Sunday, July 25, 2021

The Starlings in the Carpark are sick

Today I passed the Sunday papers
Let Tesco store the determinants
The various possibilities at least
They pay for data.

Today I parsed the tarmac
Carpark and the Starlings
Have sickened. Hiding between packed bumpers
They had recovered some numbers since spring.

Will they migrate, this flock. The papers
They ask nothing. Tell everything
Moral outrage and the photo editor
Is it that black energy that really matters?
 

Of migration routes, Baretta, for some soul
Has flown an Albatross across Oceans
Weaponised like a polarised Coleridge's foretelling retold
Do we not see to where this all begins

The papers which I haven't read speak no evil
Nor cite last year's laws making all GMO's illegal
Sequence editing patentable
Do you discriminate against the preciousness of time?
What hippocampal regions remain latent
That actin, the acting, the tight strung line.

The starlings in the carpark have taken for a fever
Like the pigeons did with claw foot
The bent fingers of the Mudra, their pallium
That possibly with care and regard we might reach.

The football evolves on the green
From the retelling of penalty shots, to pass and stroll
Some young white civillian
Sits with her red hair against the railings
Of the goal, her brother's push the bold mouthed boy's head
Toward the soil, softly as they might teach.

Some young white civillian
Has died in a jail cell
With predictive data driven stochastics
I couldn't be more sarcastic
If I mentioned Blair <!--the Giant--> Peach
Plus the Injustice of every and all those between each.

Sunday, July 18, 2021

Ode to Matt Hancock

 In these most rotten times
For ministers there is one unforgiveable crime
It is not to steal from the public purse
Nor lie on screen so well rehearsed
Nor lie off the cuff just unrehearsed
Nor fill the graveyards, break the hearse
Nor take bribes from foreign powers
Nor meet ambassadors after hours
Nor run off to yachts or Carib cots
Nor have no grasp of pertinent facts
Nor dither long and fail to act
The crime of state set far above
Is to be caught in the act of love.

For we can die on trolleys
Die in ICU
Die in care home beds
Die in hotels too
Overpay the staff
And undercrew
Pay grand fees to all your mates
But the highest crime beyond debate
The one sin the spin cannot cover
Is to be seen by the team in the arms of your lover.

Mistakes, mishaps, incompetence, corruption
Simple sabotage, complex disruption
Are all expected, indeed acceptable,
In high society even respectable
But the one unforgiveable vice
Is to be caught in a kiss with the love of your life.

There is no signature to the sickness more explicit than this
Hired for murder, sacked for a kiss.

Saturday, July 10, 2021

Precipice V

Look forward
Not down
Look to the cowards
Do they wave or drown
The townscape debates its own change
The investment it takes
To dig pipes, rearrange
Logic is a God built on these premises
Dismiss this as twisted
Or meditate on the relevance of Venice
Pontoons about the Arsenal
Inflatable barriers, cruise ships and carriers
We will all live in blocks and bubbles
Expect life expectancy's
Divergent inequalities, the troubles
The emergent qualities
Unqualified, who will survive
Land a foot on the far side
Or grip and dig your nails in
Hanging on in the face of this
Mid air over the precipice.