Opportunity's door knock

Opportunity knocks
Daily these days
All these small opportunities
With their infinite ways

Opportunity knocks
Sometimes quite loudly
Often is the most demanding of guests
Full of calls for small favours
Suggestions, requests
It often doesn't have behaviours
Apposite to polite etiquette
All the crowding opportunities
Some weighted with regret

It is often the case
That an entrance loudly proclaimed
Leaves guest that stays long after hours
And long past entertained
But when opportunity knocks
One can rarely complain
For as they come once,
Then they will come again.

When opportunity knocks
It can get under your feet
But with neat feet the opportunity
Can become complete
And with one opportunity complete
They become repleat
Then opportunity knocks on repeat and repeat.

Requiem for UK industry

Why tell a lie
It looks so like Versailles
We flog off the phone chips,
The air strips, the NHS too
Wrapped in a ribboned package
Without further ado.
It seems a short-sighted loss
Or reparations of war
We'll even sell off the Cross
On the flag of St. George.

The Starlings in the Carpark are sick

Today I passed the Sunday papers
Let Tesco store the determinants
The various possibilities at least
They pay for data.

Today I parsed the tarmac
Carpark and the Starlings
Have sickened. Hiding between packed bumpers
They had recovered some numbers since spring.

Will they migrate, this flock. The papers
They ask nothing. Tell everything
Moral outrage and the photo editor
Is it that black energy that really matters?
 

Of migration routes, Baretta, for some soul
Has flown an Albatross across Oceans
Weaponised like a polarised Coleridge's foretelling retold
Do we not see to where this all begins

The papers which I haven't read speak no evil
Nor cite last year's laws making all GMO's illegal
Sequence editing patentable
Do you discriminate against the preciousness of time?
What hippocampal regions remain latent
That actin, the acting, the tight strung line.

The starlings in the carpark have taken for a fever
Like the pigeons did with claw foot
The bent fingers of the Mudra, their pallium
That possibly with care and regard we might reach.

The football evolves on the green
From the retelling of penalty shots, to pass and stroll
Some young white civillian
Sits with her red hair against the railings
Of the goal, her brother's push the bold mouthed boy's head
Toward the soil, softly as they might teach.

Some young white civillian
Has died in a jail cell
With predictive data driven stochastics
I couldn't be more sarcastic
If I mentioned Blair <!--the Giant--> Peach
Plus the Injustice of every and all those between each.

Ode to Matt Hancock

 In these most rotten times
For ministers there is one unforgiveable crime
It is not to steal from the public purse
Nor lie on screen so well rehearsed
Nor lie off the cuff just unrehearsed
Nor fill the graveyards, break the hearse
Nor take bribes from foreign powers
Nor meet ambassadors after hours
Nor run off to yachts or Carib cots
Nor have no grasp of pertinent facts
Nor dither long and fail to act
The crime of state set far above
Is to be caught in the act of love.

For we can die on trolleys
Die in ICU
Die in care home beds
Die in hotels too
Overpay the staff
And undercrew
Pay grand fees to all your mates
But the highest crime beyond debate
The one sin the spin cannot cover
Is to be seen by the team in the arms of your lover.

Mistakes, mishaps, incompetence, corruption
Simple sabotage, complex disruption
Are all expected, indeed acceptable,
In high society even respectable
But the one unforgiveable vice
Is to be caught in a kiss with the love of your life.

There is no signature to the sickness more explicit than this
Hired for murder, sacked for a kiss.

Precipice V

Look forward
Not down
Look to the cowards
Do they wave or drown
The townscape debates its own change
The investment it takes
To dig pipes, rearrange
Logic is a God built on these premises
Dismiss this as twisted
Or meditate on the relevance of Venice
Pontoons about the Arsenal
Inflatable barriers, cruise ships and carriers
We will all live in blocks and bubbles
Expect life expectancy's
Divergent inequalities, the troubles
The emergent qualities
Unqualified, who will survive
Land a foot on the far side
Or grip and dig your nails in
Hanging on in the face of this
Mid air over the precipice.

