As the blackbird flies these autumn gusts

On the bridge across the steel track and cable

Under grey block gabled sky

Wind high and blustering like a crisis bitten lush

I saw a blackbird fly.

Spilling arcs in the close storm's surf

Wings as shields stiff, neck locked he banks

Yaws and lifts like string snapped kite

Skates swift down wild waves unseen.

I saw a blackbird blown.

No compass in the colourless wash

Yellow beak unfollowed, sky and land

One sphere to its eye he dives,

Like fletched dart, black fleck

In swilled glass of medicine

For dirty streets, it dives again.

Not play. Taut against cloud's taunts 

And laughs, stiff agency betrays the joy 

Of sport. Once caught and slips, caught and slips so light, 

The current, like a skateboard from a pipe and vaunts 

These vaults a spinning top, an upward thrust.

Tell me Blackbird, I must know for true

Is my muse's heart like you?

Maintenance

I heard Stealth Bombers expand

When they fly, so high and fast they heat

And when they land and cool

All the oil and unspent fuel

Pisses out as joints contract and seals slip

The whole thing needs repainting

Before it flies another trip.

This muse is more like a cat

Leave out a bowl

It'll probably be back.

Things to do

Whistling like sailors

On the prow and in the spray

That lamb's tail

Never fails to shake with breaking day.

It does not all repeat like brick

These cycles like the Dutch

Like amonites, sediments, Fibonacci

Sequences, calyxes and such

Repeat and grow, repeat and grow

In iterations. Organic 4D tapestry, print

Time bound block weave of wet dyed wool

Half empty or half full

The glass will set the task

If you can set the rule.

She said she didn't like honey

She said she didn't like honey

Busy as she was in flight

165 jars

Almost every country

One over imported cheese

As she pours.

She said she didn't like honey

Jet driven, thought of the future

And talked of rafts of ants in floods

That some died locked together

And the rest floated on their drowned bodies.

She thought of the future

Said she didn't like honey.

A more heavy metal protest song against the "great" repeal bill

Twisted bitch spit roast the nation
Parliament spit roast the nation
Making money, money
Off devastation
They got their tongue in, tongue in
The destitution
Fucking us like bunnies it ain't even
Prostitution.

All I hear is lies, lies, lies
And if you listen
It's just lies, lies, lies
To Rip Off Britain
More lies, lies, lies
And that's their mission.

Did mention
They're robbing the pensions.

Tax haven, craven, champagne glutton
Push button fuckers leading sheep into mutton
Double dutch press, spread gas like muck
Selling want, hate and don't give a fuck

It's a fifty fifty flip
It's a fifty fifty flip
Now go pick the coin out of the shit

They put gas in our blood
Gas in our blood
So it reminds of Moet when they suck
And they suck
Ticket sellers at the gates of the park
And they suck, and suck
Ticket sellers at museums for the trees
And they suck, and suck
Ticket sellers at the surgeries

All  I hear is lies, lies, lies
And if you listen
It's just lies, lies, lies
To Rip Off Britain
More lies, lies, lies
And that's there mission.

Did I mention
They disguise their intentions

we had a vote
Yes vote
A bit of hope
A bit of hope
Now the fascists stringing rope round parliaments throat
With a vote
A vote
A vote they say will vote votes away
Dismay, Mayhem
Rip the Magna Carta up and write it again.

It's all lies......

Protest song for the "great" repeal bill

The whole clusterfuck's been

Corrupt from the start

Dark black arts,
Foreign secret service, Saudi

And Putin's Oligarchs

Now the DUP want to rule over me

But they won't even say

Where they got their election money.

It's Germany in 33 or Italy in 25

We'll have take to the streets

To keep our freedom alive

If we let the powers be

Democracy's gonna die

Cos the corpse is out the coffin

And fascists are live

It's Germany in 33 and Italy in 25

Now the kids are on the streets

Sleeping in hungry in bags

And if you're in a wheelchair

Then it's just too bad

And the cheque don't stretch

So now your walking in rags

And they come of TV bragging,

Its the most jobs we've ever had

It's Germany in 33 or Italy in 25

We'll have take to the streets

To keep our freedom alive

If we let the powers be

Democracy's gonna die

Cos the corpse come out the coffin

And fascists are live

And they hang on it on the Muslims

Or the Polish too

And if you ain't got dough

Then they're slowly hanging you

And if you're old

A hospital bed will have to do

And if you ain't been told

This is a very British coup.

It's Germany in 33 or Italy in 25

We'll have take to the streets

To keep our freedom alive

If we let the powers be

Democracy's gonna die

Cos the corpse come out the coffin

And fascists are live

Voting is just joke

Cos the bandwidth stinks

The world is digital

They're still writing in ink

They printed so much cash

They don't think we make the link

And all they're gonna do

Is push the rest to brink.

It's Germany in 33.....

