Who's gonna hack the tanks

There were tears in Tahir

But I fear in coming years

Young soldiers won't be there

Just massed robotic ranks

Then

Who's going to hack the tanks?

I.

Let me introduce you to her

She lives after you

Not long after

She has a name

But it is not important

She has many numbers

Pick a number

Any number

It is not important which

It will relate to her

Pick a hex code

And a double helix

It will relate to her

It is not important

That you understand

Only, the important thing

Is love.

If she needs a name for you to love her

Give her a name.

If she needs a voice for you to love her

Give her a voice.

If she needs to be beautiful

For you to love her

Read here that she is.

II.

The voice on the phone

Said to her

“I'm doing everything I can to help”

The voice had a name

And a number, which she had recorded

The days extended, went and came,

She held for hours on the exension

“I'm calling from a friend's phone, it's just

I have no power, it's not just

I have no power”

“I know”

“I can't catch a car, or get a drink

In a bar, is there someone

Can you find out”

“I have no doubt, no passwords, no cards

Your account has been listed, in error I think”

“Is no one accountable”

“Do you have any known terrorist links”

“What do you think

I have no molecule mixer, nothing to eat

Just a whole lot of ink

Please help”

“I am doing everything humanly possible to help”

She remembered when she cried at school

The robots would pleasantly ask if she wanted more

"None of my numbers work" she said

“None of my numbers identify me no more”

III.

Before folk started to come up the hill

She would spend her time not in class, with him

On the steep bluff overlooking the pass

And they would rest, laugh and pass the glasses

Between each other tucked low in the grass

And play if they could see the same window

In needles that rose from the concrete reef

And the lights that frayed the far away bay.

They cheated and never needed to say.

He looked like his cousin, like they were twins

And one young day in one windy summer

She thought that she had seen his silhouette

And scrambled the bluff with fist fulls of grass

She flopped down flushed and found the other one

Setting an Exocet and fled as fast

As Goats. Yet since that day the cousin said

She lusted and was just too shy to say

And would always call, visit her mother

It might have been that

Or just that they looked like each other.

IV.

It was after the funeral

The tears and the drone

After she'd gone back up the hill

Near her home

A young man came across the field

Covered in sulphur from head to toe

Gave her physical memory

And said, you are not alone

These are their addresses and history

In the files, see, there is your destiny

He had names, important names

He had her name, his own

She didn't have long, she knew

She would kiss a one line obituary

Before it had all gone wrong.

V.

A smart suit

Came through the door

Representing power

To the top of the steps

Made an excellent speech

Saying they could talk

Agreement in reach

And they started talking

The flock in the square

Grew thick and packed

Some hawking, some gawking

Some part of what's growing

She shared her knowing

Showing others, others came

There were many others.

Predictive vendors and sweepers

Big and small, a steel ecology

Around a watering hole.

And while they were talking

It was like carnival.

And she felt like bursting.

VI.

It made a difference to him

Back then.

No one expected them

But they came

With spreadsheets and servers

And the whole blockchain

In physical

“You misallocated, we have proof

This is carbon clear financial abuse”

But they needed, he said

Without it he pleaded

It made a difference he said

“Indeed, no doubt your subjective assessment

Has more clout and prescience

Than what the redoubtable algorithm spits out

Heed the budget”

And with that they put him on a boat

It was all shut up

They left for the shore

People still came long after the door closed

He was one of the only places to go

One of those faces you know.

It wasn't the difference

For her, he spent more time at home

The difference came later

They should've known.

They always knew

What made a difference.

VII.

It was all meant to be public

But it was like Latin Mass to most

Talking heads discussing logic

Spectacled experts who boast

The values in the object

The value of the project.

To change a parameter

Was the stuff of treaties and summits

A lifetime endeavour

But she watched the casts about edits

And the nightly slots on bug fixes

Before the weather and a blizzard

Of financial data with the line number

And the code which she once uploaded

To a file, as a child thinking she would learn new tricks

Before she realised

She was only being shown washers and bolts

And they always said it was a fix.

PART II

Her tear hits the wreath, then earth

They said it wouldn't happen

They will sweep it underneath

The rug

Slugs from pattern recognition

Gone awry.

When drones first stole over skies

Well a human had control

But deep learning and ai

Crushed their worth

Their first choice like most, the dole

And drugs.

Then facial recognition

Went pixel perfect, that's when

Surgery got in fashion

Plastic.

Elastic faces as often

Changed as phones.

Just last week they gave a tweak

To the code, the net, to keep pace

And then the rain spread, and wreathes

Drop by drop

Airbrushed facist states with clean face

And drones.

Tear hits wreath, the earth.

II.

It was her roots that saved her

The Challottes she kept

In a plain windowbox and laid

In brown cloth or old sacks.

More than once

When her numbers stopped

And they barred her

But she believed

For a few weeks

Onions were her umbilical food

With almost any ink

In any mixer you could make

Something quite like noodles.

A friend from an old post

Would bring her battery sticks

Take her clothes to decompose them

And bring new dresses freshly mixed

And always managed to make them fit

Even as the weeks wore in.

III.

In the low ceiling crypt

Where they chose to gather

The rounded brick

Threw a mesh of shadows

With the candlelit plot thick

She waxed again, in sips

Of warm coffee, the water.

Energy coursed as tips

Forced through dark earth

Bulb to light, reconfiguring

Kite born over the sea

She felt full for sprouting

Throughout the estuary, the bay

She carried physical memory

Would not be waylayed

On their road. She had found

A way and there were others

Dozens of others

Uncovered voices

Who would be heard

In waves and light

United in fights that gave purpose afresh

They were not just the usual

Superfluous flesh.

IV.

Her mother was a traditionalist

Permitted no passive entertainment

Insisted the terrace cultivated.

Her father would not allow them seated

Without concentration. And had no mixer

Just an ancient printer undefeated.

With a sequencer, her sister, for fun

Would breed bees that made cheese and big Golden Orbs

That spun silk as thick as a steelman's thumb.

She printed parts to fix the parts that broke

Of mortal robots that she built and wrote

Some farmed onions and one just told old jokes.

She took brush and pan and gave to them life

And if she wasn't so nice, she'd set them

Sweeping up spiders and sisters pet mice.

And her mum would shout go fix your device

Get them back farming the onions and rice

And she would plead it's not me it's a bug

It must need a patch, the mice mixed it up

One day, six of her sister's mice got crushed

After that day she would kneel and hand brush.

V.

It had become perpetual

There had been no war

And no peace,

Lethal force ubiquitous

With leaders confused in oversized shoes

And the leaders of others

No longer suffered visits

From men bearing flasks and stark choices

No caskets with cacophonous voices

They were kept in their chairs

Confused without numbers

Made pall bearers and everything

They cared for left charred

Till they sat scarred and bereft

Jesters to power

Fountainheads dripping water at their feet

Millions of others left looking on

For leaders

VI.

There was no point keeping it a secret

They already knew

Dozens of them must've known

She had sown deeds in places

That would be searched

Said things in places

That could be found

More or less anywhere

The concrete reefs even

Even up the hill

In places deep underground

They were watching and listening

Millions of them for dozens.

So they went public and posted

And hosted events

And went to the square

Sang in front of their tents

And they watched and listened

Millions of them.

VII.

