Digital Time and other recent poems

Digital Time

digital time is theft -

no one ever says this,

at least in this sense,

but the 1’s and 0’s go a

whole of hell lot slower

when we are at work…..

we think that it is merely

an existential distortion

but it is really the case:

the clocks move slower

when we are at work…

the rest of our time

is spent watching

corporate advertisements

the intensification of

labour & life

exploitation

deception

we tear each other to shreds

as the masters laugh

& eat our children

the sado-masochistic

infrastructure of power

plays itself out as we

lick the master’s balls

ask him to beat us,

steal from us, &

then have to go without

in the bargain…

& keep paying & paying,

selling our grandchildren

into slavery…

the past 70 years was a mirage

a legend, a fantasy – exploded

we are being laughed at….

but, they are not gods

& we know who they are

The Democracy to Come

She bends over

grasps crisps &

sardines from

her bag

Reveals supple

breasts wrapped

in her jumper

Political Crimes

unspoken

She eats sardines &

tomoto sauce

on a cracker

with her legs

spread in jeans &

cowboy boots

She drinks from

a water jug &

licks her lips

another cracker

& sardine

as she talks &

chews wiping

her mouth with

her hand

She stares into space,

leaning over to an

invisible other

to whom she gives

a portion of her meal

The smell of sardines

penetrates the cabin

dead sardines

pressed into a can

to be eaten with tomato

sauce & crackers

She has spilled

tomato sauce

on her jumper

as she smiles at other women

laughing (who are

talking about sex

with blushing faces)

Cardiff Central

She moves to an

abandoned table

revealing her lovely

son and daughter

They sit together

around the table

eating crackers

& sardines

She speaks on her phone

about knibbling

sensible food & snacks

asks her love what

he? wants to do for dinner

The boy shouts, “Chips!”

They will see each other again

in an hour & a half

The sun moves

toward twilight

over the beckoning

Welsh hills shining

in the last moments

of golden radiance

In tattered letters

on the daughter’s

hoody reads

the word

“Republic”

hang the money changers high

we know where they live

no more symbolism    they are stealing our lives      property is theft

telling us   our children that there is a better reward in heaven

if we only let them steal from us now     steal our life

they prey upon our children   their powerlust is sadism financial fools

steal our one and only chance  this moment    this open   this chance

don’t let them get away with it    they walk in waistdeep rivers of blood

they have stolen they have killed for too long

throw them from the temple of this life

hang the money changers high    piano wire & salt

traces of the inexorable

impossible turning away from the body,

as the text resembles,

a sign amidst the visible,

a mark upon many surfaces ,

just another body,

the breath of speech is also of the body,

writing, a writer, a pad, a pen, a text,

inscribed amidst a situation

detached from the real,

reflecting, recounting, reconstructing -

positing an ideal real –

but, detached from the text

is the writer, as the fabrication,

the marks of inscription,

this labyrinth, is only a ‘model’

deployed in our instruction

into the divine mysteries.

Gaza into the Nameless

we are dreams of sleeping gods

fragments of an eternal nameless

we ourselves must become nameless

lest we die, lest we become

fixed into marble, as all

statues were once alive

the violence of the name

kills playful life,

love and strife

children killed in Gaza

by those of the name

only god has no name

all else is captivated

created by the name

in the beginning was the word

the word freezes the tension

of opposites, it turns pink flesh white

the serpent slips through the net of the name

deep in the underground

Spread the Wealth!

Global meltdown for

the poor, fall faster into

nothingness, while our

stockholm syndrome

seduces us to bail out

our economic captors,

we masochists submit

to the sadistic rich when

we should instead throw

them into jail, make

them wear french maid’s

outfits & get on their

knees to clean toilets

for the rest of their lives!

Oh, but I’m sorry for

being offensive, of

upsetting the rich

criminals who rape

& eat the children

of the poor – whoops!

sorry ’bout that, can’t

seem to control myself

anymore with all of

this class war rhetoric!!!

Lock ‘em up, property is theft!

Take it back & spread the wealth -

from each according to ability,

to each according to need -

Saint-Simone actually, Karl

just borrowed the phrase

but to get there, first things first

lock ‘em up, spread the wealth

and admire all the sparkling toilets!!!

