Power to the people

When they cried 'power to the people'
They didn't mean it.
Just a them and us confrontation
Against power's concentration.
But it was people that had power.

Now they mean it. Increasingly
We will say it and mean it
Against the unceasing creep of invisible webs
Networks and algorithms in people's stead.

Computers are blind to the streets
Blind to banners,  deaf to demos and chants
Algorithms do not have to face
Their children, their uncles and aunts.

When we cry power to the people
We will mean it.

We, myself and I

So this guy, who I've never met

But connect with over digi shit

From keyboard skirmish in some debate

Pops up on messenger to ask

Who are you?

And I'm like, wait.....?

I am at least 43% bacteria

Who are not me, who do not share my DNA

Governed by linked Eukaryotes

That hold at least some sway.

So who are we, this team

Bounded in a lipid skin

That processes all this data

From without, within?

A nested complex system

Fractal departure in fractal set

A mobile arc for DNA

Electro-chemical and wet.

An optic set of stories

And culture that I've sponged

A city built on many towns

Foundations, deep, unknown.

I am all those I know

And how I know them too

The other teams of storied cells

A node in the Ubuntu.

The Greeks will tell I'm an immortal soul

Ever true like maths

That there is one unchanging me

If I mill through all the chaff.

But if I'm an equation

Then it is one non-linear

The answer made each moment new

With situation and parameter.

For I am not that three year old

Or that young man of twenty

To go chasing after some true self

Is just a quest that's empty.

I am not me ten years back

Or even yesterday

And I am not who I will be

Even later on today.

I am we, is what we find

The more sciene probes

For there is at least one self

In each temporal lobe.

There are neurons

In my heart and gut

Not just in my head

And chemicals that change

With every book I 've read.

Chemicals that change

If on my head they place a crown

Or bind me in shackles chained

In prison, beaten down.

Chemicals that change

If love holds me for a time

Or I run a marathon

Or live on nout but limes.

I have understandings

From animals extinct and dead

And understandings from unique genius

Like Einstein, in my head.

I'm a complex adaptive system

That mills meanings as I be

And even by this evening

I'll be a different form of we.

She is a survivor

Be kind to her

Even if she has grown to wear the crown

Be kind.

Soon after birth she broke

Murdering family, self-harm

Long before the uncle appeared

Be kind to her.

Acount the infant trauma

Questions and pictures of hurt youth

Frozen at heart to know no path

Away from these vexed complexes

Rooted in past and tangled in her hair.

Treat her with kindness and care.

She still walks with stars in her eyes

Still dreams, still streams with tears

And screams, still finds the same faults

Can't stitch the torn seams

Still fights the guilt, clings to toys

Pulls up the quilt. Still cannot help

But see the pictures of those young eyes.

Still caught in recriminations and hate

Asking the same questions she asked then

Young questions from a long held crown.

Confounded in the same debates

From the 1860s

Darwin, Melanin, Socialism or Liberalism

Like she'll never move on, be kind to her

America, her civil war

Survivor of childhood trauma.

Haggerston bridge

London Plane, trunk like old skin, lamp clad and bluing

Is portal guard like Cerebus to dark water in warm dusk

This is not the Styx, this yoked conduit of memory

Slow freight path of archaeology

Is again thinking new sediment.

Where once were dreams rise modular units

Poorly edited, I remember this manuscript

When the blocks of type had no roofs

Shards and boards, pigeons and purple budlea.

The new brick is unetched by traffic

Unwashed by soot, standing as if

It is something, the red faced facade

And underneath steel webbed core.

There is no thought of empire here no more

Thoughts are elsewhere, interest and consideration

Elsewhere, decorations, elsewhere

Stucco and arches, long ago squared

No proud punctuation of co-operative endeavor,

No ornamentation

Just railings, iron, 4x10 or whatever.

This manuscript is seen from distance

Where pride is in different things

Different interest and considerations

Whoever made this wash

Does not know this place

And what it has to be proud of.

Dusk stretches into lost distance like this

Dark artery, spun into glasses, footsteps, kisses

By a million lights, it is hard to know

When the sun sets.

But there is no thought of empire

Where innovation is a different shape of box

Frosted glass steps monotonous, myopic space

They believe in these cube units.

Cubists,

But value just one angle

There is no thought of empire here

Only conquest.

It's a donkey

We're getting sold a donkey

They said it was a Ferrari, classic

The finest engineering, cutting edge

But it's a donkey.

A donkey with bling stirrups and ergonomic saddle

Go faster stripes sprayed on for modern appeal

We're getting sold a donkey, named Ferrari.

It's the best of 800 year old donkeys

But it's not a Ferrari

It doesn't send performance data to track side

To tweak and adjust input and exhaust, real time

It ain't clocking 200k on the straight

You can't change it's shoes in 1.2 seconds

Trade descriptions, this not a Ferrari.

Cross in a box every five years

Deary, deary, dear

It's a donkey.

The mother of all parliaments

Needs to look to the grandkids

Or we will all feel plate tectonics.

