What planet am I on?…
I can shin
from where the
the sun don’t
spin to a point
of sticking my head
out of the door,
beyond the corridor
through the wrapping
of the gossiping.
I will only see bigger valleys
on this earth.
Shelter and a lantern,
shapes thrown down
on the ground
what else is there than
the arcade of faces,
the present;
I will live and learn
about death from the wind
and give thanks
to the valley
and life not yet taken.
I draw some data,
like filling the kettle;
I watch a cat video.
There are data reservoirs
and I reserve the right
to get a cute cat video,
syphoned through the shute
and into my brain. How lovely.
Now are you telling me
that every time I watch a cat video
or maybe
a hilarious wince fest collage of calamities
or some such thing-
someone else is watching me
watching..?
Is that where the digital footprint is?
(and subsequent carbon footprint)
an invisible swarm of interest
that bites and swells
and so that that we call data,
digital water, expands all the time-
(data is a piece of information
-Latin, bloody Romans)
not because of me and my love
of cat videos but the offshoots
the ripples, the echoes, the murmurs, the scars
that come from
the watching of the cat videos..
all I’m asking is
will it be pointlessness in the end
that is the killer?
For those in a state of shock
isolate you,
for those short on shopping
join the queue..
shelves of plenty
suddenly abundantly empty,
a plundering plague of shoplifters,
high on the first sniff
of ‘what if’, passed through
so the back-footed, kind-hearted fools
assess with mystification
the lack, the lack
the lack of sense.
can’t we stockpile sense
and spirit, we might need it; not
pot noodles and wet wipes,
not go grabbing
at all the last shreds of opulence;
use sense; stockpile it:
sense! human sense,
environmental sense
community sense, health sense
just to use the future tense..
when the shops shut on us
and the gluttonous masses
of us have no easy access
to what we want and when
we’ll need reserves of it
because sense is security;
survival.
Stop and stroll man, stop and stroll
you’ve got it; the axe, the wedge
to wield your 3 chords and a truth
of stopping and looking and listening
you are the unacknowledged legislator,
your business is high vizness
for the vulnerable-
to make a space, a passing place
you halt the waltz, split the links
when the chain whirs again
to shepherd the unarmoured
to the other side, pause the tide
until this shrapnel is no longer a threat,
bicycles and buses are how we get
from a to b for butterflies and birds
and bees, one day we’ll make it big
for now though, another day;
another gig.
O window, double glazed vista,
O transparent slab of stairwell light
to aviate, I salivate
with breath on pane of the death
called ‘another-day-another-dollar’.
How did I get on your wrong side?
O rectangular O arbiter,
O inviting lens of adventure,
O magnifier of possibility,
I want yon wild, yonder fields,
to wander the backtracks
of the prospect of the aspect
that you offer unblinkingly, blindly,
as blind as the bricks
that, structurally, surround you..
O poet. Look on if you must
but I don’t exist;
you had to invent me,
O poet, netted in your indulgent
thoughts,
I’ve been haunted with gazing
pathetic faces like yours for ever.
You are free to go, as you are grown
now and-for all your fantasies
of tearing it all down-
nothing needs to be broken.
Stop your gazing and go,
talk to the battered door;
I’m sure it will open.
God didn’t say shit
until he knew all that spit
and sawdust was going to hold up.
But what he said there was
so there was sound
before light and sight
and black and white
just at the fork of the fifties
lightning struck on fertile ground,
splitting the narrative,
a dream from the dream,
gyrating out of the guts of America,
out of the gutter, self-delivered
of hillbilly soil, royalty-all hail:
king of the rednecks
we heard the news
before we saw it
there would be good rocking tonight,
and indeed it came to El Paso
they pinned the sin on him
-the first firework
before the pyrotechnical sky
we’ve lived under since-
gasping in their bobby sox
and flattops, grasping
at the subtext, this was the best
thing America had to offer
wasn’t it? Better than
the hula-hoop, Frank Sinatra..
oh the nostalgia, the dream;
fluttering, pristine
-before the flares, the amphetamines,
a rippling rhythm effect
that would build, seismically
and wobble the walls of the city
the rise and then
the splendorous demise
Eden’s blue suede skies
mushroom clouded,
the dream: duplicated
the myth: inflated
the man: medicated
and so Memphis
and all women and men
sank to grief, again.
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.
We have to part
to admit
the shell,
and lips to part,
and a throat
to assist
with eulogising saliva
to help us
swallow,
this bitterness;
for our sakes, this
last tunnel
we wrapped you
in our guts
before you left.
Total Fish Bowl: Barça v Liverpool
Divas. Look at them:
creme-de-la-creme,
South American, African, European-
high maintenance types-
sport strutters, warriors
of globally tribal interests,
of football, the legacy of empires;
the conquest is total
and we pay our dues
to these prima donnas,
glamourators, to flamboyantly flit
around our airwaves, now
in two colours clashing
in the green fish bowl
installed to diffuse in every
house, hand-in every land
and here comes
Barcelona, a shoal of stars
bursting with pedigree,
it’s all madness, din,
passion, will to win;
we all switch on to this
to share euphoria for one
for devotional escape,
obliviousness of them-
glue-sniffing: the sense of us
and hasn’t it always been thus-
and how those powerhouse peacocks
got pecked at by the blood red
fighting fish of Liverpool,
almost made redder
by the atmosphere of the Anfield aquarium,
in that oxygenating hysteria
we watched as they fell apart
against ‘heavy metal football’;
no place for the gold plated.
What goes in and what goes out?..
As we go on with us all connected
and personally feeding
to the mothership of gubbins
that makes the world
go round now, the cogs
the clogging crap is a sagging cap
and disconnection,
with everyones heads bent,
wilting in numbing illumination..
Brothers, these two, tapering boughs
after the severance of spouses
biased, off balance as a Y
with an arm chopped off,
the acquisition of new knees
like hinges to carry on stretching..
both have their political constructions
-one left, one right-
a Marxist and a Thatcherite
faces of a coin, symbiotic
and reinforced with devotion
to their rags:
Socialist Worker v Daily Mail.
Like a back-to-back they share
and were shaped the same;
the foundations, the compassion,
the work ethic, the language,
the humbleness, from the heart:
consensus but opposites
they grumble, they crumble
as towering time threatens
more and more they add more glue,
get more spiky, it’s hilarious
but its no joke.
Time sends roots to undermine
and its no oak.
My Deerboy 