"No-one
can be called happy who is still alive."
- Solon of Athens
THIS
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There is no good reason to stay alive.
'Wherever you look, there is an end to your troubles.
Do you see that precipice ? That way you can drop to freedom.
Do you see that sea, that river, that well ? Liberty sits
in their depths. Do you see that tree - stunted, blighted
and barren ? Release hangs from its branches. Do you see
your throat, your gullet, your heart ? They are all escape-routes
from servitude. Are the exits I show you too difficult,
requiring too much courage and strength ? Do you ask what
is the straight road to freedom ? Any vein in your body.'
- Seneca
DRIVING HOME AT SUNSET FROM THE CINEMA
for Suchoon
Mo
The sun
is the colour of gold-mixed-with-blood.
The moon at the opposite end of the sky looks like the
papery skull
of the Unknown Victim detached from the mud.
BIG
BANG
In
the beginning
god burst like a balloon
showering the world
with dirty shreds
of indestructible
Hypocrisy.
The
baboon in the laboratory
desperately holding the pig's heart
which "scientists" have plumbed in
to his neck
(and which is going septic)
cannot cry
My God!
My God,
Why hast thou forsaken me ?
Infection
of matter
Molecular fever
A painful collection of scatter.
The
condensation
of darkness.
In
fighting death
we extinguish life.
How fortunate I am
to have had no father
and never to have sought a wife!
If
I - a clot of clabber and bones -
were stupid enough to desire to
"have my life over again"
I should want to be born a shepherd
not of sheep
nor even of wolves
but of stones.
Before
acceptance -
illusion
After
acceptance -
burial.
Apart from
everyone
I listen to the crows.
and I practise howling
which
is poetry.
To
be born is to be defeated.
It is a well-known fact
that the dead cannot commit suicide.
The idea of Heaven is nice for children.
Our destiny is not our destination.
Joy is a leaf on the ground.
And
life is a refugee.
Meat
on a plate.
Is
life itself the tragedy
- or only human evolution ?
After
Descartes
'scientists' nailed dogs to walls
to show that beasts could not suffer.
Hacked
love from reason's belly
and chopped it into
childish dreams.
Our
comfort is the measure
of our disrespect for many
creatures, many things.
In my beautiful garden
the feeling: How much longer ?
Beauty
dies where comfort lies.
The
worst that we do
to
each other is nothing compared
with what we do to mammals, fish and birds.
Outliving
evolution
we
are all idiots-savants
stupefied
by the tightening tyranny
of
our concocted words.
I
move as the shadow of the shadow of a wolf
among mummies wound by the vast webby mire
of words, in which there is no cranny
of culture that I honestly
can crawl into. Nor have I found
a human to admire.
Street-furniture
everywhere, but no signposts
direct me to the abattoir.
The
sun sinking
tells me to stop thinking.
Truth is way beyond words.
CHALLENGING EMILY DICKINSON
"Because I would not stop for
Death
Death kindly stopped for me..."
Nature's
red in tooth and claw
But we are black of heart.
There's more "soul" in a jackal's paw
than all our works of art.
So I will
kindly stop for Death
and do the gracious thing.
And with the gift of my last breath
transform to sweet
nothing.
THE NASTIEST
WORD IN ENGLISH IS
TROUBLESHOOTING
(ANOHER NASTY WORD IS SERVIETTE)
At the poetry
rave
a hermit sits in a small cave
toasting his chest by the furzy fire and eating
little mushrooms. He dreams the mystic murderings
of Money God Shame
and the oceanic liberation of equines.
Praise the black veins and foamy manes
of dancing stallions!
Praise the deliciousness of lice!
"Before
you kill a beast
you must be beautiful," a proverb runs.
"The stranger the meal the better,"
said his soulmate over the sea.
The only poets are cracked mirrors
with cracked voice.
While people
who would not squash a slug
eat gelded bulls insatiably,
roots shoot softly from his rectum
and a thousand holywording worms
turn poems into almost-something
not seeking
but giving,
not owning
but being
and raving and drowning.
THE SCHEME OF THINGS
for
Dalan Lusaj
ALPHABETICAL
A
is for atom, which has many parts.
B is for bomb, so dear to men's hearts.
C is for cock, what you do to a rifle.
D is for doom, which is only a trifle.
E
is for end which we're all of us living.
F is for future - it's quite unforgiving.
G is for Google, search-engine of choice.