They say earthquakes happen

When two adjacent pieces of crust

Move at different rates, one gets stuck

The resulting friction builds up

Until it erupts in violent shock.

The revolution will not be televised

It will not be bought to you by mail train

Or pigeon carrier on velum parchment orginals

But if we don't fix these plate tectonics

It might just come in smoke signals.

I think we've been fooled

They say it's donkey called Ferrari

I think it's really a mule.

Say that again

The things that you say
Say to others
Say them to me.
I want to hear them from your lips.
Hear your lips whisper
Hear your lips
Without words.

No plot left

In the beds that face the sun

I have grown roses

And now they are gone.

The first was yellow

Unlike any other one

An African, yes, long done.

The second, to the West

Was a classic red

Pungent, rosette blooms

That marched determined on

Through the year from June

And I never should have left

The hips on it, unprunned.

The third, to the East

Was delicate white

Fleeting, with scent so sweet

Geraniums and snapdragons

Mark the grave of each.

And now in the bed

That faces the sun

I see no plot for a new rose

Only Borrage and Geranium.

Strong and stable

Strong and stable,

Like a hairpin on a bomb

At the negotiating table

What could possibly go wrong.

Strong and stable

Like dominoes

Once willing and able

To tread on their toes.

Strong and stable

Like Terry Waite

As she sits among enemies

With her new found mates.

Strong and stable,

Like a hairpin on a bomb

At the negotiating table

What could possibly go wrong.

Of course I must forget

I.

Of course I must forget

Like a beach forgets the traffic

With the tide.

Like night forgets a candle

That has died.

Like a shirt on a radiator

Forgets the rain.

I must hold you, or forget.

A single moment from a train.

II.

Of course I must forget

Like oak forgets the summer

Every year.

Like clay forgets its possibilities

In fire.

Like a squirrel forgets
Where it buried its nuts.

Nuts.

I must forget.

Dismay

There will be no snap election

No crocodile tears

What the naughtiest thing you've ever done

Bomb London, child abuse is God's will.

There will be no snap election.

What is it he says

Sweetest summer love

My north star, so long my hope 

What is it he says to you? 

What is it he says? 

Not within my ear shot 

Or gunshots

Those echoes of harm

Snake weak forked tongue

We will see this done

Even weasels have a leg to stand on. 

A kneecap.

What is it he says? 

From the vice dripping 

Glass house of a midlife crisis

I'll be nice with this

Though it would pain me 

To finish it quick. 

He should bring water to your cup, not your eye. 

With grace and clean speed

Sparrow pierces through sky.

Heron, my grace and compass

Don't hold his sacks on your wing

His baggage and shit

And should he seek to clip

Your freedom that lets the air in

I will break each bone from wrist up

And return to his fingers

Oh dare him. And I will visit

Jazz upon his bones like Mingus. 

It gets me a bit old testament

Certain suggestions

Linguistic tricks, baited attacks and gaslight.

I got this instruction booklet called

'Making mothafuckas act right'

Misappropriated entitlements

Fed on sensation, titillation,
Obscured connections, responsibilities 

The globalised ring of gyges

I say ring, wring

Is no big thing

No big thing. 

Lilting stream, water over smooth rocks

On what level do we meet angels?

Some can only rope and drag low

Some cannot fly, and in truth

Some can only lie

For their truth is not to tell.

Your wings reach above the clouds

Where the sun shines

And angels sing at picnic
Spare him no time

Mudslingers leave grime

Bring gunslingers, he ain't yours

He's all mine. 

Man chats flaff

What spoonful of sorrow do you bring

Exchange it for medicine

Tell me where your heart weighs

My ear yours always, in all ways.

This is not you, sweet enchantment

Can't be, but for how you are an apogee

Of every man's hope and dream

Seeming or unseemly.

No, this is not thee.

In all your sweet revrie, wise liberty

Your care, and he might wish to love you

But the full you he does not dare.

Only in your form and shape

That adverts of our heaven ape

But shys from your sweet spell

Inspiring

Too enriching to wish escape.

The only freedom in your following.

Do you not know you are more than diamonds.

Have I failed you?

More than the sun's gold good bye

I haven't failed you have I.

Some years since our summer, close

But more than most,

More than any other, almost

You colour my idea of love

I colour my idea of love

From the outlines that you left on me.

Your laugh, your wit, my sweet revrie.

Forgive me

If I think I learnt

Something of the art you taught

Learnt in lonliness, an acupuncture of intimacy

Learnt in sweat where love maps to skin

Forgive, my belief

That you need to be loved easily

Like brushing your teeth.

Like sketches in ink.

Like casserole.

Your relief mapped in touch and breath

Forgive, if you left expecting any less.

Let me risk this one disappointment

You can't expect most to match your depth

To see what you see in this world and the hearts of men

See beyond how they themselves can with all reflection

You tend the garden well,

Each grows its own direction to your sun.

The way I loved you for so long as a canvas for projection.

One of the cleverest men in Britain once said to me

Another level of understanding is needed for explanation.

You in gifts explain the art of love by demonstration.

And if he wears you too full of care.

