Octopus

I am one Like short of being beautiful.
Five hundred more Followers, I’m away
to fight culture wars. I Block two for lies
Quora does not verify. Counter-factuals
are ok, there’s simmering wastelands
to make out of vague, but someone sent
a shroom Emoji I do not understand
the meaning of, though all Emojis
are cuckoo spit on new pasture.

I love the chaste, hard summaries of AI,
all-knowing and naive as the christchild,
a friend, reading headlines in bathwater
we share and if viewed from beyond
the bathroom door, it’s hard to say where
one green, suckering leg ends and another
begins. We are like octopus in small crevices
the oceans flow through to gyrate, moil us.

Ken Evans’ collection, ‘A Full-on Basso Profundo’ (Salt) published 2025. He won the Kent & Sussex; runner-up, Daily Telegraph and AUB; commended, Cafe Writer’s. Poems in Magma, Poetry Scotland, Acumen, UtR.