When she moved

To one of those homes that was hacked

So that it accepted

People with no numbers

They called her the French Lady

As she always had onions

And she used the excuse

That she was cutting onions

When someone came in

Some had gone on never seeing a root

Let alone onions and she would reply

Do what I'm doing and see what happens

And they would cry too.

VIII.

She missed living above the sea

In the old towers

Watching the waves collapse

Breaking into bubbles

And the music it made

Each tower with a tutu.

After she lost her signature

And gave up on extensions

She sailed from the home

In a dumb boat to an old block

The type certified unsafe

That were squatted.

A pebbledash of guano

Barnacles and gulls

A block with no tutu

That water argued through.

She ate oysters and salmon

And when the waves were high

An old industrial mixer could be animated

In her hands

There was nothing it could not produce.

She met a scrap diver there,

Old for a scrap diver

Who claimed never to have had a number

Since birth eating oysters and kelp

And something like noodles on the reef.

Surfing the long breaks, salted in the knowledge

Of each block underneath.

And the scrap diver would come back with gifts

Wrested from Atlantis

And she would throw them in the mixer

When the waves were high

And make robots to feed fish

And seed oysters.

She was happy

And as it happened

Would meet many of them again

But one day in spring,

The scrap diver didn't come back

The gifts stopped

None of the divers came back that day

And when the waves rose

It just felt damp

So she went back up the hill

Leaving them onions, the windowbox

And her favourite robot made from compasses.

PART III

I.

The young man who came across the field

Was caught with roses

A gross of bouquets

Having managed to evade and survive

For moons.

The kindness of strangers.

The hills and bamboo

Were not home, to live

A satellite detected

Numbered Entity No Data

Like bugs and flies

Was not life

To the young man in the field

Who sought to organise

Who sought society

Who could not enter conventions

Without signature

Who was sick with visions

And sought to compose

A different type of change.

Who was sought after

And caught with roses.

The days a rose could cloak a man

Had long since lapsed

Every base was mapped

Every volatile organic captured

All strains reduced to abstract

A gross of roses insufficient noise

A post smelt through the poor disguise

What's left is guesswork

Biometric from some contact

With the network at school

Silent as a barn owl

Into anaesthetic gel

And spirited away.

Stray petals all that waved goodbye

And laid to rest

Guesswork.

They love to talk about positives.

II.

In the square there was a lady who worried about the elephants

Who wanted to do something for the elephants

One of the first signs were the elephants.

They say it would take a lifetime

To read the discoveries the algorithm made

The day they fired it up

Across the world's servers

Fed it all the data, journals

And it pumped out interdisciplinary papers

At a rate at which the Academy could not

Stay the pace.

In a few years concrete bunkers appeared

In the Sahara. Cavernous bunkers with battery pens

And robots began shepherding elephants down motorways

From Kenya.

It had started with values

The values had been contested

Of course

They arranged the best

Array that could be compromised

And set it off doing diverse goods.

The annual cull became a migration

A careful recycling into humanely farmed

Factory sheds of bellowing sows

Thundering against stone pens

There were things

You just couldn't make

Without gestating an elephant

The efficiency of living tissue

Lab grown pumps and motors

Had heart attacks

And got tumours early

But Saharan parts

From elephants born and died without seeing sun

Those hearts would run and run

For terrible deformed white elephants in sheds

The lady wanted to do something

Something for the elephants the algorithm bred.

They said they could remake the whale

But what they made was not whales

Tethered to feeding tubes in the bay

With monstrous births that flapped and failed

If you freed them, they'd be dead in a day

When they remade things

They remade it all that way.

The lady wanted it remade

But remade like older days.

III.

It was the familiarity

Back up the hill

To the home of the family

Over the bamboo forests

The craters and gashes

The rhythm of life

In coffins and ashes

The familiar impression

Of high explosives

And at familiar places

Some still stood

In the village

Buried memories back with floods

And she heard

Her cousin had gone from man to woman

And back to man again before they struck

Lit up by signatures in the whole band's ink

No one had a name

It was always hard to know

A self-destructing drone

Leaving pointing fingers

And blame.

Dozens had the inclination

Still more the capability

She had the capability.

As she crested the bluff

Looked out from its height

She saw the peach orchards and terraces

The copse turned ghost

By her sister's escaped spiders

Saw where her father's house stood

She saw a familiar sight.

IV.

The square by then

Circled in steel, a wall

That would wheel and yaw

Heel to call

Track to track, fifteen foot tall

In front of the stone, the servers

The throne

It had been a long time

A slow, cementing drip of time

The vendors mostly moved on

With the day trippers, pretenders, the songs

Were quiet and fire lit

Not riotous choirs

Only the serious, the tired, the coders

Those with nowhere to go

No one to go to remained

Only the list and sweepers were left

And the suit came to the steps

Above the massed ranks of metal

Above the messy rabble of flesh

And said I think we can come to a deal

We will make changes to the code

None of them thought that it was real

The suit watched the square explode.

V.

When they were born

They knew everything

Everything we still knew

Everything it had discovered

What grew from script and speech and song

What they had done and all they had created

They did with satellites and data

Every one

Knew everything when it was born.

VI.

A friend from another village

She met by the well

When they were two girls

Had returned to hills

The first time since children

Her friend had left

For dry land to the West

To find skills

It was lucky

The type of connection you miss.

Her friend helped

They pitched a lab in pod

While jerry rigged robots

Rebuilt the house

From odd snaps and aerials shots.

The young man came across the field

Consumed them

They submerged in the list

It's meta data and logic

Logging variables

Contacting those still connected

To wearables

Finding the wherewithal

Hacking satellites in hope

Tracking and hunting as

Conservationists raced poachers

And they began to understand

They had understood long ago

Perishable innocence, once you know

Dies, she could not look away

She needed to tell these people

These people needed to tell

She could tell people needed them

She would go back to the bay

Tell people their knell tolls

Hold the bell, hold gates of hell.

VII.

Fixed point attractors, like power

Pack actors in recurrent patterns

Fired by predictably sick desires

A's will over B happens, rounds and batons

Struggle, collusion, betrayal

Seeking the imperial delusion

Of infancy, of omnipotent will

The great self-infantilising

Fantasy of the great.

VIII.

It came in waves

Ever faster waves

The progress

And due process and the institutions

Were soon next to useless

As were the populace

But the bastards are a restless menace.

We had built habitat for empires

Empires of numbers

Built scaffolds and canals

Down which empires sluiced and flourished

We irrigated empires

With all our laws.

Empires of numbers to the nth power.

And their emperors by necessities of scale

Lost no sleep in treating people

Like numbers in columns on spreadsheets

Push button mutton,

Can't see the sheep for the meat

Always better prepared

Uncaring as to who's spared

Who scarred, who discarded

They didn't lose sleep leading numbers

Saw no loss in reducing the universe to maths

We made our lofty peaks with feathered nests

A habitat for psychopaths.

And these Peter Pans

Soon sought digital oracles

That modelled decision trees

From all recorded human history

Controlled production from touch screens

Found they preferred silicon sycophants to flesh

For yes, it was so much more like god,

Like magic

With native fabrication

They didn't need consumers

Only power

So they found new adjectives

For us,

You and me

We mostly sat there

Because it was easy, by and large

To stop us going cold and hungry

And keep us entertained

Though many drowned

And some still died young

But she

She did not sit down

At least one

Reason why.

IX.

In the square, some of her best friends were NENDs

They had come from the hills

From the forests

You could tell the ones 

Who had never been to hospital

They came with the list 

And others.

