work in progress
"The
more conscious we are, the more mechanical we become."
-
John Gray, in STRAW DOGS
3.
TERROR
Happiness
is
terrible
Happiness is
absence of desire
Fulfilment of desire is America
Desire is what the Mummy-Lords decree
Where is a child who is born free ?
The
majority of majorities is wrong.
- attributed to the Prophet M'hamed.
5.
WHAT
I
know about beatitude
is that joy is surfing the void,
and love is the transcendence
of presence,
and happiness is just
the generosity of gratitude.
THE
MEANING OF LIFE
It
is enough
to picture blind conspiracy
of molecules - of stuff
and anti-stuff.
9.
AFTER
masturbating
in the Church of the Nativity
and then in the Dome of the Rock
the deliciously smelly
Diogenes remarked (with still-moist cock)
that in the Fools' Afterlife
hunger would be assuaged
with the least activity -
by rubbing the belly.
CHOOSE
A TITLE
11.
ON WAKING UP
I
never can get used
to constant resurrection.
Everyone
else
seems to wake up dead.
I
run the risk
of daily infection.
I
wish they'd all join
a Cult of the Bed.
Dogs
are the best in bed,
for they are happy
and don't want more
or less than
happiness,
unlike humans.
23.
Of the states of happiness
I'll mention one of three:
acceptance that you're as
happy as you'll ever be.
13.
LOVE
is
what we long for when we lack it
and stray or run from when we don't.
Hence
the love-racket.
GLOSS
ON LINES BY DAVID MAGRADZE
and IN MEMORY OF FERNANDO PESSOA
A
poet is not respected
without parade.
A poet is not even acknowledged
without performance.
It is difficult being a poet
when you respect words
and meaning, and not performance
and not parade;
and not publication,
because soon the world will end
in famine, war and stultification.
David Magradze is the Georgian Secretary
of PEN International
MADE
TO FEEL
If
you haven't a house you're made to feel homeless
If you don't have employment you're told you are worthless
If you don't have friends you're made to feel lonely
If you haven't ambition you're told you are aimless
If you don't have children you're made to feel childless
If you don't have religion you're told you are faithless
If you haven't hypocrisy you'll know you're not human
33.
SELF-PORTRAIT
I
am not a person, but a place
of thistly thought. Like a disquiet
I write spiky silences beyond
the terrifying noise.
Life is just glue
between unmatching shards.
Grace is stone, fur, fruit, catastrophe.
Timid, perceptive, aslant, aloof, impetuous,
I find that only alcohol
makes living seem a little less than fatuous.
42.
ANGST
a poem in
TOKI PONA
Ijo
li moku e mi.
Mi wile pakala.
Pimeja li tawa insa mi kon.
Jan ala li ken sona e pilin ike mi.
Toki musi O, antesona laso!
Sina jan pona mi wan taso.
Telo pimeja ni li telo loje mi, li ale mi.
Tenpo
ale la pimeja li lon.
14.
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 the minor malady of being,
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 a red herring in a cul-de-sac)
is as over-rated as a frequented beach.
36.
BECAUSE
we
have language
as well as desire
sex makes liars of us all.
19.
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
have passed me 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.
BACK
IN BED
When
I called the Speaking Clock
I didn't get a shock
on hearing: 'TIME
IS MERELY PART OF YOU THAT'S DEAD'.
2.
HOMELESS
God
lived in a hotel
because he sent the architect
and builders of his mansion
down to Hell
before the foundations
were finished.
He
died in his bed.
And everybody went on earning money.
Jesus
said
friends are to respect
families to flee from.
21.
THE BIG
step
to freedom
is to have no interest in what others think of you.
Or to cut
off your feet.
20.
SOME HOPE II
Enlightenment
is just an
extreme form of resignation.
From
the oppression of optimism
comes the emptiness of democracy.
666.
MY REVENGE
against
my unknown father
is the silence of my murdered sperm.
7.
THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA OF NOTHING
Work
also is a drug
We will addict ourselves to anything
The
workless
often sell their labour
and existence to the dealers
of heroin and crystal meth,
as billions are
employment-drugged
The
less-perceptible dealers
are shopkeepers, teachers
(none are more suspect than those who teach)
social workers, poets...
terrorists of decency
beyond rational reach
behind tills and office-desks, computers,
X-ray machines and counters -
encyclopædias
of emptiness
all
with caves beneath their skin
which hold their first and their last vomiting,
the tragedies of Athens and every human sin,
the unconquerable violence
of nothing.
8.
SOLITUDE IS A GREAT RESOURCE
Of
all renunciations
the most difficult is grief
the most certain is life.
That torn shirt
on the railings
could be God.
135.
SOME HOPE I
I
do not wish
to be more
than the whisper
of heart
before silence.
Death
is the greatest gift to the living.
1.
SOUFFLÉ DE LÈVRES
Unpleasant
people
have many friends.
