Tis neon

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.