Robert Maddox-Harle (aka Rob Harle) is a writer, artist, and reviewer. Writing work includes poetry, short fiction stories, academic essays and reviews of scholarly books and papers. His work is published in journals, anthologies, online reviews, books and he has three volumes of his own poetry published – Scratches & Deeper Wounds (1996) and Mechanisms of Desire (2012), Winds of Infinity (2016). Recent poetry has been published in Rupkatha Journal (Kolkata), Nimbin Good Times (Nimbin), Beyond The Rainbow (Nimbin), numerous specific anthologies, Indo-Australian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry (2013) and World Poetry Year Book (2014), Setu Journal (monthly), Asian Signature (2013). His digital artwork is concerned with the technoMetamorphosis of humanity.
He is currently a member of : the Leonardo Review Panel, Manuscript Reviewer for Journal of Virtual World Research; Member of Editorial Board of numerous international literature journals, including Setu Journal. Artwork, Publications, Reviews, selected writings and artwork are available from his website: www.maddoxharle.com
Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>
Poems
The Pram
he pushes a pram slowly,
deliberately, thoughtfully
along the river’s edge path.
salt air, divine nectar kisses his face.
deftly he plucks up rubbish
plastic bottles
plastic bags
plastic “stuff”,
stuffing them in the pram,
a desperate effort to turn the tide
to clean the filth of human thoughtlessness.
False Narratives
Running the road towards deep midnight
speeding, grinding down
society’s mind insidiously programmed
consumes seductively false narratives;
the new way of the pure Cyborg
(a contradiction)
transhuman, posthuman becoming.
A human to be rejoined with, The Other
(plastic, metal, silicone).
The mythology of the brain-horizon
crashes yet survives,
crashes and survives again,
and powers-down unified systems.
A sleeping binary matrix calculates
seven main points of original sin,
within a human existence
by the same self
explained by moral judgements
drawn from a false God
bruised-blue false narratives,
[DECEIVE AGAIN!]
Tortured minds calculate,
ways, means, possibilities, mathematically
to, [DELETE] our bodies.
The reality, insidious attachments
of the new social control,
the brain-horizon within society
looms menacingly,
mirage like,
and just as deadly.
That which she brings with the body
humming, clunking, never urinating,
a reinterpreted sense
to fully migrate,
[DARE, YOU?]
Who represent the dissenters,
the mutes within the dominant order?
one created from the great false text
(absurd discourse),
science at the debate of the interpreters
insists, forcefully
evolution was – the time of the body;
no more.
Hideous manifestations emerge
oozing from milky white laboratories,
a new concept for contemplation,
(without a hideous God).
Immortality
flies in the cold steel fractured face of humanity.
The Dark Night of the Troll
Hiding in seedy back-street alleys
intractable vagrants
loitering in the dark corners of car parks,
multiplying like warm yeast cells
these trolls are dangerous to humans.
Evolved from underworld trolls of the past
they have morphed into clone-like entities
with bodies of chrome-steel and plastic,
their wheels hideous genetic mutations.
They have infiltrated our cities
like corporate viruses,
lurking patiently
deceiving us with their apparent servility,
do not be fooled
these four-wheeled monsters,
like their Gopher cousins,
are enigmatically evil.
Trolls damage goods,
trolls damage bodies,
teasing us to overfill their bellies.
Oozing out from The Palaces of Hell,
with bloody Achilles’ heels
blood-smeared knuckles
torn shoulder ligaments,
we shudder along behind.
Self-determined the trolls charge forward
ripping the paint from the sides of cars,
smashing the corners off concrete columns.
Like all shrewd parasites
trolls do not mean to kill
but bring turmoil and torment.
Join your nearest Anti-Troll Society soon,
demand implantation of human-friendly control chips
demand modification of their DNA.
We must have happy subservient trolls
we must help these tormented wretches,
help them emerge from their Dark Night.
Twitter – Twatter
Surveillance, paranoia, cameras, Google Earth
spy force in disguise.
data base explosion, exploitation
profile
stop, buy, consume, be silent
add-your-profile to the (ME)dia.
Face Book
My Space
In-Your-Face
Twitter
Off-Your-Face
(Acid, hashish, ecki, ayahuasca, ice)
Violation: Synapse overload
give me more NOW!
Flood MY (YOU)niverse
Twitter twatter what’s it matter,
tweeter on the brink of overload
no addiction here (oh yeah?)
Need more wonder, wonder
wonder what happened.
Sousveillance, nonsense
no sense
I don’t care
I don’t care
I am a solipsistic nightmare
I buy more, consume more
all on credit.
Whats it matter?
What’s the matter?
Twitter twatter.
Someone else will fix the mess
I’m not someone,
just a statistic in a data base
of corporate megalomania.
Surveillance, surveillance
why should I care.
Trash the earth,
shit in your nest
catch the first space shuttle out of here,
when we’ve finished with the trashing
the trashing
the trashing.
Sound and Fury
Squaring the measure of silence,
silence prevails,
creating quantum computers in our own image
we fail to fathom the master’s mutated words.
We strut and fret our hour upon the stage
And then are heard no more,
our desires are a tale told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
The sound and fury is reaching its pinnacle,
the summit of desire is in view.
Reprogram your desire DNA with solitonic futures,
holographic computers networked to the Galactic Centre,
transmute endogenous laser radiation
using social-media interfaces
brand names of domination,
brand names of damnation,
the summit of desire is in view.
Our rose coloured denial-spectacles are turning blue,
the blurred myopic shades fading,
the paradox of stupidity and brilliance peaking,
reaching its crowning.
The Titanic is sinking again,
stressfully unconcerned – we order a new iphone,
stressfully in denial – we eat mangoes in July,
stressfully unaware – we breed like Drosophila.
The obtuse granularity of our denial
is overshadowed by our desire for desire,
the dark black-hole of our bio-quantum computer
is a mysterious worm-hole for neuroscientists
which reveals emptiness.
Squaring the measure of emptiness
emptiness prevails,
Squaring the sound of blackness
blackness prevails,
and so it will when we crash into the summit.
Artworks
Published on April 12, 2020. © Author.