Perfect poetry

Words drill truth
Into dull minds
Clear bacteria
>From diseased minds

Mental root canal
Open heart poetry

Wish they were mine

Imperfect poetry

Perfection is a worthy cause
You decide whether you've succeeded or failed

Imperfection is inspiration
It never ends

Dead poets

Poetry often
Doesn't lie

It lasts forever
Even though poets
Must die

For their spirit
To truly live

Lost carriage

She said butterflies
made her cry
Their beauty
Reminded her of lost children

Sometimes

Beautiful things
Can't last forever

Though

Their memory
Often does

Liquidity

Save the whales
Gorillas in the mist fade into extinction
The dodo shall never return
Rhinos are brutalised for ivory
Large tracts of land cordoned off to house these glorious creatures
But what of the people who die crossing them in search of life

Put cows on milk cartons
For every sip a village gets another mouth to feed
The rules of engagement are not theirs
Another hippie knight was recognised
Another pop star gets an audience with a president
Millionaires give millions to malaria
But cause leukemia with their investment

I say come with cash
Carry it in suitcases
And hand it out at the village centre
$200 to every villager
$50 for every child
Come back again next month
Or let's go back to the way it was
Before boundaries were built and borders created
Let's revive the cowry shell
Or barter our way through the marketplace

I'd willingly exchange words for food
Or poems for shelter
But they cannot fill an empty stomach
Or protect us from the rain
Their medicinal speech does not cure AIDS
Or eradicate poverty

I say bring cash
No credit cards, no cheques
No press conferences, no programmes
Just bring cash
Enough to eradicate debt
Enough to pay for the school fees for a few million children
Enough to ensure that kids are fed

Think about it.
If you took 5% of the net worth of the 100 richest people in the world
And handed it directly to the people who needed it
We could truly make poverty history

I say bring cash

Blinders removed

Inspired by James Brown and every mother, sister:

She has birthed herself from the breathe of dreams
Willed herself into existence on the hopes of her mother and grandmother
She is their voice in the present
And she will not fail

The winds whisper her name late at night
When undreaming minds have been laid to rest
And she sleeps in dimensions other than this one

She leaves nothing to chance
The universe is being re-modelled to suit her desired colour scheme
Hope and inspiration are dressed in matching garments
And the three of them spend their evenings carving the future from their laughter

We are merely players in a play of her doing
She has commissioned our lives
And pulls at the strings of our madness when we veer off the chosen path

It may be a man's world
But I willingly lay my being at her altar
Because it wouldn't mean nothing
Without a woman in it

Fire in her eyes

Flames of fear flash
Fuel for the madness
Crass manifestion of happiness
There are thoughts to last the planet a lifetime
Yet we recycle them at random
They've been heard before
Thought before, spoken before
The packaging may be different
But they've been lived before

We perpetuate cycles
Spin the wheel endless
And reinvent it daily

Have we not learned the lessons
Are we as feeble as Icarus' wings
Is our tendon the only symbol of immortality

The sound of the police is a siren ringing into the future
The sound of repetition is hearts cracking under the weight of a lack of originality

We are living dangerously
So dangerous that our madness has become normality

What shall we become?

War

While we sleep
The bombs rain down on the heads of unknown children
Their bodies are separated from their spirits
they return to the heavens
And forsake the physical

While we sleep
They carve our souls from the earth
Fertilise it with our blood
Build fortresses on our land
Take ownership of what is not theirs to take

While we sleep
They wage war in the name of an equality that makes them stronger
Renders us the weaker

While we sleep
The bullets penetrate our bodies
Cleave humanity from humankind
Evolve us to a state of barbarism that has never existed
In the name of civilisation

While we sleep
While we sleep

While we sleep
Our prophets, our heroes, our fathers, our mothers are killed and buried in mass graves of silence
Their words drowned by the drone of fighter planes and gunships that take ownership of the skies

While we sleep
Peace is reversed
War is birthed
Death becomes the norm
Mind control real
Passion smothered
Souls extinguished

While we sleep
We lose our relevance
Our existence becomes irrelevant
Our legacy is silence
Our lives are nothing
We cannot run forever

Wake up!
I said wake up, children of the night
The world is coming to an end
What shall you tell your children?

What's it all for?

I want to write funny poetry
Stand up comedy poetry
The kind of poetry that brings tears to your eyes and makes your stomach hurt
The kind of poetry that has you sitting in the fourth row
To the side in the hope that my eyes won't catch you
And the words won't speak to you

I want to write movie scene poetry
The kind that speaks to you in moving picture and sound
The kind that has you pondering the hidden meaning when the words have long been spoken
Or dazzles you with words that explode, crash and burn without CGI and any other digital endeavours that may mislead the eye

I want to write poetry that puts Picasso, Monet and Van Gogh to shame
As the words splash a multitude of colour on your mental canvas
Poetry that reaches into your chest, grabs your heart and squeezes it gently

I want to write poetry to dance to
The rare kind that has you bobbing your head to melody only you hear
Shaking your ass and tapping your feet to words that breath rhythm
The kind of poetry that mixes breakbeats with symphony, laid beneath a voice that sings straight through you
As opposed to at you

I want to write early morning poetry
A mantra that brings peace calm and hope
Meditation poetry for the mystery of sunrises
When the world seems clean and peaceful for one short, colourful moment
The kind that makes you feel whole again
And closer to heaven than life in the womb

I want to write cosmic poetry
The kind that traces the rims of the moon's craters
Kisses the stars and basks in the glory of the sun
The kind that orbits randomly between planets,
Even Pluto, despite the demotion,
And rides on the winds of meteors
As they journey through galaxies
In search of their final resting place