Gulls

There's always a storm down the Thames these days
Constant as traffic, a carousel of gull calls
Over the tiles, the roofs, rusted swinging hinges
Even in spring blue sky, days since rainfall
There must always be a storm in the Thames.

They eat the pigeons, the gulls do
With their ired eye and their wronged screech
I've seen them, like you may have too
Pigeons left the field for Parrakeets.

My mother, looking at the clouds would mutter
When thigh high young her hand I reached for
There's storm at Chatham, over Thanet
They fly down to London to find harbor
And Pigeons are softer than Ganets.

There must be a storm out to sea
Pigeons have moved on from grass seed
And the Gulls have moved on from fish
Pecking boxes of K.F.C
Avians scavenging trash
It is, as Darwinian does
These days we breed Vultures from Doves.

I heard of civil war where Starlings breed
Now they travel with but a clutch of friends
Sparrows survive, some return to the trees
Someone won five thousand pounds in the end.

There's a storm in the Thames, gulls are in flight
The wooden lense of tradition has said
Of people who look on red sky at night
Only shepherds of the Atlantic
Go soundly to bed, and Grandma will tell
That is was all fields, before Haber-Bosch
These days there's always a storm in the Wash.

There's always a storm down the Thames
And other legends
The widow in Richmond, who in loving grief
Released a pair of green Parrakeets
And park by park they fought for twenty years
Till they shocked us one scarfed schooled winter
Green against grey and the naked trees of the heath
A flock of sqwaking green Parrakeets.

Doves become Vultures, Parrots replace Doves
Darwin says it what it takes to find love
Grandma says the Lord works in mysterious ways
And there's always a storm in the Thames these days.

Something I said to bloke on stage

Don't step to me with that
Gotta be black to rap crap
That abject chat is a trap
That forefathers fought to free from
But you jumping straight back.

Erecting same walls of Melanin
Like the spirit of slave masters
Still leaves deep within

You divide and categorise
By the colour of man's skin
Brother that ain't brain cells
That's brain prison.

Untame Ode to Ali Cole

Moonbeam loom your weft and woof

Does leave me a breathless beetroot youth

The softest quilt, your sticky silk

Is all cocooning of my heart that melts.

In truth I haven't felt this way

Since I dived velvet chocolate caramel

And swam intoxicated days

Till my teeth sank into nougat quays

And mermaids, raised me on Patchouli breeze

With magic made me divine wind.

Oh moonbeam loom, let me begin again.

At Ariadne's knee she learned

To weave the equinox's light

Into silver sheets and pearls

That hold souls warm and tight.

Oh moonbeam loom

Let me dye just one thread

Or know

I'd rather die instead.

I gaze though gauzes in my bed

No light to see by in your stead

But stumble blind in garden sheds

By scent alone to roses led

With searching fingers grasp their heads

And push a dozen to my nose

But their touch is not of your ilk

As brick to Sapphire is

As water is to milk.

A rose cannot bind me like your silk.

Ode to Ali Cole

There is a story to be told
About the glory of Ali Cole
But not a story I can tell
So wide the sea, so deep the well.

For I can gaze into the heavens
But cannot count the stars
They name me but a heathen
In the hunt of Diana.

Though my eye is full of moon
But one side I see
All its markings and its runes
Remain a mystery.

I can but stand as priests have done
Marvel at the moon and sun
As they set my night and day
In ways that I can't fathom.

I can but stand as priests and pray
In humble wonder of all she be
A glory far beyond assay
Pray, enlightenment she'll bestow on me.

Note to a bird on a train

Thank you
You gave me a pen
To write
A rare gem
From a ship in the night.

Shoulders of giants

Where cords of civilisation are moored

The brittle guy ropes of our tree house world

I see men of law and plump senators

Laying blocks and digging foundation holes

New barriers rising high while I watch

Above where the arm stops, at the seam stitch.

There the claims of Captains of industry

Lead lines of blind leaders like Pavlov's bell

“All the silver I land belongs to me”

They cry so proud from high on the lapel.

Laying barbed wire which they freshly forge

Electrifying the tromba, notch and gorge

Dragging paper up the back by the cart

Reams in blocks yards thick on seams daily grow

Miles upon miles of statutes and torts

To form walls, tall and strong like Jerrico

At the entrances they make gates like Gates

Would charge fees to all who climb the breastplate.

