a sunny weekend in greater st albans

backpack to london
for the downtown fun run
ladybirds, butterflies,
apple trees
and sofas in the sun
through the field of wheat
like a young theresa may
teal dragonfly perched
on a vibrant green
leaf above a rust bed stream
we wade with baggy minnows
by the weeping willow
clock two foxes,
attempt avuncular football
scorched between the bridges
peddle assisted
to the bucket hat photobomb
goosebumps on
the cold carriage home

this was a lovely holiday. it was sunny. saw friends. family. wildlife. waded in a stream. it was very cold on the train home though.

all billionaires are paedos we just haven’t proved it yet

mishear flushing pedos,
think will someone leak
the epstein files
*sniffs* smell that lass?
that’s football.
and it’s comin’ home
and it actually does
but i still have a wee tear for the losers
that’s a feeling i understand

then lo and behold they did release the epstein files, at least, some of them, not the video recording. and weird, nobody has been lifted. this is the worst cover up in history and yet nobody is arrested. maxwell moved to a swanky luxury prison. offers to testify in exchange for favours. trump, named more than almost anyone, remains in situ.

then england’s women won the euros and that was a bit cheerier but, due to the nature of this poem, it became attached at a section about a billionaire pedo cabal. sorry, lionesses. i did cheer for you.

something of the morning ii

it’s really quite alarming
see there’s something of the morning…
don’t they know
paracetamol
will directly cause neurodivergence… ?

i’m getting quite dysregulated
you know, it’s something of the morning…
these people
bring me out in sweats
i need another transfusion…

well now i’ve really had enough
of these zombies of the morning….
talk of the
kennedy curse
it’s the living that i fear for…

the way he croaks his words, the bizarre anecdotes re roadkill, the thing that lived on his brain. he is just so unusual. i simply reject that the world can be this insane. it must be me who is insane. [jumps from window]

something of the morning i

it’s really quite disturbing
but there’s something of the morning…
their eyes alert but torpid
gross bubbles of brain
protruding from their watching heads…

it’s really quite unsettling
see there’s something of the morning…
the smell of toothpaste
on their breath
masking their digestion…

it’s really quite upsetting
that there’s something of the morning…
what’s in the trunk
paper and a laptop
little if any roadkill… ?

it’s really quite perverse
you see there’s something of the morning…
they barely touch
the raw milk
and smell of carbohydrates…

make america healthy says robert f kennedy junior, sounding pretty rough himself. raw milk, i am pretty sure, is a meme of white supremacy. what a horrible bunch of arseholes seem to rule the world these days.

space and time are the same thing, sort of

i run, unearthing memories
and washing them with tears
visit the exhibition of piles
and get some good reels
patronise my town
and try our world
renounced cuisine
if time is distance
and the past’s
a million miles out of scene
can we go back, one day
or must we slave obsequiously
to linearity, inflexibly

endurance sport is where i often am when processing difficult memories. but if space and time are the same, then at least all the traumatic events are very far away now. did you know that the dinosaurs lived billions of miles away from us? it’s hard to remember that we are on a spaceship.

the trilogy of four

we now commence a trilogy
of four to the floor
techno-complacency is the vision
in the fore-
ground. action continues
in palestine
i’m powerless and frustrated
in this time-line;
seek whimsy, a step in the ascent
of pasta
bolognese, circuses, evil
and disaster
it’s time to normalize
the aphorism:
under the thumb of
“actually existing capitalism”

hello and welcome to part four of the love epochal: technodeterminism. this is the first part of a techno trilogy that i have been working on that will take up the next eighteen months.

i would like to use this sentence to affirm my belief that yvette cooper was wrong to proscribe the group palestine action as their actions do not amount to terrorism. it is absurd that with courts struggling with backlogs and the prison estate overcrowded that the police have been arresting hundreds of octogenarians for supporting peaceful protest.

and it is all a pointless distraction from the real issue: which is that israel is committing genocide against the palestinians. and if they are using weapons produced in this country, then everyone, including the government, including yvette cooper, has a moral duty to prevent that from happening.

