No taxation without allocation

THE TOOLKIT IS BROKEN

The solution is not about centralisation
Or the reinvention of a priest caste
It's not about de-mechanisation,
Or a middle-class
That rides out of the dawn to save us
On white chargers
Armed with clipboards and Bics
And backed by battery
Of heavy filing cabinets.

It is not about re-hashing ancient debates
About how shift the deck chairs
Every four years
To better mandate our mis-representatives
On false prospectuses
Named nostalgically
Manifestos.
The will of the people defenestrated
The moment those Misrepresenting Perjurers
Take their seats.

It's not about invisible hands, or hand outs
Or charity band aids or sipping trickle down
From dammed up redoubts of exploitation.
It's about the mechanisms of wealth allocation
As well as wealth creation.

But its not about claiming
That there's a benefit to poverty
Or looking for bottom fishing equality
From bureaucratic monopolies.

Or a misguided faith
That a multitude of misapprehended self-interests
Will keep us safe from the cliffs
Of our Armageddon myths.

That there's a perfection in price,
That the tender dance of supply and demand
Will forever be time.
You'll find
That lovers fall out.



THE EVOLUTION ON AN IDEOLOGY

PART I. UP

It seems that some small sample sizes
Short time frames
And incomparable, incomplete data-sets
Swapped DNA, that's to say,
Had sex with some abstract concepts
About the discipline, long-term perception
And self-knowledge of this particular primate.

Incubated in the hubris of the end of history
The resultant virulent virus
First escaped in the region of the US great lakes.
Isolated outbreaks infected
Polemics from academics
Till economics was riddled
With a mimetic epidemic
That migrated to politics
And popular scholarship
To become a pathogenic
Epistemic pandemic.

Endemic among a group thinking global elite
The symptoms:
An astronomic misperception
That markets can be free
And that they are equilibrium systems.

PART II. DOWN

I think we can see that markets are chaotic
In the demotic
Even the idiotic can make a profit
If all it takes is watching the clock tick
When the money is free
And we underwrite the losses.

The king of statistics declares himself shocked
That will of the shareholders
Does not manifest
In the commercial collective
That the body corporate
Has an incoherent perspective
Of its own self interest

Using the bottom rung of the ladder
To build more room at the top
They thought it was a straight path up the hill
Till the flip-flop
And the credit fled
And they found out they were walking
On a river bed.

Steady states are great for pattern seeking apes
But change the parameters and the fortune-tellers
Get undressed as amateur.

THE REVOLUTION IS NOW

It is about eco-systems of innovation
About networks of distributed collaboration
It is about information as the primary commodity
And communication the enabling key.

It is about a new mode of production.

And they can store all our
Phone calls, emails and DNA
But the pretence is
It takes six months to publish their expenses.

It is about a new architecture of power.

Now times are tight
They'll say the state is forced
Into outsourcing the civil service,
But why take such a hapless course
When ways exist to open source
The entire edifice.

It is about progressing collective rights,
Because without solidarity
They'll take individuals by night.

And I'm thinking if you can buy to let
Man United and EMI
Then why didn't my MP
Do that for me?
What is the cost of equity?

It is about new forms of ownership.

And if the west can spend two trillion on banks
To keep the champagne flutes full
And kill foreign civilians with tanks
To get petrol,

Then are we directing our resources
The way the sum of society's choices
Would choose
If with all of our foresight
We apportioned our forces
And all of our voices were valued?

Clearly there is work to do.

There are new battle lines in the old confrontation
The tool-kit redesigned now we can move information
There can be no relaxation on the ramifications
I'm calling no taxation without rights over allocation.

Post christmas lunch

So if I told you I was drunk
Soporiphically sedated,
And wrote unguarded words
Would apologies be less obligated?

You might say, why do you waste your time on me,
But its my time
And I shall waste it as I please.

I have told all the staff
That sitting with you is like
Uncorking a summer day
And they laugh.

Told them that if JCB
Built social change
They’d model you for plant machinery.
And I think that they believe me.

But I can tell you nothing,
As you won’t listen
Could try to pass a flower
But would see you hand go missing
I guess you’ll always taste
That ill fitting kiss
And I dream of an embrace
That never did exist.