It's about time we weren't all so compliant

They'll privatise the shoulders of giants.

Do Mssrs Musk, Zuckerberg, Venter, Brin

Feel that they could have achieved anything

Had they not in diligence caught coat tales

The thick braid between gold buttons scaled.

Licence royalties owed to Edison

Newton, Bacon, Faraday and whoever

Was the Babylonian that pressed on

Wet clay with stones way back in Nineveh.

Illiterate, I don't think they'd have one percent of the clients

They're all reliant

On the shoulders of giants.

This deft suspension above the deep shit

This tree house society of all us

Exists high in the sky, every bit

Borne on shoulders of countless Colossus.

Without the lookout post of libraries

We'll fall from the Eden of these high trees.

Make mine a Molotov, get defiant

They want privatise shoulders of giants.

Excercise

I spent some time in thought about it all
If
I was a climber, unvertiginous
Oh if
I loved to wander waterfalls and cliffs
If only
I tended to flowers idigneous
If only I
Couldn't live in the City's artifice
If only ideas
Freed I from these strictures and earthly bonds
If only ideas purr
Like a calm cat, watchful, ready, at peace
If only ideas purchase
Houses full bread, pillows, songs and friends
If ony ideas purchase say
Dreams of peace, light, empires and monuments
If only ideas' purchase save us
From the vagaries of love and our end
Only if ideas' purchase saves us now
Will I keep the habour afore of the prow.

Some piece of confusion

Wish she'd had enough to love
In her heart
That she weren't so hurt
You know.
Didn't start from gentle touch
So far apart, yet
I glimpse light from pillboxes
From just a brush
I think we'd fit like stencils
And alter charts,
My fire never quieted
For us.

So late in summer - sonnet

Speak less of desire so late in summer

When heat swaddles tarmac, rising from roots

Flowers in finery seduce bees dumb

And sun kisses sugar into green fruits.

The hay's to be brought in, the grass is long

The seas are warm, tall corn has ripened ear

December born charm, think my heart unwrong

So late, speak less of desire my dear.

All life's adventure, so late in summer

So late waking, bees already in love

Strawberries from spring beds have set runners

Still dusk takes an age to draw close above

This season of slow days when geese look South
She was born, a Passion flower in her mouth.

Closed vowel

Why did love not open

We made move and prove

And even lose and open vowel

But love stayed closed

And now to find a rhyme

I am so oft defeated

Love, love, love

It must have stayed repeated.

So late in summer

Speak less of desire so late in summer

When heat swaddles tarmac, rising from roots

Flowers in their finery seduce bees dumb

And sun kisses sugar into green fruits.

The hay's to be brought in, the grass is long

The seas are warm, the corn has ripened ear

The collared doves coo soft in song

May born charm, think my heart unwrong

Talk less of desire my dear.

All life is adventure

So late in summer

So late waking, with bees already in love

When dusk takes an age to draw covers close

Geese look south

She was born of this season

Passionflower in her mouth.

Sick note for Tommy Bee's birthday

Oh marbled fleshed Adonis
Unadmonishable
So unearthly is your promise
It is immodest that I pretend
To frame such mind-bending glory
With a pen.

So stout of jaw and firm of hip
That artists track your every step
A truth I see that at your birth
The very fabric of aesthetics ripped
And all was lit across the earth
As glorious God let us see in you
Heroic new dimensions
Of beauty timeless true.

I have heard the name Tommy Bee
Sung in arias overseas
And whispered in hushed reverent tones
Gates, Obama seek to phone
Diaz, Delevigne writhe and sweat
Westwood (V) casts weekly thrones.

And scientists they wish to test
That muscled member world renowned as blessed
That thick undulating silken dick
That zestful lovers besotted lick
With heaving chest and heart so quick
They quest to taste the irreplacable
Lollipop of Hackney Wick.

Sonic Boom

Gurning sun-burnt urchins lurch church to church uncertain

In curious discovery of all covered by the curtains.

Lethargic surges urge in waves merging pungent nights with days

In rolling surf of mirth and smurfs, giraffes, and of course, unicorns

Dressed in heavy gauge

Macrophages for anxiety, scour thoroughfares of pagan piety

Alleyways of high society.

And all the world's a stage

To see bees

Make a merry path so free

Dancing underneath the trees

Moments that can only please

And all the world's a stage.

