Ctl X, Ctl V

Abstract Noir by Michael Rogers

Here’s punk, rock, rolled to anarchy,

a collage zine beyond your norm -

bipolar swings and roundabouts,

lines overstepped in monochrome.

From underground to overland,

sourced adolescent shakiness,

dissatisfied with growing up

into premould, presetted shape,

outside the box - beyond the pale -

four horsemen of apocalypse.

Let serendipity be rule,

the fall of things, chance visited,

and find the shadowlands beneath

the expectations, board bard bored;

they talk of light from upper left,

event horizons, curvature

of space time in continuum,

where strictures prompt to disobey.

So cut and paste your poetry,

find typewriter with monkey play,

dyslexia write reading way

and feed as alphabetti soup -

confuse with hex broomstick brigade,

to lunge in mystery of swamp,

discover wraiths in Elmo’s fire.

With logic banned and perchance flail,

opencast opportunity,

try verse both blank, free, recipe,

words insufficient parallels -

unsuited our cosmology,

unbalance form - my Parkinson’s.

Conflicts, raging, every turn.

JHWH wars on ٱللَّٰهُ أَكْبَرُ -

global tetragrammaton.

Without the morse to save our souls,

a dot or dash can kill a child,

both binary and Unicode,

as unclear trans old ♀♂.

Decode encrypt our only hope,

NATO phonetic alphabet,

where juliett meets alfa male -

and ˈælfəbɪt sounds off again -

told printers watched their p’s ⅋ q’s,

both eroteme and ampersand.

Precision aim has had its say.

Ctl X,  Ctl V  = Keyboard shortcuts for Cut and Paste

JHWH = Jahweh, a Jewish name for God; without actually spelling out his name; it is written only using the consonants... ٱللَّٰهُ أَكْ بَرُ = 'God is the greatest' = Allahu Akbar

This was an image challenge set by an American poetry journal, The Parliamentary Literary Review, in 2021.  I researched the artist, and rooted in his personal story, wrote this piece.