For the Atlantic

She had turned straw to silver
Made her own crown
And strode a field of buttercups
In a scarlet velvet gown.
I fell for her then
Without recognising
I was falling again.

She was full time at play
A sensitive vocation
Pointed the way
Over the style by the side of road
Into nature's creation.

She sipped at me
Delicate and careful
Not to leave her lips a gloss,
We talked of who she was
How I might be
I thought of how things lost
Are found
Looking over the valley
I know I'm older now.

When our words first danced
To the crescendo of young ideals
I was spoilt and cavalier
My words neon, indiscrete
And without ears
Our sentences, insensitive
Squashed each other's feet.
If I tripped then
I never called it falling.

So when we met again
Somewhere in my valleys
She didn't know me
So she claimed
Hid in innocence
Of ignorance, played
A merry game
And blamed semantics
Had some man
But for the Atlantic,
Her eyes
Charming even the sofa
I wouldn't know her
As one
Who I had fallen for
For days.

Long after I realised
We met amid hills
That rolled together as lovers
On over the horizon
I didn't recognise
Her who I once stumbled on
Not from the door
Where I admired
How she orchestrated harmonies
Made musicians
And called two tribes to unison.
Crowned, she shared
Then I knew her name.

When the games began
We played the wind
Between our bodies
Like an instrument
The Atlantic,
Her eyes explained
So we refused memory
To make instances of melody
And harmony with wind.

In the morning
We knew each other
High on the hills
Looked at the horizon together
As far as the Atlantic,
Her eyes saw
I knew she would never
Choose one who falls in love
As a lover,
It would create distance
As she would only rise
As a lover
And that when we meet again
We'll both pretend
We never recognised each other.

Blossom on the wind

It had been a season
When light is colour
Drained, life
Adjusted to stretches of darkness
And cold become engrained.

A time of lunar streets
When all I hear
Is the great grey mouth
Of the Northern sky
Screaming within my ears
And looking forward
Brings gusts of icy vengeful teeth
That score the face with tears.

When you can pull the clouds near
And the city seems pressed flat
The next storm never far away
And days repeat from grey to black

But when it's below the freezing point of sound
When even crystal clear air weeps
We celebrate lovers
And from ground so hard
That it would blind an axe
Comes blossom on the wind.

When I still feel the need to shield
Myself in hibernation
Closeted behind stone walls
She calls
And though fearful I yield
To curiosities temptation
Where before I stalled.

Now all seems more familiar
As colour in timid buds begin
I trust the sun to touch me now
Because of blossom on the wind.

She leadeth me
Back to once bowed skeletons
Made scaffolds for hope
Aching in the naked pain of change
Every fibre striving
Tearing to grow again
Upwards.

She alludes to sunshine
Kaleidoscopes, hours of light
And times when the skin is free
She makes the wind her friend.
She leadeth me.

Risk reward

We've got ideas selling guesses
Ideas constituted
By special pieces of paper
Selling guesses about the total
Of other guesses in the future.

Its rational as proved
Through symbols accessible
To those schooled in the scripture
As if in the seminary
And they take everybody's money
And talk of risk reward.

Now if rather than using the bridge
I choose to run across the motorway
Which is a greater risk
In terms of time, my total pay
Is something I won't miss

And if now and then
Rather than the usual pool
I choose to swim
Across the Thames
Only some errant fool
Could try contend
I wouldn't be in better trim.
But for how long?

I suppose with PR and photography
I could earn a sponsor's fee
But that all sounds like work to me
And threatens no more jeopardy
No, risk reward it has to be
So I can't see the point really.

He said its funny biz
But risk is where the money is
He was bright as a laser beam
Fresh out of his teens
Creaming over a Chinese dream
That imports steam
Made by teams
Of pristine seamstresses
Fed on beans
Its a winner.
More spins of the fruit machine
Than you've had hot dinners.
He had a one kilo watch
Shoes of patent leather
A barber to keep him warm and dry
In any kind of weather.
Did I mention,
He was in charge of my pension.

So if there's two ways to make a profit
Gambling and exploitation
The great financial innovation
Is gambling on exploitation
All wrapped up in queer equations
But what the symbols don't depict
Is that gambling makes addicts.

And gamblers talk nonsense
Like “On this course in this condition
This horse is a certain proposition
The odds might seem a little long
But this jockey can't do wrong”.

Nonsense.
Or like “In a perfect market
Populated by rational, far sighted
And boringly single minded bigots
The maths works.”
Nonsense on a hydraulic jack.

Because the map
Don't fit the territory
There's errors in the theory
And some brokers should be very sorry.

Sad as it is tragic
When they've pissed away the pot
Like any other addict
They'll come asking for another lot

“Just another Trill'
We'll double up
You'll get your cut
Sure you will
Some if and buts
And maybe not
But give us some more fifties still
You know it's risk reward”

The fact is it's a cultural cancer
What happened to hard work
And dirty words like labour
Skill, co-operation, effort, thrift
I guess the Emperor's Tailor
Has been on the stitch up
For a new Tux
Made from more hot air
But when its all laid bare
It looks like a racket
Stacked with gambling addicts
Creaming a packet
And talking of risk reward.

Did they sit down and talk about it

Did they sit down and talk about it
Or was it a nudge and a wink
Did their eyes meet across the office
What do you think?

Did one think of it first
And tell the other the plan
Or did they just look at each other
And both understand?

And when they went into action
Did they go separate ways
Or plot moves over bourbon
At the end of the day?

What I’m saying is
Did Bush take his kid and play pimp
Or did Cheney say “I’m fucking your son”
What do you think
Which way did it run?

Bush was grand spook
An eminence in professional grey
If you’re off to the Whitehouse
You’ll meet his dogs on the way.

So did Bush say to Cheney
“Here’s my sons strings
Play with this puppet
And we can be kings”?

Did they come out in dimples
Over jesting with Jeb
Or was there frisson and tension
And so much unsaid?

Afterall, who shot Cheney?
What was it for
Was it just about the Constitution
Or was there more?

Did Cheney say “the kid’s simple
I can get in his head
Put Halliburton to work
And soon fleece the Fed”.

Was the whole thing an accident
That Bush never intended
Was he fighting a rearguard action
Against what Cheney then did?

Or was it a joint venture
Right from the start
Two men bent on power
With very cold hearts.

But then how far back does it go?
To Sixties and Nixon
An attempt to privatise power
Without any restriction?

Did they sit down and talk about it
Way back then
Saying those pesky kids got us this time
But we’ll come again.

Did they say we’ll copy the Kennedys
Once they’re out the way
Or are they enemies now
At the end of day?

Did they say we need a war
So we’ll turn a blind eye
We can do Orwell’s 84
If we let those planes fly?

Did Bush go to Cheney
Or Cheney to Bush
Did they meet in the middle
Was there a pull or a push?

Did they sit and and talk about it
Or was it nudge and a wink
Did they play together or each other
What do you think?

Would you let me woo you

Would you let me woo you with words of love,
My spring
And make pillows from the petals
Of the flowers that I bring

Each day afresh

Could I utter some caress
Some noun to hold the mirror right
So you feel that you're the best?

Would you let me shower you with compliments
And scrub you down with praise
And not think that I'm impertinent
To say forever and always

And would you let me sing loves settled silence
In your presence, for words can sometimes fail
And of all love's words there are none so precious
As those that pass in Braille.

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.