H is for hoodlums, who once were sweet boys.
I
is for me who should not be here
J is for Jihad against all things queer.
K is for Kali in Heaven Above.
L is for Limbo the circle of love.
M is for monster - what Man has become.
N is for nation and nasty and numb.
O
is for ogle - what I do to dogs.
P is for progress that's lost in the cogs.
Q is for quiet: the peace of the dead.
R is for raucous: the thoughts in my head.
S is for steel destroying the world.
T is for triumph with banners unfurled.
U
is for umbrage, so easily taken.
V is for virtue by value forsaken.
W doesn't scan - I'll move to X
which is for excellence, lurking in wrecks.
Y is for yours, from terrible mines.
Z is for zillion - far less than Man's crimes...
PARADE
I'm not
happy with Parade
which is why these poems are placed
by stealth upon one web-page among millions
- where you, a tiny few unknown to me,
find them, by accident, in haste,
in passing...by stealth.
You are my tenebrous
and virtual wealth.
ERECH/URUK,
IRAQ
We're told
that writing was invented here:
lists of weapons, foodstuffs, kings, kinsmen,
laws and penalties.
Here lived the first Man-God, Gilgamesh.
Here children beg for ballpoint pens.
Here there
is no fence around the ruins,
no
turnstile, booklet, shop or guide.
Here there are no tourists, toilets, postcards
or Keep Off notices.
Here is
the first city.
Here urban evil started
to gyre its tentacles across a world
which now it strangles.
Here was the New York and Washington
of seven thousand years ago -
the best of man is his ruins.
Not far
away is Hamurabbi's Babylon
whose ruins were so recently reconquered
by American Marines,
and turned into a huge base
with helipad and roads wide enough
for trucks, the shards of pottery
and threshing-floors
covered with hardcore and gravel
dug up from elsewhere.
The best
of man is his ruins.
HAIKU
A teeming
ant's nest -
mind, examining itself,
finds only matter.
THE
GRATEFUL DEAD
Time
is kind
to very few
until the end
when time is
infinitely generous.
XANADU
In that
exotic land
coffee and pornography
arrived at the same time.
Coffee they called
American Tea.
Pornography they called
American Joy.
WHO GATHERS
KNOWLEDGE
GATHERS PAIN (Book of Ecclesiastes)
(remembering...dismembering)
Success is succeeding at seeming.
Along with
Schrödinger's cat
I am a hole
inside a hole
staring out at a fog.
I have written
and destroyed so many poems.
O to have the brilliant connectedness of a dog!
THE
FUTILITY OF TRYING
TO COMMUNICATE THE FUTILITY
OF COMMUNICATION
98%
of our genes are shared with chimpanzees.
We have polluted 98% of the world.
Dogs are bored 98% of the time.
Nearly 98% of life is mechanical.
More than 98% of us are lost in the plot.
And parrots think,
and parrots mope.
O
praise
the 98% of thinking animals with the integrity
not to pray or hope.
NAMES AND NUMBERS GAMES
A
man who kills five people
is called a psychopath, a serial killer
A
man who kills ten people and himself
is called a terrorist
A
man who has a hundred people killed
is called an entrepreneur
A
man who has a thousand people killed
is called a politician
A
man who has ten thousand people killed
is called a Minister of Justice
A
man who kills a hundred thousand animals
is just doing his job.
PITY
OUR INTELLIGENCE
Even our
suffering is arrogant.
Every
army is edible.
God's name is Frankenstein.
We are his monsters.
This Chinese bear, captured while
a cub, will have spent almost its entire life in an iron
straitjacket while a dirty metal tube inserted by "superior"
animals directly into its liver drips "magic"
bear-bile like rubber to be sold as a fortifier to the
rich...
But hundreds of thousands of animals suffer just as much
mindless cruelty in American laboratories. In the "democratic"
USA no figures for animal torture can legally be published.
"Free speech" on animal welfare is regarded
as criminal by the American régime.
HARDEST
OF ALL IS TO WRITE WHEN YOU'VE SOMETHING TO SAY
I spoke
to a turd
another day.
No reply
came wafting with the breeze.
That turd was smart
rejected art.
Hell is
where there are more people than trees.
WHEN
ALL THE WORDS HAVE STRUTTED PAST
THERE'S JUST THE TRAMPLED TRUTH
Desire is
the destruction of the world.
ALL SOULS
DAY
Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val
(boundaries
between the things misnamed)
Here in
the graveyard
the rotting corpses lie.