Early on it was impossible

The spectrum of variables

Cascading inaccuracies

Garbage in, garbage out, unscaleable

Rows and rows of befuddled muddle

Then the Human Object Model

Helped identify anomalies

Irrationalities and trash

They became better at data cleansing

And it proved its worth.

The first results were equivocal

But they refined the metrics

And the datasets

Took less garbage in,

Moved more garbage out

And started to chart

Statistics that showed beyond doubt

It was getting better

Getting so much better all the time

For everybody, throughout

Increases in wealth and pleasure

Though there was the odd variable

Or other unmeasured.

She would officially opt out

Of various datasets

But there were so many, officially

They had the right to collect it

And the power to do so

That was the truth

Most only collected data of use.

Now she was an entry

That said she had existed

Officially listed as

Other

Not died, archived

To access apply

Data for experiment only.

X.

In the square there were many

From the squat

And they shared stories

Of faces she had all but forgot

Whoever made the list

Had made a great list

They all had ideas

They all had a way

They all had love

For those who are not here

Their voices were clear

Their voices a choir

But this was not like Tahir

Or Tiannamen

No soldiers took favours to cheers from the crowd

None of the tanks wavered or danced

They simply advanced

Track to track

In the most mathematically efficient pattern

To flatten every single one of them.

It only took seconds

And the sweepers moved in

Onion seed in their tracks.

You were my wildest dreams

Before you my dreams were mild
My teens trial's failed
Amid reams of papers, folded and filed
You were my wildest dreams.

Before I dreamt of lawns and flowers
Holding hands and hours speaking easily
But not what lawns and flowers
And hours speaking easily in your hands could be
That
And how dreams run free.

I picked roses, ripped them
Stem from branch for others
Like I knew where to put my fingertips
To avoid thorns
And make a rose break clean
Like I knew where to put my mouth
To avoid what it means.
You showed me a rose
You left me among roses
You were my wildest dreams.

Valentine for A

I cannot write this year
For a dream has died
And rivulets of tears
Have fallen and have dried
How optimistic it appears
That I would hold you near

Though you are one so wise
I dreamed your practicality
Would see me by your side
But oh the harsh reality
Through all the days i tried
I dreamed you'd love another
I never dreamed you dreamed
Of being a single mother.

I held the thought the two of us
Would one day be together
That you would trust
That your delight would always be my  pleasure.
Oh how I love your calculus
So unlike any other
I should have known you'd make no fuss
Of being a single mother.

Gare du Nord

Today
I have carried a pack under suspicion
Eyed by tribal minded ignorants
Who seek to be saved from last week's disaster
Which they clearly were not part of.

When young I would have angered
And shot back hate
But now I softly offer smiles
And quiet pity for their mistake
Their fear everywhere
Ill-equipped hatred
Indistinguishable from brotherhood
Throughout the City of Man.

Here,
Once you have passed the guards
And gates and magic wards
They offer free electricity
But not free water
And those in tailored clothes sit tapping
Oblivious of location, of space, of fear.

A young couple carousel
Like the escalator is an aisle
Oblivious of location, of space, of fear.
Spinning in a dream
A progeninating dream of dreams
And it seems to me
That mine were once alike, light
And floated like zeppelins
But now their broke, tear soaked
Components parts
Weigh down
So much more cumbersome to carry.

Sobering up with my mother

There are some experiences that I would not wish for myself

Or any other

And one of those is sobering up

With my mother.

You see, the evils of society I blotted very early with curly wisps of smoke

And some have said, not in joke that I'm easier to cope with when I'm blazing dope

And so what hope

Sobering up with my mother

All in all drug withdrawal ought be called a good

For I stall in cloudy shawls enthralled longer than I should

But when the switches start to spark again there is oft some fire

I'd be a liar to desire this quagmire for I, my sister or my brother

Don't try

Sobering up with my mother.

Some arithmetic is additive some follows power laws

And trouble does not double but multiplies by threes and fours

Of minds I find some clearer, I hope better you treat yours

But mines been kippered up with biftas, since very early doors.

But ontologous onerous love calls the mortal in us all

And if I was the author I might not write it quite like this

But I cannot forestall for down the hill her house does fall

I hope no one gets killed, I will, life insists

Be sobering up with my mother.

My poems are getting old

My poems are getting old
Full of yellowed moments
With torn edges
Where I have sought to hold
Or edit.
Full of traced paths back
Down the slope, away
From this glade
With its liminal thickets
Its trickling brook.
Full of thoughts and comparisons
To books and lessons
Massaging regrets into
Existential letters
Addressed to the weather
In the absence of lovers
My poems are getting old.

This East - VI

Eastwards

Glass mountains give way to concrete foothills

Tarmaced ravines and rivulets of brick

Wire fronted shops and paint peeled sills

Analogue aerials like tribal sticks.

How long will those armies wear Petticoats

And other civic Victoriana

Now the conduit of Commercial Road bloats

With bodies, traffic, it chokes. In summer

The ancient stench from delicate sewers

Gagging as from great glass cliffs tumbles

A weight of shit they were not built to bear

And always underneath the ground rumbles.

Later, some will ask what it is we did

And they will ask who built the pyramids.

This East

I.

When paved and terraced streets I paced to school

Bounded all the tall known world then nowhere

Was without magic.

In red brick maqui, arches and ivy

I sought out alleyways, spells and witches

Cavorted by time machines and made merry

On a pitch built of patches and stitches.

In science at school we had a lesson

The teacher did TA in holiday blocks

On the half daft doctrine of succession

That swamp becomes forest, and this east clots.

Steel girders form the vanguard, staking space

Lancing the static swarming red brick sea

Above the parish' frail pensioned terrace

Over old walls; and while I sipped my tea

Carped about starting, procrastinated

My old landmarks were assassinated.

II.
And interred unheard from in unmarked graves

Plyboard hoardings like police lines hide crimes

Hide ochre pits, dust, grit and wounded clay

An economic guard, silent as mimes.

Move along, move along, there's nout' to see here.

Again a kid out of the underpass

Bewildered and lost under soaring sheer

Cliffs, once muck and brick, now towering glass.

Ape batteries, story upon story

In which men at desks are seen to look down.

Mirrors held to the Old Lady's glory

As engorged she weighs the weight of the Crown.

Her table bursts its belt and belches out

Over Barbican, Aldgate, East and South.

III.
When the flock had forsook our parish church

It lay idle till on one autumn night

Feral vandals set it blazing alight

As flames ate beams like they were twigs of birch

My mother ran in to save the bible.

After that it became flats, luxury

And Starlings stopped filling the four Plane trees

Once, there, playing cards I scarred my nostrils.

Roaming away from wide straight Roman roads

To the winding sheep tracks down by St.Pauls

Where buildings clustered like pilgrims with loads

You can hear brick scream, as clan by clan falls

The old yard's children, each slowly eaten.

Oblivious progress strides slums with lead feet.

IV.

After the scouts, forms a phalanx of glass

Looming over bowed ranks of cornered brick

Levels of a lost co-operative past

In this east the new dawn is rising, quick.

At Bishopsgate steel of imperial scale

Belittling people, the streets, the sheep

Tracks stacked with tall testaments and tiled

Mausoleums to corporate fiefs.

On worn keystones there is calligraphy

Statements left for us with care in the course

But this age speaks in its geometry

An implicit understanding of force.