13.
AFTER ADORNO
Novels
are anecdotal
Poems get more trivial.
46.
LINES TO SÉAMUS
A
poem is a kind of rumour
that goes nowhere
unless you're famous.
16.
Love
is what we long for when we lack it
and stray or run from when we don't.
Hence the love-racket.
LIBERATION
SQUARE
for Hauke Hückstadt
It
might be called Liberation Square
the terrible, teeming concourse where
two cheerful girls with Down's Syndrome
and time-bombs strapped to them
were dumped at what is euphemistically
called "Pets' Market"
to kill as many people as they innocently might.
It
might well have been
a pitiful release
a mercy beyond measure
for the poor
starved, degraded
cowering, cage-fouling,
panic-stricken animals
tormented in the gulags of our pleasure.
CHILDREN
OF AFRICA
(a
homage to Hans Magnus
Enzensberger)
There
is more variety in vegetables than in people
and I can eat them
without risk of prosecution,
courtroom mumbo-jumbo
and life-imprisonment.
There are 4,119 kinds of cultivated potato,
but people are all the same,
unearthy.
Hyænas
love tanks
or more particularly their dead crews.
Hyænas eat up their dinners
and don't think of the starving
children of Africa.
SELF-PORTRAIT
IN A WARDROBE
a
rag
beneath an endless rail
of empty, clinking
coathangers
CHRISTMAS
The
illusion of giving.
The squalor of selling.
THE
UNDERWHELMINGNESS OF EJACULATION
Sexuality
and I have had
'poor connectivity'.
I am not good at connection -
perhaps because I over-value
the illusion of autonomy.
The
surrender of autonomy
is pain. Death
the permanent surrender
of mere consciousness.
HISTORY
To
a greater
or a lesser
degree of other
people's pain
all leaders
all desperate achievers
are insane
OXYMORONIC
Poetry
Workshop
THE
IMITATION OF DIOGENES
Avoiding
breeders
meat-eaters
and hypocrites
that is to say
most people
my chief accomplishment
is to enjoy being alone
For
this I am grateful
to plants
and dogs
and weather
and water
and stone
THE
SECRET OF LIFE
Le
secret de la vie
c'est d'être content
en la détestant.
We
define ourselves
by allegiance, hatred
and religion.
We are the only hating species,
and if we were benign
we would not have
invented religions.
The
secret of life
is to hate it
and be happy
THE
TRIUMPH OF CONSUMERISM
Now
here
and everywhere:
nowhere.
TRUFFLES
There's
gotta be a reason
why the underneaths of
happy foreskins smell
of truffles.
And does Heaven's Great Collector
eat them, or does he
just sniff His Great Collection
from age to age, yea, unto Eternity ?
Do Jews eat truffles ?
Or Muslims ?
As for me, I find, will find, have found
the perfume of my cock
not just more exquisite
but a helluvalot cheaper
than mere truffles
- and available - to hand -
all year round.
A
WASHING POEM
I
wash my hands several times a day
My face twice a day
My
brain remains unwashed.
UNWASHED
The
only time
I take a bath
or shower
is after I get
too close
to hypocrites -
But
I keep well away...
IN
THE FOOTSTEPS OF CONFUCIUS ?
At
20 I wanted to be a Philosopher.
At 30 I wanted to be a Poet.
At 40 I explored a tiny corner of the Empire of the Senses.
At 50 I entered the Grottoes of Angst.
At 60 I rose up from the Depths of Despair,
despising, but not necessarily disliking, human beings.
At 70 I hope I will be rotting in the thicket
where I planted many trees and avoided using shears,
and which by then I hope will be impenetrable.
If
I live to 80, alas! I will not have got the guts
happily to end my superfluity of years.
POETIC
ESSAY
(after listening to William Trevor's
"Sacred Statues" on the radio.
In
Ancient Greece
men in their forties and older
had affectionate relationships
with teenagers - involving
genitals but probably not
arseholes. This, of course,
is perfectly natural where
it is not taboo.
In
Ancient Greece
unwanted babies were put
in special places for the childless
to adopt or the wolves to eat.
Wolves are admirable animals
alleged to foster human infants,
especially twins.
Why
cannot unwanted babies now
anywhere be brought or sent to a
recycling centre
for the childless to adopt ?
'Because
they might be used for sex'
(you may reply) - which is rather worse
than being devoured by hungry wolves.
But in a culture where babies
could be swapped and passed on,
and mature men could have inductive,
pagan-godfathering relationships with boys,
our bogeymen would not be child-buggerers,
but perhaps the heartless people
who keep the debilitated old alive in limbos
of suffering, confusion and neglect.
WRITING
HOME IN 2058
Nothing
to write home about.
HAIKU
Winter
and summer
up their well-worked arses:
the haiku-writers.
- attributed to Theodor Adorno. 