The newborn depress me.
But it cheers me up to know
that I and they will die.
COMPASSION
Pity the pig who has never seen light
Pity the food that she eats
Pity the Christians, Buddhists and Jews
and the people and dogs that they've beaten
and killed in secret and in the streets
Pity the dolphins in tuna-nets
Pity the tuna, too,
and the 93 million new babies a year
and
the pitiless, affluent few.
OBSERVATION
after Bardhyl Londo
Where suicide
is outlawed
it is not to protect us
but to keep us from escaping.
THE WALKING
WOMEN
Some men
are deeply attracted
to other men's
phallic collections of nerve-ends.
The walking women
with arms like angry pendulums
are not walking out of their traps
but inside
another routine.
ON READING
A COMMENTARY ON THE VISION OF THE PROPHET DANIEL
To the invisible
nothing is divisible.
The visible is
infinitesimal.
I am infinitesimal
amongst the visible,
but not quite invisible.
My vision goes beyond
the visible and I see
misery
to gods unknown.
The cross
we don't
quite die on is Desire:
we call it Throne.
HOW CAN AN IRISH POET
FOLLOW YEATS ?
(in honour of Christopher Marlowe)
They danced for joy
as the towers were burned
the Towers of Ilium:
the sack of Troy.
Shall
Notre-Dame's twin towers collapse,
shall vainglorious Washington be sack'd ?
And is bin Laden the new
Odysseus ? or yet
the new Æneas,
the falsely-justifying hero
of societies not founded
on the principles of greed and debt ?
RIBS
FOR OARS
In a world where no-one
says or shows true feeling
I cannot hide mine,
and regret that I regret
that I am not a dog.
UNDERSTANDING MÖBIUS
The meaning of catastrophe
is
the catastrophe of meaning.
If the human brain is
as wonderful
as we are constantly told it is -
why are we not living in Paradise ?
Why are we the only stupid species ?
Great poets are dead and
dutiful.
The dead are always beautiful.
combat 
crusaderism
COLOURS
First, every
tree and beast was burned.
Then the worship of the guns and the
boiling of the blood-smeared
boots for soup.
The best of man is his ruins.
Trapped
in our private catastophes of comfort
we only seem to live:
comfort, even more than consciousness,
makes criminals of us all.
I am terrified
of white.
Stainless
and murderous
it chops hearts and minds.
The moon is bone.
Why do we
prefer stories to insight ?
Grey is the witnessing of silent stone.
Knowledge is the white of slaughterhouse,
experience is red as abattoir,
red and white the screaming brains.
Purple broods on its corrupt, corrupting wealth.
White is frightening
freezing and sterile
eating with stainless democratic dragon-teeth
like cancer
through everything
Black is deep truth.
Flies are the sun's kisses.
If we kiss those
that celebrate the outcast's eyes
we'll learn compassion
and become a little wise.
WASTE
The evil
of war
is not just the killing
but the hypocritical taboo
against eating the slaughtered.
AMONG
THE MANY TRUTHS THAT RELIGIONS TRY TO HIDE:
There is
no need for faith.
Serenity's
anonymous - anonymous the guide,
and joy is the loving breath
of death.
ANOTHER
FOUND POEM
(sent as spam: who needs to write poetry
now when such as this arrives unbidden ?)
Collect
a big lower on your medicine
dependable classes,
Peak quality.
gargantuan variance, including not easy to find drugs
No prescriptoin
appropriate.
Hush-hush with No waiting space or engagements needful
Obtain in
bigness and Save! granting added
Please type www [dot] rxall [.] org in Your browser
command Hold, sir, opinion move said Villefort, do within
not prolong this
And your slave?
By sign my grandfather. Arrogant
Oh, number Morrel, relax pray love him for
And thought hence, noise spring said Villefort, arose
payment my affection
'It is well,' said he, kissing road baby plant it; stick
it is my mast.
FOUR
SEPTEMBER POEMS
1. WRONG
In 1970
I looked forward brightly
to the Collapse of Capitalism
with False Communism tumbling after.
Now I understand that the merchants
of desire and misery thrive upon
calamity, and not just the calamities of others:
Capitalism will do very well
out of the Collapse of Capitalism.
God has no conscience.
2. STUPID
PEOPLE: STUPID GODS
They've
got us by the balls,
the Christians. We thought
that reason would release
their terrible grip, but they have
subverted reason
with their 'values': hypocrisy.