Sparkle this lithium crisp reaction i saw shooting stars

Look, a smile and another, and another in a milky way

Which way, oh what wily bewitchment hexes this

Enchanted wood, I hear leaves play tambourines

And lights in orange, white and green

Shadows dance and hug me warm like wilderness

Perambulating ambient distances, riotous bliss, listless of all, dam hill

Missed this, legs kill, white coats, pill for that,

Missed this, in glistening visions, missions in fission

Listening to waves breaking in space in fat collisions

Wishing

For a clean place to shit-in.

Cover me on the grass like ashes, drift like pollen in the sun

Running syrup thick liquid marionette to sounds and sets

Settled and encamped in rainbow ranks, what walls

What walls are there that would resist this army's siege.

Drink a case this on my feet

Tarantella daft, laced with tastes of scenes, bass and acts

For others

I can't speak

The most useful paste of lean baked half sedated waste

I been in a year and a week

For real

Something saved my grace in those fields.

Battle bars

Your deadweight statements are basic, abate them
I got half a dozen replacements
You'll take vacations in basements
Concrete casements no trace, no body, no statements
Wasting your grace chasing migratory geese
Geaser I'm decorating temporary space with these beats
We done verbal feats
In places where iron gates get effaced by the beast
You heard all the  chiefs, daft
I'm sicker than cats fed on weeks of fur-balls and grass.
You claim you badder by half
Bet I'm madder, brung better rungs the ladder
Had enough of rough mathematics and adders
Don't be sad that your pad is full of fakes and charades
Bars claiming your hard
You only punt ounces, all you bounce is a card
Gwaan jog your hard arse right back to your yard
Act like you heard
My style is known lardarse round here and abroad
Don't be sad that you're around to drown in my wake
My shit is greater, no debate, settled and clear
Your ears been waiting to hear shit like this
Since like Shakespeare.

Scum also rises

They say that cream rises to the top
A quote true of pure milk
But that's about where it stops.

For when I boil the pot
Cream in or not
It's scum that I see rise to the top.

So don't be suprised
If the film is not
As the quotation advises
There is the odd clot
And scum also rises.

Me friend he say

My friend, he enquire 
I say “Fire. Wired. Less tired” 
We converse 
And in some flippancy 
I drop discursive verse 
Upon family 
Him a see me 
Him a say 
“Do you have a problem with intimacy” 

Me a say 
“If I have learnt one thing today 
It's easier when they run away 
It might not please, might bring dismay 
What's easier when they run away” 

And him a say “The struggle to stay may pay” 

And me a say 
“In sunshine we must make hay 
To store to feed a winter's day 
The work we love is not all play
When may all the struggle pay” 

What him a say next 
What me a say next 
Don't go down in text.

The Camel and the Swallow

You know the mound out the back door

There was a Camel under all that straw

And a broken Swallow too
How long for, no one knew

The Camel sat submerged and chewed

The Swallow ate ticks galore

They chewed and chewed until they saw

The world anew, a bit like before.

A breeze came, then a wind

And lightened the Camel's leaden limbs

And twitched the weakened Swallow's wings.

Day by day, summer jets

Lifted golden blades away

Like invisible majorettes

The Swallow began to hop and flap

The Camel stretched its legs and back

And turned his dusty head and said

“No matter what the doctor thinks

There's a million straws gone o'er the brink

And I'm still here and need a drink

How many summers Swallow?”

The Swallow said “more than one

I've lost count, I've seen no sun

Sallow, under all that straw restrained

But you will play piano again.”

And the Camel said “and you will sing”

And that small breath took the Swallow's frame.

In the zephyrs and gusts that summer brings

Came the breath that lifts the Swallow's wings.

Letter to a 4am fan

Given your pride's so clearly in safe hands

What should I read of your shyness

Coy lioness?

To analysis I shan't digress

For all that way is silliness, unless

A rustle in the grass, a scent

I can but wish

In innocence and jest I ask.

What causes you to slink

I wish you'd come confess.

It must be changing metres

Or where I put the stress.

You must have fixed on Cheetahs

Or be vulnerable I guess.

This verse is always yours,

Use it for whatever purpose

If you would that there be more be

Close, come, make others

Superlative, make others

Superfluous

This verse is always yours.