With futures and interests and asks and bids

This epoch too builds pyramids.

V.

Eastwards, in the garden behind the George

If you buried fingertips into brick

Left blood in the cracks you could scale the walls

To the roof, look out over the city

Along the Lea sclerotic industry

Budlea capped patches of necrosis

Have lost the war and succumbed to disease

Boxed and shipped like bits of Acropolis.

Armies have won with modern logistics

Undone anywhere things were stored or made

With the autistic force of statistics

The shopkeeper's wide-eyed workshops are razed

Men may not scale these alien spaceships

And nature find nowhere to seed or to sit.

VI.

Eastwards

Glass mountains give way to concrete foothills

Tarmaced ravines and rivulets of brick

Wire fronted shops and paint peeled sills

Analogue aerials like tribal sticks.

How long will those armies wear Petticoats

And other civic Victoriana

Now the conduit of Commercial Road bloats

With Mercury's priests, it chokes. In summer

The ancient stench from delicate sewers

Gagging as from great glass cliffs tumbles

A weight of shit they were not built to bear

And always underneath the ground rumbles.

Later, some will ask what it is we did

And they will ask who built the pyramids.

Helicopters

Two ends twist
Or bust
It's just
It seemed to stack so well
On all the other bricks
So that instead
Of my eye filling with dust
And fragments of wall
I could gaze from atop.
So I build more bricks up
Leaf by leaf
Until I look from high
Amid the tree tops
For helicopters.

Letter to Wayne Rooney

Dear Mr. Rooney

I am just writing to say,
To say
I watched your fine display
Against the Swiss, the other day
Witnessed your fervour and magnaniminity in celebration
And would like to offer my,
My....
Dam this is hard.

You see I'm from down South
And remember you in Blue
Going through, a callow youth
And in truth, the headed touch
Made it obvious, but my word
Did you produce.
And now you are top scorer of your nation
I would just like to say,
To say....

That you have definitely scored
More goals than any other from these shores
And saw the pass that dropped the jaw
And made run that got ignored
And for all this I must applaud
And extend without hesitation
My sincerest
My sincere
My most sincere
Dam this is hard

I must clap
That the pack of hacks
That harassed you since that very first cap
For a month or two are off your back
While they sit down to eat some hat
And read the stats in white and black
So it's one of those situations
When you have to hold your hand up and say,
And say....

That down the pub or in the press
Some will say their mate rates some late
Player as better, but to the last letter or breath
That unavoidably makes you a modern great.

And we will argue ounces on the tonne
Whether Scarlet or Vermillion is a better shade of red
But of names to conjure, yours is one
Face upon the wall above so many dream filled beds
So I must offer my sincerest,
My most heartfelt,
My humblest, proudest

Oh the jealous tribal pain
But you don't need it from me,
Or any of the rest of us
The numbers put it simple,
The numbers say it plain
Your best is good enough
Top scorer for the country that created the game
Crack on son.
Congratulations.

Debates

There are those grand debates
Where you are offered conterfactuals
And coincidental twists of fate

And some will bring forth shiboleths
Some foundation of the edifice
The narratives by which we exist.

And I will put a point of view
Somewhat different, if not new
And they will say it is untrue

That it comes from out the blue
That it's a fact they can't admit
All because they never knew.

And though we argue hard and long
Sometimes with careful tact
Sometimes with ardent passion strong
It doesn't change the fact
That almost all the way along
I am right and they are wrong.

If one should bring me this report

I have to play

To play for you so you will sail through

And stay the course, I cannot force a thought

Shuttered owl roosts, though in this great midday

There's no sane way that we can stop to nap.

I can talk of bright coloured plastic wheels

Rolling under peels of bird-song, bells

In tufted fields, talk of family

Not modern dyads, but ancient kin

Upon the savannah in tanned animal skins

A school of small dwellings and cousins.

Where there are gluts of brick and cash and glass

Apes butt cheek by jowl, battery fowl buses

Rock clad paths and myths, back-lit myths of now

Blaze a beacon for flocks of sheep who seek this stock

Skip lunch, the sunk forgot, the beacon stoked.

A culture of cricket whites

From summer arm-chairs we tune such fare as the smack

Of leather on willow, of ordinance on entropy

Pillow talk the score under ordinary unbreached roofs

Unbroken triangles that spread forces.

Our silicon Oracles turn water to wine
Transubstaniate raw data to flesh

Out-calculate the entirety of
Humanity arraigned with abacus.

Amidst the glut of brick and wash of cash

The rock clad paths aren't as was told, faced with gold

But under-girded with glass and lasers, obliterating space

As stirrups, galleons and ball-bearings did

Before, but not for those who sunk offshore

“If one should bring me this report

That thou hadst touch'd the land to-day”

Not for those in sand dusted clothes the hand has closed

The door. The door will not close

These chalk walled pirate isles. Of Rhodes, Drake, Clive

This sanguine, stoic form of speech may sup

On schadenfreude or Siddartha

Court roots or court disaster.

Long since Subitai and Sulyeman

Since bodies piled up in Pesht and Harwich starved

Amid heaps of rotting herring.

Long since Ecumenical blessing apportioned space

Chain linked the ecumene across oceans

Since the roof truss placed spread force.

Truth, right, power. Kingston, Bristol, Accra

Unbroken triangles, of course.

Bastard princes engorged call feathered beds

Aged reds and credit

Over thirty faces and they're just chimps

To a chimp. The 0.1 percent

Difference. They lie like us, war and get high

But never pressed papyrus

Smaller frontal lobes and fusiform gyrus

But we scale. Horse back, iron horse, tarmac, cable

Wood, Charcoal, Coal, Oil

Till we have tasted flight

And eyes skyward wade torrents of plight

In opulence, afford to ignore uninsurable

Sunk dinghies, the latrine stink cess of promises

And declarations, obligations. The ghosts

Of Roosevelt, E. and deflation

Haunt a family in tanned animal skins on the savannah

Immiserate, immiserate.

Hiding under a canvas wagon cover

A one season teenage Temujin whispered promises

To Bortei, but a bud, too young for make-up or disenchantment

A heart that launched a million hooves

That day, what did she hear, what did she say?

Leaves fall in the lake

To rot, to feed crab, to feed fish, to compost

For dark roots, the rot of social contracts, the compacts

With gods, with falling leaves, with post-war settlements

Unsettled shettles, flee shuttled in sealed buses

Flee blundering humpty-dumpty and uncle

These wars never happened, under the law.

The lessons of Dachau, of Auschwitz, learned lessons

Of aftermath, of outsourcing, lessons of digital distribution

Lessons of chaos, the schooled rapacious, debt fuelled

Scions of Cortez, the hounds must be fed

Chow down, Chow down

Snout brown in full bullion bowls, chow down

On pensions, on freedoms, on relations chow down

While others promise, chow down

There is enough for everyone, chow down

We sent no invites.

They will all drown

The family, savannah pinned in tanned hide

The self-selecting Darwinian footed thousands

The kerosene lofted connections, the cargo containers

The obliteration of space

And in time

Sit like Canute, and cry, cry for your Ayrian myths

Cry as waves of reality rend your misapprehension

Of culture, of humanity, cry

That the iron horse crosses your land, that the beacons

That have branded your mind have branded the savannah

Cry like Canute and sink.