The Pope’s latest outburst in France

The pope in France

suggested that we

may have inadvertantly

become pagans again

with all of our lust

for power & money

Perhaps we have

become pagans again!

And, so what?

We have always been

pagans anyway, it is

only another word

for being human

But, we are not

pagans in the sense

of the Augustinian plague

of lust for money and power

Power & money

has always been

in the protection

of religion, of You -

it has always

been the church &

the rich standing

should to shoulder

No, we are pagans

since we lust for life

this single chance

to live, to be, to love

this incomprehensible,

ineffable fortune – awake!

That is our lust, to be

Not power & money,

our philosophers have always

praised moderation;

We will leave immoderation -

the lust for power & money,

and the greed for immortality -

to you, his holiness,

You arch-hypocrite & liar!

We are pagans!

So be it!

And, we will bury you

when you die,

in the Earth,

in the humus,

in Gaia, our mother

Revolutionary Defeatism

I walk down these dirty streets

and smell the disaster

of the theft of life from

the people by the wolves,

by the thieves in suits

and I wonder why in the fuck

we are fighting wars to preserve,

defend and extend this culture -

this cultureless culture, this

cancer on the planet – this

destructive excess, murderous

culture, raping the planet,

killing off the last indigenous

peoples, devastating the

cradles of civilisation -

I ask why, but receive no answer…

the scum drowns out the stillest words,

and I hope that this sickening fraud

of a culture is defeated, destroyed

washed away forever, to make room,

open a clearing for the emergence

of a worthy culture, a sublime people

The Revenge of Kronos

It has been said that Kronos

was exiled to the abyssal depths

in the wake of his double defeat

at the hands of his son and his allies

His first defeat occurred from the wrath

of his wife Rhea, at the site of his

ingestion of her children

She saved her youngest, Zeus,

by giving Kronos a stone, wrapped

in swaddling clothes

After his unbringing by nymphs

& goddesses, Zeus returned with

their arts, and giving Kronos a poison,

made the god of time vomit up his

children, who being gods, though

unhurt, were from thence on quite wary of

any attempt to mingle time & eternity

The second defeat of Kronos took place

when he and the other Titans arose

in an insurrection against the Olympians

This attempt was narrowly suppressed,

& the Titans were returned to the abyssal depths

Yet, it is with this defeat, at the greatest

moment of darkness that Kronos concocted

his most dire plan for revenge,

he withdrew time from eternity

letting the idea (eidos, ‘the look’) of a new divinity

float off into the sterile purity

of beauty, truth and goodness

In this illusory state of harmony, the younger gods,

Apollo, Dionysus, and Artemis ensconced themselves

into the world, joyously blurring the divide

between time and eternity, mortality and immortality -

until a magical bridge seemed to have been built

that one could hope to cross this divided line,

from time to eternity – the threshold, ramparts

seductively breached, there is no Prometheus

to suffer the punishment for transgression

Kronos bides his time, witnessing the

implosion and transmutation of realms,

he is certain of his revenge as time has

again swallowed life, power, creativity

Time went on and the old tension was

repressed in the realm of the gods,

but without this tension of life,

the gods slowly went to sleep &

Kronos hid behind a new narrative of a saviour

which fell upon the old stories just as the leaves

which fall into a blanket upon the leaves of grass

the story of a god made flesh, of eternity

descending into time, of being swallowed by time

the god become man is killed, only some believe

the tales that he lived again, already the

particularity of his homely, man-ly existence

recedes into the sea, as the dignity of the

ancient stories of the gods have themselves

been destroyed by the latest god-man

all belief in stories old and new are

swept to the wind, now merely products

of time, eternity no longer descends

into time, it is itself an aspect of time

itself, a nunc stans, a moment, a mere

feeling of an ineffable in-finite

the god made flesh is a talisman, a golem

serving the god of time, Kronos in his final revenge.

He again castrates Eternity, repeating

his first godlike act, giving to man

the terrestrial love of a tainted beauty

There shall be no other gods but me.

I am I

Yet, the repose of Saturn (Shelley, ‘The World Ages’) and Love that burst

became the age of resignation in the facelessness

of an infinite striving that was merely ironic

God lives, God is dead

there is no difference

in the Absolute

Who will feed the new Kronos poison?

Do we not already smell and taste the vomit?