HOSTILE TAKEOVER
We installed a firewall,
Splashed the walls with fire retardant,
Plumbed in a fire hydrant in the bathroom,
Cut back lurking vegetation for a fire break,
Fired our double agent at the embassy,
All to prevent the rumoured
Hostile takeover being prepared by
HostileTakeover.com
Taken over minutes before
The Liquidation, and
Fire Sale.
OUT OF TIME IN THE TIME ZONES
We sat around the crystal ball,
Gulping Spumante from crystal glasses,
It became clear to the 3 of us,
Crystal clear, that our
Fortune-telling was a sham,
Lady Gotitoverus was
Naked for a reason.
>>
Now that I’ve come to the realisation,
To the understanding that
Everything about the human condition is ridiculous,
I find myself immobilised.
>>
Toppled and
Erected and
Toppled again,
The ruins
Bleed a
Little of
Themselves
Onto themselves.
>>
Under rearranged skies,
At an unconvincing juncture,
I went to sleep a dog,
Woke up a cat.
>>
The buses I travel in
Have a window solely
For me to look out,
Nobody is ever
On the buses with me,
The only people
I see while on buses
Are footpath people,
Traversing.
>>
On the overbridge
The waiting had
Begun and ended in a single arc of the sun,
Heel down hard in the walk back thru
The underpass,
Wind tunnelling
I lean against it,
Over a cliff
Waiting to fall,
Goading myself to fall.
>>
Out I look from the window
To the world where everywhere
There are experiments underway,
An entirely experimental world
Where nobody sits comfortably,
Nothing escapes analysis, and
The gathering promise of overhaul is
Actually a threat.
>>
If only I was handed the Hindsight File a little sooner in the day.
YOU AND ME AND ME AND YOU
I carried offerings
You would take up
On arrival,
I was back and gone again,
I mentioned not
Being ABLE
Not being
WILLING to
Sit in a room with Me,
I put Me on my back and
Carted humped-back for 10 years,
Smoky compartments, desert grit,
Sudden drops in altitude,
Women who mistook
Me for You,
You for Me,
Back by plane,
On foot,
Here I am, and
Me?
Never fucking left.
Argotist Online Poetry is the successor to the poetry section of the now no longer existing The Argotist Online. Send submissions to argotistonline@gmail.com. Next submission period is October 2024 to August 2025
Poem by Keith Nunes
THE FLOURISH AND THE FALL Lying down to Take it front-on Look-see What the hell is Coming this way, Catch a sharded reflection In the corner...
-
EQUATIONS #25 When I converse with N on the phone, in about my thirteenth year, our heads open up together, and we create an imaginative lan...
-
THE STUDIO The vista which then opened was one I never could’ve anticipated in the Nineties—the PAFA campus was set as a series of jeweled b...
-
EQUATIONS #26 Audrey, as a tangent to N, took the idea, not of broadcasting gossip but of sharing and disseminating literature, as a fait ac...