The Manual for the ZX81

GOTO non-recent abuse, and 35 years on
It seems that instead of typing 'PRINT "Play Player 1"'
In the BASIC program for that space invaders game
(Why should disclosing this make me, the abused, feel shame?),
He evidently typed in 'PRINT "Prepare to be bummed!!!"'

If by reading, in retrospect, the manual for
The ZX81, tracing what he did before
My visit to his house, commands he must have typed in,
I have fought him off once more, what of children akin,
But children I fear, subsequent I fear, who succumbed?

I write to the NSPCC: He was 16,
I was 10. He had set that message to flash on screen
Each time I lost a life; I repeat it verbatim,
Testifying to what is puerile and makes me squirm,
Sinister when his scheming and aggression are summed.

November Decals

My isolation is invidious;
Further isolation is imposed as a sanction.
My oxymoronic indigenous
16th-Galway-hair, ne'er avulsed by English traction,
Disconcerts.

In spite of sumptuary officials sent to verify verse written for tacit readerships,
I write for a muse, eccedentesiast, whose eyes do not smile at me in accord with his lips
But are frightened and minatory, seeming to say, "Away, no one asked you to write about me,"
While faithful to that other muse who is not a subject, the one who has come to me divinely.

As those with stammers, to obviate disfluency, audition words before stating what they want,
And are thus learning new ways, words, syntax, new things they desire, in procrustean kerning of font,
I tune rhyme into a state of proper harmony. Poetry is a revelation of what
I desire and what I praise and oppugn, for a muse who is subject, and by a muse who is not.

Other at the Vernissage

Venoms, emblems, figures fragment,
With Balkanised encadrement;
A white admiral's wings pulsate
Faintly on my back –
A barricade to isolate,
For who would trespass on the weight
Of wings, in onerous catchment
Of a maniac?

Other, here at the vernissage,
Where smaller frames through static charge
Affix to a primary work,
Titled Lazarus,
My soul is alate, a bulwark,
While my physical self is murk,
The bulk of my shoulders is large
Yet a nothingness.

Epanorthosis, pulse, nay, force,
Holding an irresistible course
At death, was countered, as forthtold
When Lazarus rose.
I leave and head over to Old
Street. The autumnal air is cold,
And within the station's concourse,
Leaving its repose,

The butterfly finds my shoulder
And notice, then, of its holder;
Whereupon, smoothing epaulette
To mind it clearer,
Careful not to unseat it yet
Expeditious, I weave to get
Back to the gallery; colder
And nearer, nearer.