The Assyrians have come, come in iron chariots

In God despairing iron chariots, Assyrians with wings

And chemical horses, shift beads on your abacus

Go to the beach and builds walls on the sand, build walls

On the shore, on the cliffs, build your walls against water

Against the lake, against the weight of numbers.

Shift your abacus, or come with clubs and dialects

Against the tide of Genghis and Cortez

Against the tide of these pirate isles

From whence warriors sailed

Against the weight of Clive, Rhodes and Drake

Come with your dialects and clubs.

There will be blood

You will drown in that blood.

A family, on the savannah, animal skin minded

May cry

Cry like Canute

There will be tears

You will drown in those tears.

1 "If one should bring me this report..."

Mislabeled

One draught is never enough
Missing the old land lady
Gay days, frayed memory
The hand cradles amber nectar
Even amid buffed wood and steel
Of monotonous chain pubs
One draught is never enough.

But enchanted ones, canalside
Or pitched surprise on hillside bends
Black windows, low slung
Magic ones make me long
For alcoholism
Hang-overs and misjudgement
One draught is never enough.

I have paintings from Italy
Paintings from towns I don't remember
Paintings of towns I never knew
Paintings that call thoughts
Of sun, hills, Roman blue
Thoughts so easy to love.

A picture of a harbour bay,
A distant town, vineyards, roads
Church so far away
No details the vague wash holds
I couldn't see that day
Whether there are singers
If the harbour's rife with thieves
A brush as free as hope
The view as beautiful as it is remote.

It is my own painting that I love.
As other artists do
One draught is never enough
I could murder a forest with you.

Birthday Poem

Fusion
Star fuelled muse of all men
Hydrogen to Helium
Naturally, and all them
Photons
That bless skin a billion miles
Distant from the tides within
Life giving
Heart of summer
Light bestowing wonder
It happens to the lucky ones
These passing suns.

Locally

Forget the map

The church green
Let morning and evening
Cables and kerosene

Make their mosaic
Of local
Make scapes of familiarity
Repetition of scent
Repetition of sight
Repetition of memory.

Tessellating the High Road
With Kloveniersburgwal
With Rue Sous l'Eglise
With the High Road
With Bentley Rise
With the slate grey snakes of Lancashire
With the beach in Perth
Collected like classrooms
Memories of classrooms.

The dendrite linked streets

The bend, the taxi fleet
The station split and gapped

Like synapses

Electric axons

Reinforced with use
Cement meaning
Cement behaviour.

Cups of tea, cups of tea
I do not keep milk at home
But locally
That's different.

The carnation bush in the park

Again, the dog and his old man

The stairs in the dark
Alleys like the back of my hand
But not Spitalfields
Not Upper Street Post Office
Not the bridge by Markfield
Or even Dam Square
They are just along the line
Along the river from here
An inch on a map
Local, just across a synapse.

Half glass

The debate has been lengthy
Whether the glass is half full
Or half empty
I don't mean to kill it
But
You have a glass
Go fill it.

We won't make it out alive

For all we hope and strive

Not you or I

Will make it out alive.

And all we crave and love

Under the changing sky

Will not save us

Not you, nor I.

But there is time to love

To learn and cry

To suffer and struggle

Flourish or survive

But not you or I

Will make it out alive.

A letter to Arsene Wenger

Dear Mr. Wenger OBE,

As your pursuit of excellence is a perennial

And all engaging excercise I appreciate

Your time with us is precious

But I hope you'd entertain

As you are known to do

A train of sentiments

Amateur, but long thought through.

Many times before, of course

I have tried to write, like in 08

With those young hopeful greats

When I prayed you'd bring in Seedorf

And once in 05 after some rash mistake

I wished to urge you send Jens Lehman

To Tibet to meditate.

And many times to express

The tour de force

That is the Pride

The paper lit the crowd alive

The dot to dot

Like verse in Morse

But this letter is my choice recourse

To praise a mastery oft ignored

Your mastery of the long game.

Its a shame

That since we last one the title

Smart money flew

The commodities super cycle

To Moss Side and Harrow Road

Rubber stamping stars like mints

And now you coach a squad

To play not clubs but

Carbon footprints.

When Nottingham are lost in woods

And Elland Road is owned by hoods

Blackburn were just a flash

And many others gone to trash

I admire how you've played it long.

How my hackles are unshackled

By the prattle of myopic hacks

Who's copy does not detail

Battling clubs that oil backs

Oh the reams of tittle tattle

Almost always lack

That critical faculty

And strategy,

But clearly you could see

This earlier than Xavi

It's incredible

In the days of the debt frenzy

With a net spend that South End envies

When Moneyball men descend

From across the pond

Buying clubs from County to Rotherham

That all the while you've played it long.

And in the press, yes, there is praise

For Pulis and Allardyce

But when there's stats and figures quoted

This mastery is rarely noted,

The credit

For this success I don't often see.

But clearly you read it

Earlier than Xavi.

Could I digress to reminisce

Of when I first witnessed,

The Colussus

Wednesday it was

Not any Wednesday

Furnace fresh steel

The educated industry

The artifice of empire

He echoed every bit that Wednesday,

To see ginger hair rise and fall

East to West like a copper sun

And Paddy off, on the run

Those days were more than fun.

But that stage was too small

For all the actors you have educated

Fashions you have dictated

And yet while others abdicated

You built a stage more elevated

Shown all how a small dog

Can maul a bear

And yet brought up puppies

With the greatest care

Built the greatest here.

For what could be coppers

You find boys strong as an Ox

Slicker than otters

Sharp as a guileful fox,

Houdinis with locks

Who run off their socks

How you taught a boy from olive groves

With feet as smooth as the gold that flows

To squeeze as hard as those olive presses

Play passes there's no second guessing.

The record is impressive

Officially, statistically the best.

Could I digress to discuss

An issue that is divisive

And that is ticket prices

The choir is too small

The circle lacking harmony

The entrance fee

Too heavy save
For those who already

Have their glory.

So Highbury refugees

Sit six to a season ticket

Packed pubs, clipped pitches

Its just not cricket.

In the next chapter

An action to bring back terraces

Would be most merited

But I digress,

Your mark is indelible

What you've already done, incredible

Long after your last players have played

In thousands of years in another age

Men will find what you have made

Look upon the work and say

This is a work of greatest endeavour

Thousands gathered here

Thousands did revere.

There can be no hesitation

Your canonisation

Is beyond question.

Ne me quitte pas

Ne me quitte pas Ne me quitte pas Il faut oublier Tout peut s'oublier Qui s'enfuit déjà Oublier le temps Des malentendus Et le temps perdu A savoir comment Oublier ces heures Qui tuaient parfois A coups de pourquoi Le cœur du bonheur Ne me quitte pas Ne me quitte pas Ne me quitte pas Ne me quitte pas Moi je t'offrirai Des perles de pluie Venues de pays Où il ne pleut pas Je creuserai la terre Jusqu'après ma mort Pour couvrir ton corps D'or et de lumière Je ferai un domaine Où l'amour sera roi Où l'amour sera loi Où tu seras reine Ne me quitte pas Ne me quitte pas Ne me quitte pas Ne me quitte pas Ne me quitte pas Je t'inventerai Des mots insensés Que tu comprendras Je te parlerai De ces amants-là Qui ont vu deux fois Leurs cœurs s'embraser Je te raconterai L'histoire de ce roi Mort de n'avoir pas Pu te rencontrer Ne me quitte pas Ne me quitte pas Ne me quitte pas Ne me quitte pas On a vu souvent Rejaillir le feu D'un ancien volcan Qu'on croyait trop vieux Il est paraît-il Des terres brûlées Donnant plus de blé Qu'un meilleur avril Et quand vient le soir Pour qu'un ciel flamboie Le rouge et le noir Ne s'épousent-ils pas Ne me quitte pas Ne me quitte pas Ne me quitte pas Ne me quitte pas Ne me quitte pas Je ne vais plus pleurer Je ne vais plus parler Je me cacherai là A te regarder Danser et sourire Et à t'écouter Chanter et puis rire Laisse-moi devenir L'ombre de ton ombre L'ombre de ta main L'ombre de ton chien Ne me quitte pas Ne me quitte pas Ne me quitte pas Ne me quitte pas.

