 2015

THE MOON

The birds of dawn

Sing Come out on the lawn.

Flowers

Say Seize the hours.

The day, the sun

Say Don't stay – look, laugh, run.

Warm rain

Says More! Again!

A tree

Simply says Be.

Beyond the trees, the beach

Rumbles Extend your reach.

A cliff

Asks: If?

The sand

Calls for a handstand.

A wave

Says Misbehave.

Sunset

Asks you, Done yet?

The moon, that overhanging stone...

The moon says You're alone.

Published online: Snakeskin, UK, October 2014