I. 
All our assumptions were based on a lie. 
That was the first cause of our problems. 
But the situation was so inconsistent 
what could we ever have gained? 
So if you seek the meaning of life, 
blinkered toad, flickering dragonfly, 
you’ll barely live. 
It was a hollow reiteration I made out 
of that carved-out loaf 
within a solipsism that seemed 
like the stacking of blocks. 
Faced with the proposition of absurd 
recursive nausea I am left with 
a dilemma which is undecidable. 
Sometimes even relativity falls apart. 

II. 
Help navigate the boat through 
this brutal and invincible winter. 
Your pulsar-sized beacon 
has been my guide so far 
upward from absolute lack of rebellion. 
Begun with genesis, ante 
in the pot spontaneously 
here and gone 
tear gliding down a gun 
drips from Mum 
on her child’s drawing 
of Dad’s last aeroplane. 
Autocrats puff on breeding beehives, 
they destroy ourselves 
through essential progress. 

III.
Just past the safety of the wall, 
I have without doubt known malevolence 
so too the mechanics of envy 
and so deeply cellular the memory is elephant. 
Through withered leaves and unread books 
he walks automaton to mother’s room. 
The rest of her objects are hotly contested 
by all the relations. 
Aboard the new lightweight spaceship 
where happiness gets too much good press 
it seemed so key in context 
that half of us are undernourished.
No theory can encompass itself, 
excepting perhaps some vague anti-circumscriptivism. 

First published in "Selection" 2018.