Going Down With The Ship - poetry by shaun patrick green.: October 2013

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Haiku #44

"Good things come in small packages,"

Say little people

In big houses.

Haiku #42

"Words are brittle," he says,

Bending in book shops,

An origami crane.

A TV Guide.

Cook like a MasterChef

Renovate like you're on The Block

Sing like you've got talent

Dance like you're with the stars

Let Sunrise give you a Kochie enema

Then blow it out your arse

Let the Bold and the Beautiful

Set the template for your relationships

Let Neighbours distract you

From those who actually live next door

May Today Tonight teach you

The same lessons they did the day before

Watch The Project and Can Of Worms

Because you need to be more informed

Become the blank slate upon which

Capital can write its epistle to the rich

Making you dumber makes them money

It would be a joke if it were funny

But it's not

In the end we will find

TV teaches us nothing more

Than a funhouse mirror

One of the greatest inventions

Of our time has been turned against us

Capable of enlightening millions

It now numbs us into acceptance

Sells us shit we don't need

Including ill informed opinions

Idealised bodies and greed

Crack cocaine for insomniacs

And those with low self esteem

Watched a sixteen year old girl

Chew dirt on My Weird Obsession

She had obviously been weaned on TV

Where fame is the drug of choice

Get your fifteen minutes any way you can

Without it life is meaningless

An existentialism of sorts

As if Sartré had eaten Nietzsche

And shat out a shiny Warhol

TV is the ultimate immanent surface

It has staged a bloodless coup

It both killed God and replaced the need

In one fell swoop

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

In God's Image.

If we were made in God's image

Then somehow the flesh got it wrong

Mistakes made at a genetic level

Irregularities in a system

More hit and miss than science

The ultrasound showed the tumour

A globule of impossibility

Dug deep in her breast like a tic

How do we deal with this?

Where is the magic? What is the trick?

In what kind of capricious universe

Does your own body set out to kill you?

Consoling silences and knowing glances

Only add to the tragic tableaux

If you do die you're a martyr

If you don't you're a survivor

Either way you are redefined

And in whose image are we re-made?

Some malcontent missing organs

Tongue, breasts, bowels and balls?

How do we go on living knowing

The original design has faults?

Should there be a worldwide recall

Of all imperfect humanoid life?

If so, we would lose a growth industry

And I would lose my dear wife.

Monday, October 21, 2013

The Midwich Cuckoos

Blonde children thicken like weeds

In this most Aryan of gardens

Gamboling about naked as angels

Communicating with each other

In naked baby angel speak

Making adults do their bidding

Screaming bloody murder

Are they capable of it?

Be wary driving in the street

Wouldn't want to unwittingly

Break a bone or thin the herd

Or like gold feathered birds

They would descend for revenge
Calling on all those unborn
To join this miniature reich

A world quivering in their eyes

Just another ball to be thrown

With malice at a neighbour's door

Or bounced against the dry stone wall

Of religion, politics and other lies.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Rabbit Traps.

I've seen you skulking in the woods

Watched you trapping rabbits

Tramping them back to your hut

Leaving blood trails in the snow

I wait for you to make a mistake

Follow the same path

Leave a latch unlocked

For I know I will get only one chance

I will have to take you inside

Cornered, unable to escape

You will be dangerous then

Lashing out with all your force

But you will tire eventually

The small space allowing no escape

Which is when I will close in

And crush your throat again

We have been here many times before

You and I hunting and hunted

So it goes on into eternity

Those cursed could not want for more

Gift of the Witches.

Three dire maidens

Call MacBeth to account

Don't offer destiny

But a view of time

There is no predestination,

Only choices,

But choices made within

Limited parameters

There is no doom only

Wrong choices

You can't foretell the future

Only grasp its many variables

And suggest possibilities

What of the narrative of the witches

Who are obviously trying to conspire?

On the one hand they are there

To facilitate regime change

But on the other to bring down a good man

Why? What's in it for them?

Sadly this supernatural theme

Is not born out in the play but merely

Used as a theatrical device

As a foreboding presence

Like the Greek Chorus

Who sing the decision our anti-hero

Has already made himself

Money Doesn't Buy Happiness, But...

Anthony earned six figures

And I'm not saying

He wasn't worth every penny

The man worked very hard indeed

Lived alone, ate out

His friends few, colleagues many

He owned an apartment on the river

With city views, a maid

Swimming pool on the top floor

He never had a house warming party

When I suggested it he just

Shrugged and said: What for?

I tried to explain to him the concept

Of living and giving in a society

Which respects your rights

For him the thought of owing anyone

Anything was more than enough

To keep him awake nights

Sharing, for Anthony, meant investing

In shares, stocks, bonds,

And annuities

He didn't believe in enlightened capitalism

Social responsibility

Or ad hoc gratuities

To him money well earned was to be well spent

Namely on those few things

Capable of providing pleasure

And yet Anthony was a man of few passions

He was not the sporting type

And had little use for leisure

Didn't windsurf, collect stamps, bird watch

Bush walk, snowboard, drink beer

Play darts or dive

He stayed in lit by his laptop screen

Browsing and ordering online - a man

Totally without social drive

His furniture was someone else's idea of chic

His hair someone's idea of cool

His wine club told him what to drink

Like Einstein he tended to wear the same clothes

Every day in the belief relief from mundane

Choices left more time to think

It was when I suggested some art for his walls

That Anthony's plight was for me

Cast in a whole new light

I took him to various galleries in a day

Some cooler some safer than others

But all with art on site

He said at the end if he wanted to invest

It had to be something

No one had ever seen before

So I took him to see a conceptual artist

Whose name was Livingston Crapp

Who had been a transsexual whore

Crapp's work was indeed outrageous

Especially the "Dead Bird" where

She walked around in a white room

Dressed in nothing but stockings

High heels, an Alpine Climbing Cap

Holding the spool from a weavers loom

Anthony said: I'll buy that - and that was that

Nobody could argue with his money

He wanted the show, he wanted it all

I tried to explain to exulted Anthony that

Crapp's work was highly ephemeral

Not something to hang on your wall

He said: Fuck it, I'll buy this überbitch

And watch her gradually depreciate

While I look ultra cool

And he dedicated a room in his apartment

To Livingston Crapp's "Dead Bird" -

The ultimate folly of a fool

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Winter Wall (for Yukio Mishima)

White her skin blossom scented

Snow so heavy and silent

The carriage takes us onward

Beneath the blanket upon our knees

Her hand awkwardly seeks mine

This is not the time for intimacy

Besides I think of cock and

I cannot write if no one is listening

At my uncles house the ritual will begin

Feasts and pageants and the white wall

Pine trees marking the path

I must walk alone to find nobility

Knife slicing through my belly

She cannot walk it with me

Shivers a little as if knowing

Snow falling heavier now

Quiet in the absence of language

Like a blanket that calms

Wrapping the world up

Like the abandoned baby

It always will be

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Lycra Nazis.

At dawn they roam in packs

Safety in numbers for those

Whose uniform harks back

To some futurist ideal

A fascist aesthetic

With a touch of S & M

Striking energy drink

Advertising poses

Stills from Triumph of the Will

There is no stopping them

As they bulldoze

Toward physical perfection

This militia on two wheels

Embodies Armageddon

A robotic hairless uniformity

No surprise lycra

Was invented by DuPont

Manhattan Project fanatics

Makers of the hydrogen bomb

The antithesis of humanity

Next stop world domination

We already have a lycra nazi