A missing
British child abroad
is worth more attention than
a million murdered Congolese.
The merchants
of death
and destruction, of numbing
comfort and greed; the merchants
of luxury, of entertainment
of continual longing,
have got us by the throat.
We are unheard, or, if heard
dismissed and ridiculed.
The only
possible protest
is suicide-bombing.
3. RELIGION
In the unlikely
event
that there is a god
he's a nasty, bitter sod
who turns good into evil
- unlike the devil.
4. TENSE
We are the
indefinite
strung very briefly
between absence and infinity
longing and failing
to define ourselves
and everything.
CONFESSION
OF A VASECTOMISED AND SKINNY MAN
Between
a careless and unknown father's sperm
and the meticulous injection of embalming-fluid
the I I think I am absorbs potatoes, wines, ideas,
Armagnac, impressions - and expels
piss and sweat and fæcal matter
- and semen but no sperm
- and I can't get any fatter.
TOMBS
FOR THE LIVING ARE ERECTED BY THE DEAD
Poems give
me no pleasure
no satisfaction like painting
and paintings do - why
do I write them, then ?
I just feel the urge - like
masturbation - and (as with
sex) don't rate the product
too highly. From a young age
my goal was the learning of wisdom,
the finding of truth, the Life Worth Living
- but no help was forthcoming - except by dead
poets and novelists - not by philosophers, nor
it almost goes without saying, by teachers
or friends or relations. And I have met no-one
to share my demanding obsession, and so
in my rich solititude I write poems that no-one will read
(for 'poetry' now is mere anecdote, void,
chopped-up prose that wins prizes)
- or if they do read, they won't understand
or be moved by to seek understanding.
Although I am now happier than I ever was
what I write is depressing, for
everything I want to celebrate
is threatened
or destroyed.
WRITTEN
WHILE WAITING FOR A TRAIN
(floating + sinking) -
breathing = dying
(with or without a little, or a lot of, pain).
WHAT
WE CONSUME IS CRIMINAL.
WHAT WE WASTE IS DESOLATE ABOMINATION
Rats laugh
when tickled
and dogs smile,
and Duns Scotus believed
that the world was born
when the Trinity fell in love
with Jesus' soul,
and in Massachusetts there's a law
preventing goats from wearing trousers.
Botticelli threw his paintings
on a puritan fanatic's fire.
The sound of one hand clapping
is the amputee applauding war.
I AM
HIS WHITED SEPULCHRE
Of course
I should have killed myself
after O. was clubbed to death.
I put it off. Although I bought a body-bag
I put it off. I rewrote my will.
Although I carefully composed
a terse farewell to three friends and the coroner
I put it off. And - hideously - now
I've never been so happy. His death
was the prerequisite
for me to buy a house in France
and there spend half my time,
a regretfully-sometimes-happy hypocrite.
WHAT
SILENCE MIGHT HAVE SAID TO SPEECH
Listening
to the sperm die in my scrotum
and to the shedding of dead skin,
to the thickening of my blood
as I live out my minor malady of living
I reflect
that none is more suspect
than those who teach,
that to be single, solitary, is far
from being a punishment or prison,
far even from being a limitation,
but an accomplishment - a prestidigitation.
And sex
(a headless chicken,
or red herring in a cul-de-sac)
is as over-rated as a frequented beach.
HYMN
TO DIOGENES
OF SINOPE
ON MY BIRTHDAY
Now I'm
66 and I have a travel-pass
and I don't do up my fly
and my trousers smell of piss
and family
and riches and career
I let pass by
and I'm sipping cognac by the fire
in France, composing this.
Alcohol's
a tender friend
if you treat her with respect -
like dogs - and unlike men
who'll stifle you, unchecked.
Man is the
cancer of the world
evolution turned to tumour,
mainly because he has an
undeveloped sense of humour.
"Death
is the least
awful thing that can happen to anyone."
-
Quentin Crisp
NICANOR
PARRA
(20th
century Chilean "antipoet")
for
Paul Flaherty
In poetry
(he wrote) everything is permitted.
With only this condition of course,
that you improve on the blank page.
But that
is an impossibility.
And the blank page is a miserable
come-down for a tree.
Then there's arse-wipe paper
which used to be newspaper
and slim volumes of unread poetry
and the holy books
which accounted for the loss of Eden.
THE
DIOGENES SEQUENCE
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