Poems
Model Misbehaviour
some day I'm going to cut the cat-walk model out of the photo
and paste her into some morbid part-time position
where she'll be required by order of management
to shoehorn herself into a two foot box roughly
prop behind job title, counters, bars with no stool
or else default on conditions of employment
and one day, by chance, long after she's rediscovered
as Miss Yes and creams her face into a cosmetic career
she'll remember her muscle rage and multiple corns
the dropped bridge and toe crimp, her convalescence in poverty
for an ankle restoration and post why do women pain for beauty
wear impossible shoes and drown their night away in foot spas?
and someone - not a friend - will reply after drying her feet
and indulging in a sarcastic pseudonym, it's people like you
Neuro Evolution
as continents drift might organs drift
toward a body of wisdom
organs as raw, ingredients of change
inspired by an other-worldly mind updating
our continental body, its sensory plates,
our nerve-stitched skin, tectonic cloth
a one-sided cover that daily assumes
our enemies only do battle at the front
a fossilised design for a seamstress of vision—
a fantasy physician—to cut another template
"just as the physical world renews, we see
body-parts-volcano-like. Think Krakatoa."
in this futuristic furnace, technologies ready
with their vulcanising heat, for a fit survival
on a volatile earth—their ideas not mine:
eyes to multiply, with some relocation to a higher
floor, opening brains to the possibility of sky
automatic eyelids to trick the missiles
noses pollution-savvy, some close to ground
vacuuming smells of the dust we abhor
the soil we mistreated, the dirt now to love
mouths as sockets for knowledge, female input,
a power board of mouths compatible with progress
with taste-bud alarms for molecular assassins
ears to flex, wide-ranging as wolves
retractable for safety, swivelling to listen
to the animal channel, its strategies on humans
skin to remain as one source of newness
a lavascape flowing to replenish the day
the body ever growing, the mind a quake