Meeting

Once my muse,
Object of my affection
In what direction do you pass
Can I ask ? Make some connection
Or maybe a correction.
And she just going for a swim
Pinches straight thinking
God it's him.
So what you up to, how you been
Oh, you know
Can't talk right now, gotta go
Maybe one day
You come by and see a show.

Cheesy valentine

Before I saw you, I had never seen a woman
Only so many approximations to your perfection
Like pencil sketches of a rose
There's so much I didn't know.

So now I wonder, awake at night
In a world so wrong
How you can be so right.

Number 8

As Artemis,
But mistress over cupid's dart
She weaves amid the boughs of love,
To catch the ripened hearts.

And I who strayed upon her charms
Awake with fevered loves dismay.
Oh that she take me in her arms
And there to stay always.

My floor

Right now I'm racing rapid, abstract mind designed by acid
It's kind, but rarely placid, I thrash it
Passionate proactive not passive.
Let's make this massive, jack it up and smash it.
Lashings of loquacious equations lasso the masses.
Massaging the molasses to vapid conscious nonsense that catches.
I want to quanitfy the stashes my massif has turned to ashes
And gases and assets, assess the mess their's gaps and lapses
Not drastic. No longer linger long on perhaps
Remap the project
And dash off odd logic in batches.

Fingers

These days I'm at an age where I look at women's fingers
And could've beens and loves lost can catch a moment and then linger.

I get strung with questions
Watching a man with grey hair chatting to a woman
With a ring finger that's bare.

These days its where your scars show
What was it with the issue
On the chance that made you throw.
Half of them don't know
Blind painters with pallete faces
Traces of misplaced grace
You can't compare with security
You see when bond is their.

We all love love
Get twisted on charisma
Chimera, wish you were there
Long before the wearer.
They say we must be scared of
That, but it feels more like anger
That's the clanger I drop
So its like, I don't cop.

I guess you can take to my mother
Feel she never wanted I for me
With age complicating selfishness
In amongst the wood that's trees.

I said it all before, and anyway
She don't wear one anymore.

Why you do that

Why you give me your number,
And then not pick up my calls
Why you do that,
Why you do that ?

Why you charming with your chat
And smile when I catch you scowling in the hall
Why you do that
Why you do that?

Have you got an adverse version of love,
Or is that for your ideal person
I'm ticking none of the above ?
A summer bell,
You camoflage your trouble well
And sabotage your feelings
Soon as they begin to swell.
I could try I kiss and tell
But then I reckon that you bite
Hopeful. Worse than that
I reckon you turn up your nose and cut it off,
Just to show your spite.

For Cat

You the most voluptuous temptress
Faye hostess in the black dress.
Oh to know one slow caress
I feel my whole soul possessed.

Your blessed chest makes my eyes mist
The way your thighs switch,
I try but I can't fight it.
Oh for some golden moment

Most precious, presses of your lucious, languid kisses and flesh
Leaves no breath
No less
The sweetest death.

Hello again

I say hello again.
Your face in the morning
Intoxicating,
Making me loose myself
My mental health escaping.
I've had my warnings,
But torn between your haven
And being born again
I fall once again
Into harm,
Into your arms.

These psalms from rounded palms
My soft alarm bells
My yarn that there's no way to tell.
My hell, or quiet purgatory.
It's funny, at night
I think how I might murder me.

Praise be to calm and the straight laced.
Praise be to them that charm with a straight face.
Praise be to those happy with any, any embrace.
Sometimes I envy these heads,
But it ain't the way I'm placed.

So I sit where I can hear the wood creak
Sometimes think of friends with whom I could speak
But I guess as we grew we needed more space
And I guess there's no law now that ties to a place.

I remember the formica and concrete ramps
I remember the parties where we blew up the amps.
Those days aren't what's missing
Though I miss the collective
I've never had what I'm missing now
What's changed is perspective.

Happy birthday

Many happy birthdays
Long sundays
And sunrays
Expectant mondays
And fun days
Well used tuesdays
Good news days
Tender wednesdays
And friends days
Cut and dried fridays
And fly aways
Chattering saturdays
Good latter days
Try and succeed days
Brave days
Well worth days
And always happy birthdays.