A rustle in the grass

No teeth or claws, I can but muse

Excuse me this
Many souls walk the streets of London
Wishing that they'd played their trumps

Does Carnival, oh mind altering insubstantial

Oh seam of muse

Oh rich vein 

Unmined

Does Carnival and the throbbing street

Touch you only skin deep

Were you once touched deeper

Once touched deeper

Oh and that time flew

Call it shallow

Call me shallow

I know that's not enough for you. ;-)

What was that

I don't know whether it was
Oxytocin or Beta-endorphin
I been spending more time laughin.

I don't know whether it was
3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine or Psilocybin
I been spending more time vibesin.

I don't know whether it was
What's only skin-deep
That touched me like a suture in the amygdala
I been getting better sleep.

I don't know whether it was
Sun-shine or music
But that really did improve shit.

I don't know what to blame
Whether it was all or none
Or one and not the other
Sketched out in rough
Seems enough.

Offerings

They offered me diamonds
I said I had no need
They offered me roast meat
I said I had no need
They offered me sugar
Sweet, honeyed mead
Offered feather beds, flags and jewellery,
Syrups, swords and grails.
Offer me a violin
I will take it without fail.

Trophy hunting

I.

Sometimes, summer dusk promises no rain
Sky like blistered fire in a whitesmith's forge
Eyes become giddy with riches and flame
With all that glides your mesmered gaze ignored.

II.

Brush dip the sky-line and colour the night
Running where eyes do not help, the woods, caves
Where only ears and fingertips give sight
Mice in the grass sound like leopards at play.

Sunset led me into blindness.

To this cathedral, where eyes are no aid
Dark decorates dark, laticed and yawning
All solid darkles
Ornament is silouhette and scratches
Saved for morning.

In this black abyss came a beast so vast
Its stone haunches shifted trees like dancers
Its vermeil ivory rich outshone the moon
Each deft step cast, a giant earthquake passed
Night falling in night. Darkness bright as noon.

Sunset led me into ink.

In silouhette decorated cathedrals
I stumbled
Where swelling fear holds your face from truth
Till my soles broke brambles to sweet dark juice
Morticed brush to paths, that for others lay
To the horizon, hillls, the holloway
I stumbled
From the sweet dank stench of wet earth at night
To the pale, nervous scorn of morning light.

III.

In peeley-walley day's advance
When cold braves slept and field mice crept
And all that's left is detritus
Feathers slipped silent from the branch.

As shepherds watch rams that fight
And fisher seeks the fish to bite
After blind, warm, embroidered night
My sore eyes caught a final flight.

In false first light's nervous scorn
I saw Minerva's owl at dawn.

Ouch

I.

Sometimes, when summer dusk comes and the sun
Lights sky, like a fire in a whitesmith's forge
Eyes become giddy with riches and flame
And what glides across your gaze is missed.

II.

Brush dip the sky-line and colour the night
Running where eyes do not help, the woods, the caves
Where only ears and fingertips may aid you
Hoots, mice sound like giants stirred in the brush.

Fears eats your shadow, grow on your shoulder
Pushing your cheek, holding your face from truth
Face them
Face them, as you would children
Face them well, and they will become guards and pets.

III.

Sunset led me into blindness
Where eyes do not help
Into this cathedral, where dark decorates dark
And all ornament is silouhette and scratches
Are saved for morning.

I stumbled amid lice and rotten wood
Till my shoes broke brambles.
I stumbled in the blast of guns
And warfare for ivories.

IV.

Sunset led me into darkness
With but one silk length
Where eyes do not help
Where fears eat your shadow
There came a beast so vast its haunches
Shifted trees like dancers
And its ivory outshone the moon
Each step an earthquake of night falling within night.

With but one length of silk
I stumbled
Amid lice and rotten wood, the scent of earth at night
Till my soles broke brambles like grapes
Morticed brush to paths that lay
To the holloway, to the rising horizon and hills
To the pale nervous scorn of morning light.

V.

Sunset led me into ink
In silouhette decorated cathedrals
I stumbled, the scent of earth at night
Where fear holds your face from truth
Would I cage the moon, would you
Take it from the sky,
Stuffed with straw
Hold it in some room in fear
Of tides, of earthquakes, of night falling
Within night.

With but one length of silk
I hunted earthquakes
And sought to feed them from my hand.
I stumbled.

VI.

In the pale, nervous scorn of morning
When braves slept and mice crept
Feathers slipped silent from the bough.
I sought to call a beast so vast
To my wrist and feed it
From my palm.
I command no other way.