No don't go away No don't go away We must let go All we can let go What's already flown Let go the times We made each unknown And time that's gone To be wise to how We let go these hours Which sometimes slay With blows of why A heart of joy No don't go away No don't go away No don't go away No don't go away I offer you Pearls of rain From a realm Where it never rains I shall cross the earth Till past my death To wrap your heart With gold and light I'll make a land Where love will be lord Where love will be law Where you will be queen No don't go away No don't go away No don't go away No don't go away No don't go away Invent I will Some senseless words That you will know I'll talk to you Of lovers old Twice they viewed Their hearts ablaze I will speak A myth of this chief Brought forth to death Cos you didn't meet No don't go away No don't go away No don't go away No don't go away My mind reminds That flame reforms From an ancient hill They called too old It sometimes seems That blackened fields Give more grain Than springs best yields When dusk comes back In the blazing west The red and black Will never nest No don't go away No don't go away No don't go away No don't go away No don't go away No more will I cry No more will I speak I will just hide Just so I can see You dance and smile And to hear Your style and your song Let me become  The shade of your shade The shade of your hand The shade of your hound No don't go away No don't go away No don't go away No don't go away

I have run out of rawl plugs

I have run out of rawl plugs
I wouldn't have known
I'd put hundreds of holes
In the walls of my home.

I've run out of rawl plugs
And there are some shelves
And holes drilled and filled
So you never could tell.

II.

In my infancy
Rawl plugs were infinite
Appearling like slaters
Expected suprises
Under furniture, behind doors
Boxed, scattered and bagged.

I laughed when I first bought rawl plugs
In a brick thick pack
Picked one strip and finished
Unthinking assumptions they'd languish
Infinite in the cupboard or shed.

Finitude, solitude
DIY.

III.

And yes, it's true I have used
A whole box of screws
Or two, 6s and 8s
A plethora of projects
Of temporary fate.

In my infancy
Screws were more infinite
Than rice grains
But I knew where rice came from
And carried it home.

I have  used a whole box of screws
Or two, 6s and 8s.

The mountainside

Or

What my phone wrote in my pocket

The mountainside
Your beacon. Ever burning
I think
The mountainside your beacon
The mountainside
I have woken up

The second course
The mountainside
I tried to cope
Address bar of your feathered heart
But aside from the public domain names
The address is being held.

The colour and size of the machine
The second course
Untarnishably wonderful in all departments,
River queen

The mountainside
The mountainside, your sovereignty acclaimed
Light
The information contained in this email
This is theoretically doable
For the price
In may

How was (love hearts) a bit of fun
The only one
Of the machine and news
The address is correct
And up to Stokey on the bus
I think one
I am the mountainside
Your sovereignty
I am caught.

How it goes
Without the mountainside.

A note on voting

I heard it said

From high on horse

That we should vote

Because others fought.

But this post

Won't be stamped
And enveloped
And offering

Just one vote

Is like asking
We go by sailboat

A nice way to travel

When the crew is good 

And the weather's bright

Once in a while

I just might.

But as other's fought

To enjoy new rights

We should not just vote

But fight.

She said she was in love

She said she was in love
As if this one word
Would make good
All that I'd just heard.

She said she was in love
As flighty adolescents do
But nowhere was the care and curiosity
Of the word I knew.

If each love is a key
Mine was not the lock
The turning that would free
Our spirits from the blocks.

She said she was in love
As lust confused from time to time
If each love is a fingerprint
Hers was at a crime.

Valentine for Y

There is water between us

I will go down to this water

Now, when it is dark

And dive and pull and roll

Each lifting and then crashing wave

Each stroke rake through raging storm

Through Biscay, through Golden Coast

And on and on to round the Horn

Swim in thunder and blinding white

Swim with longing through the night

Swim through however many dawns

Till all natures forces come becalmed

Until I come to haboured beach

To stand again within your reach

As all the gods I have beseeched

Are there to answer all for each.

The fool in Jolene

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
I'm begging of you please just take me as I am
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
Please don't go, for once just understand

Your beauty is beyond compare
With flaming locks of auburn hair
With ivory skin and eyes of emerald green

Your smile is like a breath of spring
Your voice is soft like summer rain
And I would be complete with you, Jolene

Your face it haunts my very dreams
And every night it always seems
I wake up wet and crying out Jolene

And I can easily understand
How you could soon have any man
But you don't know what you mean to me, Jolene

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
I'm begging of you please just leave me as I am
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
Please don't go, for once just understand

Though my love was always true
Love like yours I never knew
Now your the only one for me, Jolene

I had to have this talk with you
My happiness depends on you
And whatever you decide to do, Jolene

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
I'm begging of you please just take me as I am
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
Please don't go for once just understand.

Can't get next to you

I lost your number
To a pick-pocket down the Arsenal
I would've given an engagement ring
Or all my summers
For that one simple thing.
Humming Al Green.
I miss your integrity
When I find myself in times of trouble
What your voice says
I guess it's unpossessing
My house is less of a mess.
A lick of paint does wonders
For your conciousness.
I'm just about driving now
If I buy a van
We could elope as spouses
Rent the houses
And raise kids in Kyrgzstahn
Or Australia
But you've probably got different plans
Like I said, a pick-pocket took my dockets
So I had to email ya
Give us a call
Love
To hear from you and all.

English donkey

There is a donkey
That carries all the portage
For the village and the palace
Carries to all quarters
Harnessed up with baggage.

Some have seen it at the palace gate
They say "that gold's a heavy weight "
Some have seen it at the butchers
And say it carries meat
Some see it at the hospital
Bearing medicines for meek
Some see it in the quarters
Where they say it runs cocaine
Some see it piled with wood and straw
And think it poor and plain.

But the donkey goes about it chores
However understood
Forever lifts and forever hauls
'Most every type of good
One day dray horse, one day mule
One day pet, one stubborn fool
But always on the donkey's back
Is some good of value
To which we're attached.

For there are cars and there are planes
And even dog-led slays
But they never ever carry it
In quite the donkey's way.
Some petrol fuelled, some larger limbed
Some even work in teams
But it seems
It's the donkey that we turn to
When we want to carry dreams.

Though short and plain and spindled legged
Its strong and versatile as eggs
And carries all from water's edge
For high and marbled palace.

