Firefighters

My Deerboy

We’re all firefighters now.
Yes campers, we may lie
zipped up on the blind side
of the fly sheet
but our tent is on fire,
our continent; flammable.

‘the gym’ is out there;
no more loitering by the pool
table, working on calendar poses,
no more I do swear
allegiance to pudsey-the-bear
when there is smoke in the air

there is fire,
like a rash, like rain
like last year but worse
all over again,
spark life; spring and summer,
hidden havoc seeded
in our wild gardens,
to cover our roses in ash..

debunk and deblinker,
learn the lift and descend on the pole,
tune in as Earth detectors,
tackle 2020 as Earth defenders;
a call for preparation-
to pick up on a beat, a drum
of warnings of warmings,
heed sensitive alarms
and data and hype
before the lament of the hosepipe.

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Peak District

It’s shape is a remnant
from the in roads and out
roads and industrialisation
and what’s left is the manor,
manless manor in the middle

It’s a back yard dog
for Lancashire, Yorkshire
Midlands, chained up
panting in unbroken heat;
shaking off deluges
when they come.

get back there, explore
hear the silence implore
‘In wildness is the preservation of the world’

You’ve said hello

Your dog broke the ice
of a spring morning.
Up ahead, affirming
fondly herding words:
come here,
you’ve said hello.

Barca v Liverpool May 7th 2019

Divas, almost aquatic
in a fish tank near you
prima donnas, creme-de-la-cremers;
South American, African, European-

high maintenance sport strutters,
colonialist dancers as warriors
of football; the legacy of empires.

The conquest is total
and we pay our dues,
subscribe to the tribe;
goad the global glamourators,
to flamboyantly flit
around our airwaves, now
in two colours clashing
on the green stage

and here comes
Barcelona, a shoal of stars
bursting with pedigree,
it’s all madness, din,
passion, almost blood thirsty
will to win in the glue-sniffing:
the sense of us
and hasn’t it always been thus?

how those powerhouse peacocks
got pecked at by the blood red
fighting fish of Liverpool,
made redder by the atmosphere
of the Anfield aquarium,

in that oxygenating hysteria
we watched as they fell apart
against ‘heavy metal football’;
gold plating roughly stripped
like scales.

Geek

Bring Me Back

What he took took him
and that was the road,
that was his road to ruin.

Where he found his soul
his soul was taken.
What he did was his undoing.

Was it gravity,
was it destiny?
a road opening

a road, a pinning
she knew, she drew
what she could draw,

a never-ending
landing rope,
clutching at straws.

What he took took him
and where he shared his soul
his soul was shared.

She kept a hold of life
but part of her always
ready to answer

and brought back when
a certain song
brings her back to then

Back

Just when you thought the passion had gone
the passion is back;
rest your head
put your nerves back
in the reserves..

all that emotion, that promo
pro motion and promotion
is back, all that needle
of the banterful game,
a want was scoring into a need,
an internal battle of external consensus
around futility, a simulation
of a war state, a stimulus-
back-on, the stimulus of
us against them,
let us kick-start and consume
get back, switch on and drink
from the aquarium.

Right Of Passage

There may have been a point, a right
to cross, further up or further down;
a bridging strip of black and white
on the conveyor in and out of town.

Like themed Lego though, I don’t recall
any; just blocks in basic colours
on the conveyor, (before the pulsating all
new pedestrian pullers

that interlocked in time
with the gridlocking).. we went
to the papershop alot, a fixture in its prime
for magazines, sweets; entertainment

and where we came to
the hazardous main vein
the papershop was right in view
sitting beyond the sporadic traffic lanes

it was on my periscopic radar
to get across unaided
without the marshalling of a mother
self-reliance, risk; self-graded.

Passwords

Their own devices

boxing and bouncy castles;
deflated. The life sucked out.
The race reduced to a run,
the human trundle;

if I can cut in I’d say
that thrusting blade;
blunted,

and a lot of it was about status
and a lot of it pleasure;
curiosity and marvelling and ‘progress’

That’s why there is no
substitute for the interface of interaction;
real people in real time in real places
and the real reason
that the next generation is fucked
if they think that living remotely
with screens and the ‘internet of things’
is sustainable.

Without interaction
it’s all in review, rewind and degeneration,
without the oxygenaters,
the hydrogenaters of life; coming
together. god, in his heavenly quarantine
help us, if we have to rely
more and more on the web.

another snipe
another snip