A letter to Arsene Wenger III

Dear Professor Wenger CBE,
 

I ocassionally
Mix metaphors and messages, make typos and digress, but yes
I have been thinking
Thinking about thinking and how we now think
But the thing is. The club.
I'm sorry, I digress
I guess my previous correspondence long forgotten
Some missed previous missives among your post mountain
I have written to you before with great alacrity
In your previous capacity.

But the thing is
In thinking about thinking
I have missed a lot of football
And missed indeed the terraces
But I digress
Smith-Rowe yes, Maitland-Niles, well some distress
Saka, of course, but I always opt for less adventurous
Despite everything you taught us.

But in thinking about e.g. EEG
Protein expression, yes, pattern mapping
The delay lag of nerve fibre transmission being
18 metres per second at least for sodium
The main channel, Calcium only 3. Canals
Oh sky, I see, sorry I digress.
I have not played any software
Football games, but FIFA
Is a vertical institution of rule based
Patterns and understandings
A grass roots to high arts
Lonely road to global stage
An institution that encompasses all this
And in this age
What is the club?

It is not an orange biscuit.
Nor an item to beat a foe's brow
But a classic democratic institution
The question, what is sport?
What more?
Those biscuits.
In our memory, circuitry
Rhythms and traditions
All recall the fireworks
Left, left, roof, the fleet of foot
The hard studs, that looping arc so late.
I digress.

These regular patterns and powers
The second order value
Of all these dreams of ours
Where did they take
These gambles with dreams
From dust spitting ruts
To manicured greens?

Invasion is not sport
The professional is not the fan
Though both dream of fireworks
Some handle gunpowder, and others
So the least invasive...
Achilles, did he blame his mother?
Or accumulated blood restriction in the tendon's connection.
These tendencies, to digest
I remember the wisdom of Adams
A pain in the neck, arm aloft, the teeth
The heel on the through ball of Shevchenko's golden chance
A look of wonderment askance, an imperious stride, a glide
I digress.

But if FIFA
Is the global custodian of dreams
The dreams of fans, of children
Well heeled, feet bare
Kicking dust into the air
Of graceful professionals who at great cost
In the face of fear and loss
Stake the prize of a whole dreamt life
Everything for which we all cared
And yet after the white line...
Then what is the club?
Who should own these dreams and patterns
And how should they be shared?

What is the value, not of a fan's dream
Or a players dream, but both combined
What is the value of the dream
About the combination
One-two, third man
What shape is similar to that pattern
Among the stars and flowers
The shaking earth, the accounting columns
And I still can't do kick ups
Even after little Ryan
Showed me the step-over and catch on the fields
Carling cup appearance, went to Millwall
A wisp with grace, such a precise pass
All you had to do was run straight
Tell him which foot and off your laces
But I digress

The editing of these dreams
A subtle possession
And what of Carbon Dioxides effect on grass
When 420ppm is passed. Napoleon, maybe like Dale Vince
We should watch the pitch from trees.
I have only passing understanding
And this may need some editing.

Now on the monitors
TV, laptop, phone, floodlights
Wednesday nights, these vibrations
The quanta, I wouldn't want to hazard a guess
How all that messiness combines
Umpaloompas, curses, never mind, I digress.
Let us pray
No digression
We were so used to 87% possession. But yes
Medical monitoring, the treatment table
The efficacy of prayer is messy
But we can't start doing that
Bolt from the blue.
We could do that too
Protein expression monitoring
Homeopathy over wifi
And the club.
A less invasive, more digitally generous
Generally better intentioned dimension
Than memory editing and opposition
Joy and tears, the perfect super-position
And if all this is given
Taken as given
Taken, (he saved so many relegations)
Give or take, it is not remotely my decision
But that is one vision
Of the club.