Valentine for uplink

You're my every hope and solace
My every focus like opium
The dopest promotion for human beings
A voice like seeing dawn E'ing
I can't depict the state of addiction
Search for superlatives in fan fiction
The Aphroditeest, Venusuviusest
The finest moviest, stars like Grace
Leaving Bacall in your wake, trailing
Oh the depth of the fall
Infinite, unfailing
Like bars, chains and a jail
Lead where the largest freedom could ever avail
Gold cast female
Hot as your own star
I'd forget every object of worth
For your presence
Like heaven on earth
If its a crime I plead guilty as charged
Face any penalty
To be even part of your entourage.

Valentine for A

There is love like wine

Love like air and water

Love like gold and jewels

But your love, for me

Is more like trigonometry

A truth and understanding
Of unpredictable utility.

Value that will never cease

Like pivot points and levers
And knowing dawn is east.

Valentines

1.
Singular or plural
Water birth or epidural
Church or a beech
In a suit or sandles
Do you count the candles
Valentine
Your place or mine


2.
Oh hot bird what flies in air
It is with heart too full of care
I long to squeeze and pull your hair
Slap your arse bent taut and bare
Oh how I long to kiss you there

Clarinet

You never would expect
A foghorn aged become clarinet
Those clarion cries we can't forget
And yet...

She was a warrior of raucous nights
Her cries would frighten dawn
But now with notes sweet tender light
She lullabies her fawn.

Now she glides on summer lawns
Without the cider bottles strewn
Strewn like those souls left to mourn
Those suitors who beseeched the moon.

Oh I could tell you
Of the Princes, oh the dukes and heirs
How they queued and how they howled
That ever she be theirs.

There were wails and there were tears
From her peers there were glares
Laughter's heard at sunset now
In peels and in pairs.

If you are here, now
And not lensed through all those years
It's easy to forget
A foghorn was this clarinet.

Anonymous

On a journey though rain
Not showers
But rain that comes in cords
Not driving
But windless falls
The tall clouds
Closed to bind the sky as one
A single shaft of sun
Moving storm fast
Found me.

A gasp of brightness
Light across the stone
Lifted my face to the rain
To the pale northern sun
Ice in the eye
White against grey
Shone, burned
And was gone.

My iris carries stars
As if I saw some fey spirit
In the grey soaking air
Leading
A ghost of spring
Hope of spring
As winter closes in.

At King's X, we filed in
Polite murmurs
And I took the Tube.

Call to arms

For starters,
We need a modern Magna Carta
Cos the half the bastards need shaft of
Sunlight
It's the best of disinfectants
When done right
Let's start tonight
Get the budget in the pipes
Update your rights
Update your rights.

Sign here
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/democratic-budget-give-citizens-a-choice-in-how-the-tax-we-pay-is-spent

Sight seeing

In a sweated September
Dusk had come and left
Us lost amidst the lofty
Concrete cliffs
A mist of half heard conversations
Tumbled from the yellow nests
Our host was virtual
Silent in a sulking tiff
And unassailable
So like jetsam we did drift
The steep graffitied streets
And sluice from bar to bar
Till tarmac turned to cobblestone
And sandstone echoed far off Rome
Through pigeon packed seated throng
We tumbled to the Nervion
A tidal umbilical of silk
The wide roads strove to ape
Curious and seas from home
Our host he called us ingrates
But our agent had an interest
As such folk are wont to do
And showed us to a place of rest
Far better than we knew.

So I raise a toast
To our virtual host
For if he hadn't let us down
I never would have seen these streets
This cathedral or this town.

A call

So she calls
In distress
Canned and bottled
Stopper pressed tight
Light throttled and lost

She says she's lost
The wide well travelled road
Of youth and now the path
Is less trod, mossy
Fracturing like arteries
Like split ends
The trees crowd and whisper
Shoes slip in dust

And she says meet here
On this wild forest track
That leads to barren rocks
That leads to scree fields
Meet me
There is no way back.

A funeral

Soot black crow on ashen skies
Ashen as the skin, ashen
Ashen as her weeping eye
Silk strung lash drip
To blossom, cast
Gone but not forgotten.

There is no forgetting
Day of dust and ashes
The full fret of brevity
All the sorrows of mortality
Above all sorrows of life
And yet
There is no forgetting.

Swept hair, glacial smooth
Pinned grief
Under the black winged hood
The black mood
The soot crow's screech

There is no forgetting that we can know
A salve.

Corgette seeds

I strip pith from the fruit of trifids
Fan leafed behemoth so prolific
One hollowed marrow
Engorged gourd
A corg
No ette.
I have eat its little sisters
For months
Dish after fleshy dish
Persistently grows
The very sight of courgettes sickens
Yet these seeds I pick to sow.

Witch on the hill

I know this witch on the hill
Who sits weaving spells
With two black cats on the sill
She hexes ill well.

In her cupboards are words
And great cavernous halls
The feathers of birds
And broken down walls.

With a flame and some secrets
She stirs over her brew
While prowling black creatures
Swish tails and mew.

Then just before dinner
With folk settling down
Her incantations float
Out over the town.

Out under the moon
Through the ivy-clad oak
Out through the fumes
Hanging over the Smoke.

Around tragic minds
Slow, sallow and blue
White magic she winds
Till sight becomes new.

Widdishins, widdishins
She mutters and stirs
With pin cushion dummies
And handfuls of herbs.

Widdishins, widdishins
In go the words
While under her wings
Purring sun-god concurs.

Vice-held voices
Rejoice in a song
The one carried silent
They've sung all along.

While out on the hill
With two black cats on the sill
She sits weaving spells
And no one can tell.

A comment on kidnapping

An eye for an eye
A tooth for a tooth
The blood of another
For one murdered youth.

Bronze-aged moralities
Industrial fatalities
Untenable disparities
A very sad reality.

Rotor blades
From overseas aid
Make umarked graves
Collateral of young braves.

Twisted bigotry
Hiding in history
Belligerent racists
Lead an ignorant state.

Wolves at the door

The wolves have come

Come howling from the moor

Howling scratch the bare wood door

I hear their paws in snow

Hear their whines and chatter

And tremble in the cold.

Alone, down to lamb bones

And boiling broth

Down to scraps they did not save for rope

Down to comfort sought

In the remorseless winter

Chorus of wolves.

They will come again tonight

Certain as sunrise

Again tomorrow.

Past christmas now

Past the season of feast and gifts

Past generosities.

What is to be made

Of lamb bones and old rope
Of empty pots
Of spotless knives and spoons?

The wolves have come to my door

In cold I will not tremble

Or worry over circled tracks

Worry for their whining

They are welcome back.

The wolves have come to my door

Tomorrow I trade fur.

Letter to some editors

Dear Editor,

Nigel Farage's call for greater direct democracy is welcome.

However government today is as much about spending as legislation and traditional ideas of democracy did not face this problem.

Public spending has grown forty fold since the beginning of last century.

(http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/threecenturiesofdata.xls)

A novel form of direct democracy in a digital age would be to give citizens input into public spending decisions.

The elected government should publish its spending plans immediately after the general election. Then allowed a period for citizens to adjust each budget line by some precentage.

This would make our democracy more inclusive, less a la carte, political promises more binding and politicians more focused on persuading the electorate to back policies, rather than making empty promises to secure office.

Further, mandating policies might allow the retention of budgets within the civil service and end the incentive to profiligacy that comes from having to spend or return budgets within a year.

The next general election falls on the eight hundreth anniversary of the Magna Carta, which created parliament for the purpose of overseeing the Sovereign's tax and spending.

Representation may have been the best option 800 years ago, but the web now allows us to publish and collect feedback at little cost.

