Tanks remix

I.IV

 

It was after the funeral

The tears and the drone. After

She'd gone up the hill. Near her

Home.

A young man came across tilled field

Covered in sulphur from head to toe

Gave her physical memory, will

And said to her, “You are not so

Alone.

These are their addresses and history

Their branching and probable destinies.”

There in the files the man had names

Important names, hers, others

His. History, chains, more. Their

Curse.

Foot snaps a branch and paths fork, part

From then on whatever occurs

She'd kiss an obituary. Walk

To the field where she first heard

Worse.

The window

In the rain, walled in by clay shades

And the scattered brick that repeats in rooves

Breaking spumes of green, this framed scene

Is the stuff of epics, snow blind boredom

Of escapes and flights. Yoked madness

And demons beaten like sled dogs till they drag

Some words, from the whisper of car wheels

In spray, from the soft pat of footsteps

Kissed by moist concrete. With this

Turbulent pot of spider stocked molten soup

Thick with all that's caught between Colombia

Canaria, East India, flies swarm, drawn

To the sweet rot, scent of piled corpse and sacrifice

The old headstones stacked like index cards

Against the moss stippled yard wall

Of St. Someone's church by the flats,

That sits locked like it or god forgot;

To the sediment of the anthropocene

The rich alluvial deposits of longitude

Of law, the first thawings of power's grasp

And what jungles grew, what jungles of souls

Where cut, chainsawn to planks

By the strong arms of freedom, shipping rope

And sails stretched like spider silk past sunset

And the clay shaded walls left

As testament, as embers and magnets

This horizon of stacked brick and rain

Is the stuff of epics. It's plain.

Blueprint for the revolution I and II

It has to be leaderless

As we understand the risks. Power corrupts

Dopamine makes fiends of Kings and Queens

Makes schooled folly and bullies

Makes a mass, a forest from trees and the rest of us.

The attraction of hierarchy, addiction

Of our institutions,

Manacled to mammalian mating patterns

As natural as they are arbitrary.

Did the enlightenment ever happen?

This great hubris of humanity.

We ape gods.

It has to be leaderless

Poly-centric, poly-archy, poly-anna

Democratically selected technocrats and planners

In a structure of proper etiquette and manners.

That is, checks, gibbets and balance.

Connected and injected with

All affecting the manor.

It has to be leaderless

A network that gets the best work

Tests first, then iterates

Builds and communicates all that is great.

It has to be leaderless.

II.

It has to be transparent

Infinitely perspicacious

Clearer than water

Clearer than glass

It has to be like optics and maps

Like microscopes, telescopes

Stethoscopes for every bloke

To slice and dice

Comb out vices, ticks and lice.

It has to be so transparent

That the path of every penny

Is crystal clearly apparent.

Every signatory and functionary

Every spreadsheet and file

Every phone number dialed

It has to be transparent.

Blueprint. Pyramids

We stand before Pyramids

We stand beneath pyramids built of wires

Built of cargo ships and computation

Built of our venerated law and custom.

That heave from deserts, where the band plays on

Upon the wreckage of old certainties

Upon famished, unwashed, terrified pleas

On legal instruments, players play on.

Watching seasons of reflected sun

On the gold crowned apex, as at Cheops

When the Nile flooded with slave bodies

When the mind budded with new found signs

When Egyptians learned how to split one

Into fractions and built pyramids.

There is no gold atop the pyramids at Cheops.

Their gods long since submerged by grains of sand

Their temples swept by grains of sand and lost

Their dead tongued edicts shorn of old meaning

The broken bodies of their carved idols

Like the scattered jigsaw of a crime scene

We could not begin to know

How to worship Pharaohs now.

We stand before our Pyramids, gold crowned

The gold cap atop Cheops long torn down.

Blue print for the revolution. Intro

Let's get it on, stop pretending
That we're stuck in the days
Of typewriters and pens
Bookends and postmen.
Just stop pretending.

Stop offering wooden soles not rubber treads
Stop offering fruit picking instead of bread.
Stop saying pigs can't fly.
We've a dozen ways to make pigs fly.

I'm not calling for a bit more for the poor
For men to do house chores
Or to let live and ignore.
I'm calling for all these old walls to fall.

For the cathedrals and palaces
To be redecorated, reconsecrated
For the entire architecture to be updated
I am not the only one frustrated.

Each election is an  affront
A front of rubber stamps and shackled tyranny
It's obvious when you understand it
Parliamentary democracy
Is premised on poor bandwidth.