And what is the nation
Is this tuned into the right station
Argentina, Hungary, England, Torino
What is territory and testosterone
Now there is no regard for borders
Fans film on their phones,
Films film on our blood and bone
Satellites link our experience
Is there creativity? And what of orders?
The following disorders
Competition on the training pitch
Pitch battles before the match
The club, the territory, secrecy, the terrace
The marshlands of Munich's centre circle
What is fair? What is a game
Tokyo must ask the same
Histones, cryptocrome, ribosomes and all
In my day it was nandrolone and roids
Now all boys want to be Pep droids
Oleg Blokhin, Dynamo, how will we ever get to know?

Now safe standing, in my understanding
May be a resounding success
But as a man on a building site
I can but hazard a guess, suggest
Not that I am ever (Banega) asked
Players need gas masks for a start
And to fully play their part
In the club
What of emotion, what of learning
What electricity, what cytokine
What is it that can be shared?
A 4 m/s transmission rate
Is sunshine football
Barely legible above the Rhine
The first time I saw Ibrahimovich
Play for Barcelona was in the snow
Well it was not the first time
And they were in the snow
I was in my living room
They were on TV, you know
I digress
Dani Alves, with a snood on his head
Clearly a contravention
Puyol turning purple in his shorts
A man from the mountains
That full tilt timing, peerless
I digress
That semi-final masterclass
Xavi
Now if Xavi can do that in Qatar
And we've only come this far
And FIFA is the only globally integrated
Vertical, horizontal, voluntary
Cross-cultural inter-planetary, inter-dimensional
Inter-intelligence, post cartesian physical
Aspirational vehicle
Then
What is the club?

It is not an orange biscuit
Not in the context of FIFA
And I confess, I have eaten
One or two orange biscuits
And I am sure others have too
But the club
As a democratic voluntary replacement for strife
For distraction from the factories
For solidarity, camaraderie
For jumpers to be made into a fungible computation of Wembley
For joy and company, evincing all these things
And the love of the game
But I digress,
I sometimes miss a message, mix a metaphor
And yes
I have missed a lot of football
And have more questions than commentary
I had my windows fixed last spring
By the man who moved your fish
The Carp, I hope their spirit calm
And wish you the best of complexes.

Now there is something I hope to catch
Not a game, but a match, I hear this is where it starts.

Dover port take HMG to court

Dover Port
Will take HMG to court
The charge, what could it possibly be?
The Governmnet acting irrationally.

Brexit, immigration, the Castle
Gatehouse of the nation
Our Garden to be a semi-mobile wall
Visible from space and all.

Billions on the track and trace
Gov, spare a penny in the right place
Yet not a bean for Customs
Just trust that they can catch
All those latchkey refugees en masse
En marche, sur la Manche.

Like they fish the cancered Sole
The French exact a heavy toll
While we will "juxtapose control"
With post-modern chaos, oh so bold.

Fill the Island with undocumented migrants
Deregulated people, smuggled goods and pirates
It's the least we owe the fishing ports
Now the cancered Sole is short

Small boats can go on the make
Cherries on deregulated cake
While all the lorries belch and shake
Surely there is some mistake.

The executive will defend most vigorously
The culmination of its long term policy
Pursue that post-enlightenment trajectory
Of working backwards and irrationally.

Law or a gun

It all adds efficiently
Transparency, duplicity
Everybody is known
And it's recorded what's done
So balance the equation
Either with law or a gun.

They sit in plain sight
Neither hide, nor do they run
This nation's blight
The greed of high station.

It can never add up
Now the killing's begun
You can't balance this equation
Without law or a gun.

Excuses, excuses

Excuses are just descriptions
Of the challenge
You could not overcome
They do nothing
And get nothing done.

Rice haiku

Three grains on a plate
In a famine is a gift
Their picture but death.

Twitter shrapnel

Yemenis are also Arabs
The cursed Scarab the weeping cherub
The flat land beside the sea
The chariots over Galilee
What odds of peace at ten to one
Symbols, projectiles, projections
The back and forth, forth and back
Time, space, culture all attacked.