Let it slip

Let it slip

Let it slip

With touched fingers tips

To your buttons,

After the staring sun has dipped

The blue relaxed, the amber is lit

The clasp and the catch

An uncomfortable fit

Let it slip.

We will die like cats.

At least curious. At least curious.

Let slip a zip notch off your hip arch

Make one button fall undone

And cotton drip

Tip my thought with a sip

Let it slip.

The gate you keep

Meet by it, and there betwixt

Cup your back and catch like wick

Your laugh like sparks

Your lips like gusts

On grass lain all summer parched

Let it slip

Let it slip

With ringed fingertips

Over your shoulders

And down from your hip

Let it slip.

Shrapnel no. 22

The sky is a grimy sheep
And the street full of clowns
In tumbling, that wiggle
Down the windows in jumbled
Paths and splash punchlines
All the way from the endless
Blank stage above.
The street is full of clowns
Telling stories of love.

Double or quits

Double or quits

Double or quits

That's how you become a troubled

Gambling addict

With the hope of a lift

Throwing more down the pit

Then you soar when you claw back

The smallest of gifts.

Double or quits

Double or quits

When you're all in a bubble

And the wrecking ball hits

When one moment you're rich

Then its thrown down the ditch

Taking double or quits

Double or quits

When what you wrote brings a writ

That fan spread hot shit

But your pen pounds and pours down

Like mounds more bars might just drown it.

Thinking double or quits

Double or quits.

Shrapnel No. 47

The sun on my pen makes it a beak
Swilling krill through the bright lake
In swirls, across the ledge, shadows
Edge in drifts as curtains think of England.
They're talking about the parking space again
Outside,
More politely now in tones that hide
The squabble over territory
And then sirens like a paint bucket thrown
And someone thinks they funk
Then just soft growls and the siren
Comfortingly distant.

Shrapnel no.65

They take spring lambs too young

Buds touched by frost grow flowers with a twist

The caged bird sings a cruder song

Chicks fall to hawks ere they fly the nest.

For there are men of force

Who so desire beauty

But fear its addiction more.

How the fear and the power felt

The spoiled reward of shame and guilt

Four pillars that, great St. Peter's built.

Fired like this, what warmth would melt?

For among us all

There are those who so desire love

But fear its addiction more.

Epistle to addicted pussle

Cat, puss, wustle, woodly woodly wuss

Whatever be your name

What is it you wish

That makes your tail swish

That makes you cupboards brush

That makes you whine and fuss

What is it you wish?

Not this dish of fish? Not beef

Or lamb or bread in milky mush

All left untouched

And yet you fuss and swish

Come over from the neighbours house

I'm only guessing which

What is it you wish for?

Whiskas

Whiskas crack biscuits? Ah yes

What's in this? Nip?

Cat smack that racks your naps

With thoughts of crunchy rock.

Ah wuss, Ah wuss

You wish a dish of fix

What war on drugs.

I wonder what's in this?

The Socialist Revolution

Let me tell you something about the socialist revolution

It happened. While you were sleeping

It happened when workplace terminals came creeping

It happened when the computer came home

It's happened. That's why you check your phone.

It happened with satellites and fibre optics

Computer chips, when the internet replaced television

It happened with the collapse of communism

It happened when stocks stopped being about dividends

When you no longer had to make things

To get rich, just three guys with an app and a pitch

Capital factories high and dry as they put it online

And you pay for bandwidth to reproduce all that.

It happened with SourceForge, Linux, Apache

When geeks united across time and space

According to their ability, to write software

According to your need. Indeed

It happened with the advent of cyrpto-currency.

It happened. But maybe not quite as envisioned.

While you were sleeping.

It happened when you became valued for your data

When they started giving 99% free

To sell you 1% later.

Are you're awake now?

When with a big bang the banks flopped

You woke up, and saw there was a problem

Went to the cook-book and called it

Capitalism, Nationalism, Liberalism

But the revolution had happened

And all the mud you slung got no traction.

As you cried “Burn capitalists”

But capitalists had turned to taxes

And burning cash in Silicon fire pits.

As you cried “Worker's rights”

But workers are nowhere in sight

And electric power runs robots all night.

Tank remix II.III

In the low ceiling crypt

Where they chose to gather

The etched and rounded brick

Thows a mesh of shadows

With candlelit plot soup thick

She waxes again, like sips

Of hot coffee, water.

Energy courses as tips

In spring force through dark earth

Bulb to light, flip state switch

Kite born over the sea

She feels free for sprouting

Throughout the estuary

She still carrying her

Physical memory

And will not be waylayed

On road to them, she found

A way, there are others

And dozens of others

Who will be a band in

Waves and light, uncovered

Chorus of voices unite.

Fight gave purpose afresh

They were not the usual

Superfluous flesh.

