Tis neon now fiery crush
on starkest smithereens
squealing come rest track
as beaming traces show
lost pay to moth masque
and smugger captions
beguile each shut lively
now sent beyond in furs
or go garland the wrath
dice in hot dashing rivet
with hammy drills racing
on old warp factor blush
hand to geld wax mouth
spangled to windscreen
diamonds gone to crown
its veil in mergent blue
*
The specs go finger tapping, heaps of fees
the peas in a row, singing
undo the fast and hand-packed slop of aid
all together now, blithe box
spread roughly over ladders, blue on blue
the thing heart cooling off
and wedded to spine-killing in wry slacks
who even cares about no. 7
now give and gray showering in the dark
to note a single absent dog
you, me and the clasp of far satellites
tuned to gloating precedence
the feathery hatch with renewed gusto
and so much for dualism
*
As the double sack fits the mendicant
done to a yielding purée
in thousands so offered up for burning
so stripped of muscle tone
the world of the firstest bursting its gut
come slurry and ordinance
as number locks onto incoming souls
the prosaic but bright light
spread to how floral leaflets of practice
flow weary ways or waters
and how the mass destruction eagerly
spreads its cynical umbrella
awaited with everything up in smoke
and conventional weapons
in the latest mockery and cakewalk
for an audience of one
Three of the untitled and unnumbered poems in Drew Milne's Go Figure (2003), which is an attack on mathematics, accounting, calculation, statistics, and numbering: as instruments of social oppression, manipulation and control; also as intellectual tools with pretensions to grasp real things, which they can only grasp in a violent sense, excluding the understanding, or rather relationships, that sustain life in natural communities. But anyway Go Figure shouldn't be defined by the polemic of its Afterword (titled, with the usual irritant pun, "Aftermaths"). Shouldn't we add science and technology to the above list? Probably, and these are all commonplace themes in literature and popular culture. Our stories of mad scientists or people being treated as numbers or dystopias that only the hero sees to be wrong are manifold and now too easily consumed. They are generic fictions, cautionary tales that stimulate a fight or flight readiness that will never be called upon ("disturbing" is the approving critical term). They are straws in the wind, sure.
Go Figure is rather difficult to consume, and perhaps attracts only the already disturbed.
Tis neon, that is, tis not noon (despite the fiery crush) but an artificially lit space that to some extent makes ridiculous the time or weather statements of lyric poetry. This might be nightshift, shelf-stacking.
starkest smithereens. This poetry is full of emotion, or rather, emotive gestures. Not just stark but starkest, not just first but firstest, a generous sprinkle of intensifiers (so this, so that), a thundersheet of squealing, gloating, yielding and burning. (Yet smithereens is what you jocularly call it when it's just spectacle, when any emotional consequence is denied.)
come rest. Another aping of lyric, the frequent exhortations to "come" and "go" , e.g. as in the title of the book itself, or "go garland" or "come slurry". As the thoughtful audience imbibes lyrical poetry, there is not in fact much coming or going in evidence, but that seems to be quite a good analogy to a virtualized consumer world in which action is something staged and for the most part imagined, but activity is incessant and concealed.
as beaming traces show. Words like "as" and "how" are used to connect material together into a single experience stream, without any real pretence that the materials are related in a specific way or that it would be interesting or innocent to claim this.
cynical umbrella. The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima.
cakewalk. A dance of broad triumph. Originated in slave plantations, mimicry of the owners' genteel manners.
Labels: Drew Milne