On a return

I missed your love.
Missed loving you
For time, a long time.
Until distractions, complications
And daily degradation
Made me just miss love,
Miss care and company
Miss being something someone wants of me,
Miss meaning
In this quieting
This careful contemplation
Of my hard drive humming
A moment's movement
Of my central heating
And the company of the wireless bleating.

Ginger tea

Ginger tea
Was prescribed
By the witch
And I inbibe it
Writing poetry.

Its not that she’s evil
Just magic
Not white or black
A mixed magic
One half, two quarters
To be exact.

She’s fetching
But there’s never any object
Clearly bewitching
But I can avoid that.

It’s a rarity
Intelligent, curious company
I guess that why I sit here
Alone writing poetry.

Papers

When I sit down with my papers now
They don’t always roll and rhyme,
Sometimes now my papers
Are made of grids and lines.

And where before the score
Sang always of the past
Now it sings about the future
And regiments my tasks.

In my papers I find orders
Of all the things that I might do
The past now represented
By single line struck through.

In my papers,
There was much confusion
Often I would loose them, abuse them
Or get lost in sketched illusions.

But now I use my paper
To store my thoughts for later
So all the little potterings
Add up to something greater.

It’s a marvel
Now in my paper I find plans,
And they might not make the weather
But they tell me where I stand.

Painting the town

The pains you cannot confront
Perhaps you can paper over
With the craft of wash and brush.
Like you do the plain,
Pale and thin dream caught
Flat in your reflection
Watching a new layer of foundation
Grow up over the bruises
From swift draughts drawn up
Inspiring new abuses sustainable
Within this old, crowded amalgm
Of Self, blinded to the pain of the past
By the distress flare smile that leaves
To join will-o-wisps frozen in amber
Beyond the glass.

The magic has been paved over in this city.

28th November

Dear Gorgeous,

Could you afford us some spare moments?
Save a few up and keep them together,
So that I can come by and take you to
A comedy, gallery, Galilee or whatever.

If we gathered up some hours
And squeezed them real tight,
Perhaps they'd drip some minutes
That we could cast into the night.

It's just in this metropolis
There’s much that gets on top of us
And time between here and there
Adds up to such a loss.

But somewhere amid bricks and aisles,
Paving stones and tube
There are golden instants, moments, whiles
We seldom ever use.

Save a few for me.

Then maybe if you’re so inclined
Spend some of that precious time
Over tea in Galilee.

Some similes

So silliness
Some simple similes.
You are like the morning dew to me,
Disappearing into sunshine.
That night like a shady tree
A sun-kissed rest that’s cool and kind.
Can I be extravagant
And say lying with you
Was like touching firmament?
Better not, unless I throw in
You’re finer than Kate Moss on top.
But then why stop?

It’s late, but loosing sleep over you
Is like the only dream I’ve known.
Your hips move like horn section
In Nina Simone, feeling good.
Seeing you was like seeing trees
When before all I saw was wood.
Being alone before was like meditation
Now it’s like wondering
Whether there’ll be another train at the station.
In your eyes I saw the birth of creation,
You holding me felt like a slave’s emancipation.
Possibly, maybe, going for a touch of sensation,
Buts that’s what you are,
More than an A-List occasion.

Burnt sugar

I swear you were like demererra
The way you used to wear your carefree karma
Compare you to a summer's day, your fairer
For cares you got arms or tarmac to tear away the drama

Your error, you never used to wear no armour
The terror and scares caused by hooks of charmers
He's clever, your pure, he's insecure he'll harm ya
The dilema, you don't want a cure for your Broadmoor panorama

A stretch

To this I stretch
The next day in threadbare elastic
Carry pennies in my pocket, for comfort
And seek a virtue in solitude.

I wash potatoes
And daily list the absences
Pen scribing another wish
On my essentials shopping list.

And there it hangs
Like a role call of past captains,
A celebration of success
While I avoid the excess
Of a sandwhich.

Another lightbulb has gone
And faithfully I write it on
My illusions lengthening
Like late shadows,
Another line
Underneath tomatoes.

My own have grown small and sweet
Parched often in their bag
Organic, they are in all irony.
And soon I'll have luxury
Of picking a single strawberry.