Feathers slipped silent from the bough
After blind, warm, embroidered night
My sore eyes caught a final flight
In false first light's nervous scorn
I saw Minerva's owl at dawn.

Like dancing to D&B

I've been dancing to pop songs too long
In four four
Side to side steps on the dance floor
A little shimmy or a shake
But nothing so complicated
You have to concentrate.

But there's the odd track that's Goldie
Hip shake palpitations makes a break sweat
Feet sweet confused, ankle, passes ankle
New fangled angles, half spangled
As the drop lets your fingers dangle.

Shifts lift, kick infiltesimal gifts,tuck adjustments
From just where the cusp of balance tips
Boated lips spit time, butt grinds
All other limbs celebrate like panic.

I can't live in country, I need city
Syncopation, smoking jazz or frustration hints
Every missed chance the artist omits
Trying to add the extras, I admit
Be committed and quit
Be committed and quit
Rather than subsist on off the peg regular popular dirges
Purge dregs
My feet greet jazz, greet breaks
Like new found lovers
I've been dancing to pop songs
For too long.

Letter to W.H. Auden cc: Foreigner

I don't feel you need no teaching
You know what love is now
Not for weather or for bacon
Or strangers in a crowd.
The kind that plays on Steinway grands
The kind that really sings
Not that which leads to suicide
That isn't really loving.

It looks as clear as ground and polished glass
Lenses light to crystal points of focus
It stinks unto high heaven, since you ask
That reek speaks sweet like the scent of crocus.

Touch a pile of small particles like sand

Dive the water of the river

With a little luck you will understand

That's what it'll give you.

Others often talk about it

Like it is something new

Love speaks of all the particles

Your body's sliding through

There are versions told in stories

That make the heroes tick

But stories have their editors

I doubt you're quite that thick.

And you hear it when you can hear

The lark or blackbird sing

There are times that you can hear it

Above all other things.

You can hear it in the questions

The echoes and replies

And when it speaks you hear it clearly

It does not bear disguise.

Go look at how the waiter feels

Watch the eyes of their pets

Go look when your telephone rings

And look on further yet

And if you can't see it clearly

Don't get it twisted bruv'

If you've searched and haven't found it

First look inside for love.

It doesn't just do party tricks

It works white magic too

It will feed the finest lunches

On only scraps of food

It has opinions on investments

For when the times get rough

And is the finest company

The odd truth about love.

Love's all the water in the sea

And oh the rose has thorns

Love's look out post sways tipsy high

Don't say you've not been warned

If it comes when you're unready

Then it may pass you by

But it is sure to come again

As dawn is in the sky.

You can try blind it, force it, shout it down

Love will be heard

And it ain't shit to be flippant about

Not a careless word

And though it's more abundant still

It's worth much more than gold

That's another truth about love

That's very, very old.


W.H.Auden. O Tell me the truth about love

Capitalism

It feels strange, a wake 

And yet no sorrow

I talk, get no response.

I used to see you grow and learn

Ensconced you in warm clothes

I call, get no response.

I tended you, and fed you

For many years now
You used to wake

And talk

And now I sit in wake 

Brimful confused sans grief

And cry, I get no response.

It always feels odd

Sitting with dead bodies.

Untitled

I wish I could stop
Writing about sadness and loss
Eat berries for breakfast and floss.

I wish I could stop
Writing about sadness and loss
And go rolling on
Not gathering moss.

I wish I could stop
Writing about sadness and loss.

Tanks - empires of numbers

VII.

Fixed point attractors, like power

Pack actors in recurring 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 silicon oracles

That modelled decision trees

From all recorded human history

Controlled production from touch screens

Found they preferred steel 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.

Tanks part II bit

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.

Grime Bars

All dem want is a big, big war
Boy step up get slap to the jaw
Your mans chat like they never been chored
Bet my ghetto more gutter than yours

Gutter than yours
Gutter than yours
Bet my ghetto more gutter than yours
More gutter than yours

My mans roll with no front door
Dogs in the yard blood, its your call
Hardcore t'iefs that'll take your floors
Bet my ghetto more gutter than yours

Gutter than yours
Gutter than yours
Bet my ghetto more gutter than yours
More gutter than yours

All your boys is in plus fours
You got guns but we got more
Chat like that, kidnapped in a car
Bet my ghetto more gutter by far

Gutter than yours
Gutter than yours
Bet my ghetto more gutter than yours
More gutter than yours

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.