I won't explain

I won't explain

And you won't ask

Cracked vase in the aftermath

The over watered pot

The mucus covered calving

Sentences. Things I just forgot.

I won't explain

When paint runs

The current flow

At surface and at depth

Split.

I didn't think that fag was lit

Didn't pour that drink.

I won't explain

A whisper's touch.

Spray breaking upon bare rock

Bamboo shaken in a gust

Gravity lost in rolling surf.

I won't explain.

Tanks remix

I.IV

 

It was after the funeral

The tears and the drone. After

She'd gone up the hill. Near her

Home.

A young man came across tilled field

Covered in sulphur from head to toe

Gave her physical memory, will

And said to her, “You are not so

Alone.

These are their addresses and history

Their branching and probable destinies.”

There in the files the man had names

Important names, hers, others

His. History, chains, more. Their

Curse.

Foot snaps a branch and paths fork, part

From then on whatever occurs

She'd kiss an obituary. Walk

To the field where she first heard

Worse.

The window

In the rain, walled in by clay shades

And the scattered brick that repeats in rooves

Breaking spumes of green, this framed scene

Is the stuff of epics, snow blind boredom

Of escapes and flights. Yoked madness

And demons beaten like sled dogs till they drag

Some words, from the whisper of car wheels

In spray, from the soft pat of footsteps

Kissed by moist concrete. With this

Turbulent pot of spider stocked molten soup

Thick with all that's caught between Colombia

Canaria, East India, flies swarm, drawn

To the sweet rot, scent of piled corpse and sacrifice

The old headstones stacked like index cards

Against the moss stippled yard wall

Of St. Someone's church by the flats,

That sits locked like it or god forgot;

To the sediment of the anthropocene

The rich alluvial deposits of longitude

Of law, the first thawings of power's grasp

And what jungles grew, what jungles of souls

Where cut, chainsawn to planks

By the strong arms of freedom, shipping rope

And sails stretched like spider silk past sunset

And the clay shaded walls left

As testament, as embers and magnets

This horizon of stacked brick and rain

Is the stuff of epics. It's plain.

Blueprint for the revolution I and II

It has to be leaderless

As we understand the risks. Power corrupts

Dopamine makes fiends of Kings and Queens

Makes schooled folly and bullies

Makes a mass, a forest from trees and the rest of us.

The attraction of hierarchy, addiction

Of our institutions,

Manacled to mammalian mating patterns

As natural as they are arbitrary.

Did the enlightenment ever happen?

This great hubris of humanity.

We ape gods.

It has to be leaderless

Poly-centric, poly-archy, poly-anna

Democratically selected technocrats and planners

In a structure of proper etiquette and manners.

That is, checks, gibbets and balance.

Connected and injected with

All affecting the manor.

It has to be leaderless

A network that gets the best work

Tests first, then iterates

Builds and communicates all that is great.

It has to be leaderless.

II.

It has to be transparent

Infinitely perspicacious

Clearer than water

Clearer than glass

It has to be like optics and maps

Like microscopes, telescopes

Stethoscopes for every bloke

To slice and dice

Comb out vices, ticks and lice.

It has to be so transparent

That the path of every penny

Is crystal clearly apparent.

Every signatory and functionary

Every spreadsheet and file

Every phone number dialed

It has to be transparent.

Blueprint. Pyramids

We stand before Pyramids

We stand beneath pyramids built of wires

Built of cargo ships and computation

Built of our venerated law and custom.

That heave from deserts, where the band plays on

Upon the wreckage of old certainties

Upon famished, unwashed, terrified pleas

On legal instruments, players play on.

Watching seasons of reflected sun

On the gold crowned apex, as at Cheops

When the Nile flooded with slave bodies

When the mind budded with new found signs

When Egyptians learned how to split one

Into fractions and built pyramids.

There is no gold atop the pyramids at Cheops.

Their gods long since submerged by grains of sand

Their temples swept by grains of sand and lost

Their dead tongued edicts shorn of old meaning

The broken bodies of their carved idols

Like the scattered jigsaw of a crime scene

We could not begin to know

How to worship Pharaohs now.

We stand before our Pyramids, gold crowned

The gold cap atop Cheops long torn down.

Blue print for the revolution. Intro

Let's get it on, stop pretending
That we're stuck in the days
Of typewriters and pens
Bookends and postmen.
Just stop pretending.

Stop offering wooden soles not rubber treads
Stop offering fruit picking instead of bread.
Stop saying pigs can't fly.
We've a dozen ways to make pigs fly.

I'm not calling for a bit more for the poor
For men to do house chores
Or to let live and ignore.
I'm calling for all these old walls to fall.

For the cathedrals and palaces
To be redecorated, reconsecrated
For the entire architecture to be updated
I am not the only one frustrated.

Each election is an  affront
A front of rubber stamps and shackled tyranny
It's obvious when you understand it
Parliamentary democracy
Is premised on poor bandwidth.