Call, I'll tell you that I love you, and ever are my pride

And that for every verse I write

There's a hundred men a tongue tied.

He might want to love you, but love you he doesn't dare

Leave him to rue and learn, go drop hankerchief on Mayfair.

Vote giant vampire squid

Vote giant vampire squid

Because squid will eat your kids.

Squid will suck out your face

And label you a disgrace

For not having enough flesh to

Suck.

Vote squid

Squid will efficiently

Juice every nook and cranny

Squeezing out every last penny

From any pocket.

Squid will beat the small man down

Squid will beat the medium man down too

Give squid your vote

Because squid will fit universal catheters to pipes

And juice your shit on remote.

Squid will pat fat cats and

Eichmann's Jerusalem enablers

Relax in tax havens

And make you play catch for crumbs

Squid will presume you're that dumb.

Vote squid

Because squid will liquidate our common heritage

For a couple of quid

Vote squid

A monster you can trust

To suck out your face

And leave you a dried husk.

Those other loves

Would you ever accept being fourth

Worry of other loves

Worry that at night

I was stealing the message of your touch

For Erato,

That I was saving my feelings for Calliope,

Or that I sang for some other better

Greying that I only wanted you

For your resonance, for sentences

Could you ever forgive leaving you alone

For a sonnet.

Lemel

Candle light

My jet, you make the page so bright

And yet, I know you can't requite,

Reciprocate a love like this

Don't fret 

You make the page so bright.

I spoil her

We shall go to the sea late summer

When a faraway storm brings waves

When moon is waxen yellow and low

And all the sky is a nave.

We shall go to sea late summer

When the air is a syrup of blooms

When the air is an oven of slumber

And all the shore is a room.

The waves will be our whispers

And all we have to tell

The waves will be our cradle

In the frolick of the swell

We shall taste salt on skin

Salt upon our mouths

Salt upon the air that swims

On the shores of the seas of the south

We shall go to the sea late summer

Without gravity or edge

Without the trappings of fashion

With nothing that needs to be said.

We shall go to the sea late summer

When a faraway storm brings waves

When the moon is waxen yellow and low

We shall go to the sea and be saved.

Make me an honest man

Make me on honest man

This tongue of mine so lose and free

For I believe there's one who can

Carry this rich hyperbole.

Would you make me an honest man

I have such sweet, fine things to say

So few who gently understand

These words so often throwaway.

Oh, let me shower them on you

In whispered passion or sweet jest

Be one to make these words ring true

Make them not lies upon my chest.

If I should say that in your eye

Is all beauty one soul could bear

Could you make this not some coarse lie

Oh, make me honest if you care.

Were I to call your touch divine

Could you make that phrase ring true

Whisper you've a heart so kind

Could you make that truthful too.

If I sung there's nothing better

Than to spend my days with you

Would your spirit make the letter

Of this commandment ever true.

Oh love make me an honest man

How sweet nothings flow from my lips

And rising flames they unseen fan

This careful tongue so often slips

And with it words slip to your soul

Like diamonds on your heart to hold

To speak in lies does leave me cold

Oh, make me an honest man.

I only wish to hold your hand

And sweet nothing seeds to flower

Would you make me an honest man

So rare that one has the power.

Thoughts of a grey day

Well, I guess it's a mess

Frayed trust is a hard set to adjust

All static

I can't ask you to do this

The edges of my cover

In lose filaments, the weave

Fading, unbraiding and disordered

Caught on the less populated edges

Like the first dogs

I must mutate to stomach

The rubbish, fed with rubbish

And fed up, to the gills.

These storms of mind worsen

There have always been squalls

Burnt carbon, methane

Now they are hurricanes

And the thick black pall

Hangs on the horizon for seasons

The only deliverance is mutation

Controlled cell growth under this light

Adaptation. The lodger left the toilet broken

My ex got drunk and pulled the guest

Of all, I know not what should be spoken

This frayed blanket is a mess.

Obama,history may see you as black

For America,

Obama, you were a great act

A mixed descent Kenyan

American of melted origin

But heritage, will see you as black.

In Damascus

They will see you as black

In Tripoli and Cairo

They will see you as black.

And all those in the Umma

With their homes on their backs

Well, they might just too

See you as black.

100 years since the Kaiser

Put Lenin on a train

The oil fields in flames

And your closer

The foreign legacy

Was a right Turkey.

You sold yourself so short

In memory of Ted Hughes

You deserved it

Outside the great court

After all our courtship

You sold yourself short

So short

Too cautious, so obvious

You chose less risk

Thinking it was safe

That he would never see you lit,

To turn your back on changing sea

And boat your passions on a lake.

Do you pretend

For a second

That I could not have made that conflict quicken

As you scurried sticky

Under the Plane trees.

I let you shrink

Not worth the ring

Not the worth the mink.

We pretended

Long after it all went awry

When you became offended

That I said your mother had surrendered

In Kent, to defeat.

And I became offended

That you couldn't think on your feet.

You can carry on pretending.

You won't forget me

Or forgive yourself

For missing out on love

However old you grow.

I saw your wedding photos

Who were you thinking of, what

That day?