Trees on the motorway

Passing the bridge
The new planted saplings hide
Swaddled in white pipe
Marking the bank
Like the mass produced
Repeated mistakes, afterthoughts
Of a military graveyard.

The whole river

On this pathway where the cold shiver
Some take the fresh tarmac
Some roam the river.

When I asked how she took her water
She told me
The whole river from the torrents
Of the mountain spring
To the wide, slow estuary.

Left and right

After a while it became clear
The right were not right
And the left left
So that all that was left
Was a bunch of rights
And nobdody to take care of the lights.

Boris Johnson's Curtains?

Now of course you see
None of us can be quite certain
About Boris Johnson's curtains
A matter of some debate
The Prime Minister or State's Estate
And of course their hue
Is it Midnight, Prussian
Or do we simply call it
A deeper shade on Blue?

It's the state
Of the kitchens and the lounge you see
Not to mention comprehending the intention
Of whatever the last inmates
Left behind in the settee.

You see
Boris Johnson's curtains
Or not
Are they open or closed?
A pertinent inch
Like a garter exposed?

II. {Boris Johnson's Curtains} 

    Var value
    Var connection
    Var spin
    Var attention
    Var charm

III. Function : BorisJohnson'sCurtains

If open
    Then
        can we see the wallpaper?
    I hope it is luxuriously embossed
    For the cracks it covers over can be seen in actual fact
    Seismic graphs and fractals showing scant regard for impact
    As to what life lives within them, the cost can but be guessed.

If closed
    Then
        We can see Boris Johnson's curtains
    Else
        Is he just actin'? Waiting for an encore?

If open
    Then
        We can see the comings and govings
    The hope a typo in .gove
    Translates effectively into phonetic nodes
    Rome wasn't built in a day
    But whoever did it. ate (Pasta)
    Buck    a trend    or two
    Follow your passion for fashion.
 

If open
    Then
        Can we see all the way to the garden?
    The chalk wall and water feature?
    Can we see Johnson, heel on heel
    Digging a little deeper?

Precipice II

The memory model, refined to perfection
Minds inspected like terrorist connections
Superior temporal sulcus mined
Who you know, what crimes they've done
We can scan and annotate all agents of corruption.
They will cling to the mast in the tempest.
Abuse of power and secrecy their only defence
Their pretence, that Lincoln was an idiot
That we will all succumb, forget
And wander dumb over the precipice at sunset.

Dear John

 Dear John,

Well it's not me, it's the data
I ate a chocolate cookie
Now they book and look at me
I don't take biscuits and am an excellent debater.

Dear John,

You undoubtedly have a job on
As to Comms, a suggestion at no personal cost
Throw the towel in, admit you lost
#WhereHasAllTheMoneyGone

Dear John,

Hammer on, hammer off
I guess they had Ron at Hello
It was a lovely hatfull
I wave the recipient the best of odds.

Yours most faithfully
Signing off.

Doctor, doctor

Well they were charming
Those new phrases bought in
Scrammble the Scrabble
Throw a ball at the pins

But since that strange yoghurt
The charade's worn rather thin
It's obvious the polarisation
Is not charm but spin.

Chips on the fly

We needed the storage units
And the container mountains that float
With the regs to comply
And to track them remote

So after Candida, Wolbachia, Radiodurrans, et al
We found we could make chips
Really cheap afterall
You see the ships, when they dip
Their hulls in the Med
Turn off their TACOS
So one idea instead
Would be to chain all the data
Like they do to you and I
And write it all on the wall
In the genes of a fly.

The last Apple in Bramley is no more. IV

There are apple staves staked in dank pots
In December, those darkest of days
I heard something like,this will not be forgot
When in the grip of chill I returned dismayed
My thought was all the staves would rot
Yet dank pots with no gaps like bog
Were nourishing, this spring sprung
Green spear from seemed dead wood, the red bud
The mixed earth, sand, clay rock,soil
Bramley, Fibonacci, Lemarck, smile.