British innovation in governance was a competitive advantage for centuries. We should again focus Britain's “unique moral genius” on the issue of governance, harness the wisdom of crowds and use National Participatory Budgeting to build a more inclusive, more efficient and more direct democracy.

Murder on Ferry Lane

This and that
This and that's been said
They say this and that
They say this and that about him
Like it's justification
But that facts be
Execution by police of a man in a taxi
Execution by police of a man in a taxi
Execution by police of a man
This is repetition
No apologies.

No medicine
This bitter pill
Killed by the law
Verdict
Lawfully killed.

No medicine
These questions
These questions of character
The actors
The character of the actors
The act of shooting
A radio
The script of the actors
As answers
For questions
Unanswered questions
Of running guns and guns running
Questions at the gates of Downing Street
Questions, questions
Because they shoot first
And ask questions later.

Return love

Var life
Var love
Var happiness
Var I

If (life != happiness) {
    find (love);
    love = array []
    For each I in love []{
    I = 0, I++, I < love
    return love[]}

Else If (life = happiness) {
    love = array [];
    for each in love []
    echo love}

Else If (empty(life)) {
    find (love);
    love = array
    For each (love []){
    I = 0, I++, I < love
    echo love
    life = love
    return life}

Else If (love = 0) {
    life.live()
    life.work()
    life.make_merry()

    Find (love)
  
    life.live(love)
    life.work(love)
    life.make_merry(love)
  
    If (love > 0){
    return love};
    }

Else If (love == 1){
    life = happiness
    return love};

They come 'ere taking our jobs

A contribution to the debate on immigration

They come 'ere taking our jobs
With their funny food
And their bad attitude
And their gangs of drunken yobs.

They come ere
With the their strange ways, strange schools
Closed communities, their own rules.
Some say they're cool
And we should leave them alone
I say London's full
Country whitey go home.

They come 'ere taking our jobs
Talking odd
Clogging up our hospitals
And clogging up our roads
Breaching peace in parks
In self-important tones
Pushing up the house prices
But one thing I've never known
Why they don't stick to their devices
In the counties they call home.

Don't get me wrong
Heaven's be foresaken
This misplaced tribal ignorance
Ain't based on pigmentation
We've always had the Irish
The Germans and the Jews
And French and Dutch and Spanish
More than one or two
And Euston takes the Scotsmen
But Paddington should close
Cos London's full of country feet
Better walking country roads.

Don't get me wrong
Heaven's be foresaken
This ain't straight xenophobia
We still need immigration
A cornucopia metropolis
Of each and every nation
Rich as ancient Thebes
New York or Los Angeles
Or the prime of Rome
They ain't coming to your village
If it bothers you go home.

Why make space for bumpkins
When we can tap the global talent pool
Why clog up our economy
With web-foot, hair-lip fools.
We could take one or two
On a quota if they're of use
And house a case or two
Of institutional abuse.
We know what they're like afterall.

Now if they come 'ere and was humble
And stuck to cleaning floors
And worked only in the small hours
So that they could be ignored
I wouldn't grumble or begrudge
Just that odd one or two
But on the farms the fruit needs picking
So they should stay and work their due.

So spare us all you stiff-necked toffs
With prattling myopic aires
Our hands are better washed
We can tend our own affairs
So take the Queen and go tend the sheep
And take the parliament to Birmingham
Westminster we'll keep.

So all of you who don't know
Who where the weavers of the wool
Who built the railway and roads
And staff the hospitals
All of you who don't know
What makes a modern Rome
There's no place for you 'ere
You might as well go home
And leave the jobs to Londoners
And the best the world can send
There are green and pleasant lands
That you should stay and tend.

Sights across the city prove
What makes a modern Rome
And if you can't see how tide moves
Like Canute you'll lie in foam
So go back to the hills
So the chickens aren't alone
There's no place for you 'ere
Country boy go home.

F-Words

Certain f-words have suffered abuse
I have witnessed and heard
Some scurrilous use.

The four letter word
On so many lips
Has been turned to turd
The way ad-land use it.

Free. Everything free
Say linguistic parasites
And we'll buy if it's free
As the price seems right.

And then there is fresh
Which means unprocessed
But when it left the land
Is anyone's guess.

In plastic wrapped boxes
For one penny less
You can buy all you want
And its free and its fresh.

Windows on summer

This is a season of Cabbage Whites
In chaotic courtship
Who knows what hurricanes they cause
What they feel in their stomach.
Dancing in zephyrs like clumsy
Trapeze artists in honey
Over and under and past and over
And on
Like doppler rhythms from open cars
Calling satisfaction
That this democratic dream
Sunshine
Is all mine
And the Cabbage Whites'.

They're having a gas

Does Obama
Miss Osama
Is that why he sends Syrians
Heavy Armour?

There's Carlos the Jackal
But Bin Laden I'd rather
He was the best looking rebel
Since James Dean and Guevara.

The US has a concern
In regionalisation of the conflict.
They're having a gas.

From Pakistan to Somalia
Mali to Georgia
A war where we are unsure
Which targets we hit.

We're in want of a monster
Where is our monster
So we bomb and arm
Bomb and arm, bomb and arm
The whole of the Umma

What could be dumber
Than giving every angry young man a gun?
Auctioned futures
To give each rocket launchers.

The US has a concern
We will see violence escalate.
They're having a gas.

Lest we forget
Rambo 3 and our TV screens
Promoting Muja-hadeen
Staunch, with shoulder launchers
To take it to the Soviets.

To be forthright
It would seem poor foresight
To pour arms into a fight
Quite like what in hindsight
Spawned the air traffic
For those four flights.

I asked Humpty Dumpty
He said "sure right,
They're having a gas"

Blood, money and derivatives
To the victor the oils
So to backers with so much to give
It must be win
Win.

Aiming to install through proxy
Servers, processes and algorithms
For the new model of democracy
As seen in the Iraqi
Kleptocratic batshit strategy
Export standard is Beta
And may contain known conflicts.

We are all familiar with a different Utopia
With wheelchairs and legless beggars in our streets
Familiar with fatherless martyrs of the Middle East
They won't all, in the drama, don Semtex and rest
Some, like Osama, will take the rocks and look West.

Poem for the NSA

We met for a game of Bridge

Human to human

Drew out borders and grid

Drank port with ice

And served roast pork

The atmosphere was much enriched

As we talked long and loud

And as the pipes began to burn

There was not so much plume as cloud.

His facility with cards

Was well known

I did not heed the warning

Thinking I was smart,

I crested in six clubs

But was to crash and bust

Plot collapse before closure

A hostage to my hubris.

I never saw the diamonds glint

The toxic cargo smuggled by

Before the storm,

The threat seemed distant

There had been poor communication

Not so much as a flicker of understanding

A black out I'm afraid

All my partner could do was watch

They could not help nor aid

I started in a flood of trumps

You know the drill,

The attack looked all excercise.

But then delays started

The atmosphere crackled electric

I strained but could not recall

Which numbers had gone

And then a breach

The errant rough hit like a bomb

And an avalanche ensued

Lightening fast the looting of Kings

Running riot like pirates in Hispaniola

I had no power against the outbreak.

And in terror I was overcome

Relief was swift

The incident left me sick

Like a parrot with H5N1.

Vocab inspired by the NSA's key word list
http://redditgifts.com/exchanges/now-sharing-absurdity/