the biggest ride of the summer

take the train to lockerbie
soaked twice on the heatwave day
learn it
then you’ve earned it
always pack a gilet
sun cream
gets in your eyes
as the king meant to say
through coalburn a wheel-sucker
and deadwater and succour
climb abandonist
when i felt the thirst
as a stab in the kidneys
a painful business
don’t have a cow
abunga dude
bloody lookin’ rose
is looking good
lily pads
and other wet plants
then keith goes to a barbecue
and we just ride home in the rain
how come we don’t get burgers

the final chorus of the gilet years, which only lasted six months

that’s our lot
for the gilet years
a window of calm
between crises
it’s the unseemly quiet
amidst the tempest
when the storm is over
what will be left?

alternative ending and final chorus, making the previous final chorus the penultimate one all along

those were the gilet years
congratulations
if you’re still here
this is the end
until more similar tomorrow

and that’s it for part three. i hope you enjoyed giletdonism. please come back next month for part 4: techno-determinism.

the poetry/bills conundrum

would it make me
a syndicalist to say
the way that you treat people
is the way they behave
and then it struck me.
i’m not anxious,
i’m scared.
so much of the time
scared to be at home alone
i just don’t naturally
enjoy the repetition
and uncertainty of life
i’ve spent all my time
trying to find meaning and comfort
and all that really works is
a constant diet of art,
drugs and sex and exercise
but sadly i have to earn cash
to sustain it

the human condition. productivity. gdp. we work so much and so many of us work at things that… could simply not be done. there are enough clothes on earth to last several future generations. we could feed everyone well with less land if we could just eat less meat.

we could simplify life so dramatically, and benefit from much more leisure time. we could exercise every day. see friends every day. write poetry. paint murals. do the things that make us happy.

anyway. best put your phone away and get back to work.

the opposite of listening to madonna in decathlon

they pass the assisted
dying bill
will the lords giveth
the right to kill?
a vision: no,
you have to take it yourself
mr benn
a shock of mortality
please, call me n.n.
quite a memento mori
a lonely shiver

i have aphantasia but this was a pretty harsh, real feeling idea. i imagined the doctor passing me the pills in the little plastic cup. and telling me no, i have to take them myself. it gave me a blast of the feeling i had after i was diagnosed with emphysema. thankfully, i was undiagnosed about seven months later and celebrated by listening to madonna in decathlon.

as it turns out, the lords tooketh away the right to assisted suicide. antidemocratically waffled it away. i give them the respect they deserve.

we don’t need fasces, just a bundle of souls

it seems to me
there must be
a shadow gang of hoodlums
in every nation
ready to put on uniforms
to torture and abuse
waiting for a bully government
to empower them
and this is such
a lonely, alienating thought.
i’m not sure you,
fascist sympathiser,
will read this poem
but it is not strong
to stand up for the powerful
strength is to accept
we are weak
alone we are at
the mercy
of forces
we can not control
we can just hope that by sheer benevolent numbers
we can crowd the villains out
each of us forever vulnerable
as a bundle, indestructible

trump is the embodiment of a generation who, facing down the barrel of their mortality, have decided to turn the gun on everyone around them, cohorts and descendents alike.

he is a stuck up entitled snob who has made the critical error of conflating his wealth with his personal ability. he is a caricature of a generation who had the luck to grow up in a time of economic growth. they benefited from the social democratic, egalitarian societies that the generations before them had created after living through the wall street crash, the depression and the second world war.

they came of age in a time of full employment, strong trade unions, high wages, generous employer funded pensions and low housing costs – in britain due to massive postwar social housing programs.

and then as they reached their thirties, if they were lucky not to have worked in one of the many industries that were closed down, they benefited from the privatisation of social housing, and then of all the other things the government used to monopolise and provide as a service (gas, electricity, water, trains, buses), all of which generated one-off receipts for the government, made a lot of capitalists rich, but created a long term problem for future generations by incentivising profit at the cost of quality.

so anyway, now they own all the stuff, and they are rich, because when they were young you could have a job working in a factory and retire with a decent pension and have maybe even made half a million quid or so just by moving home a few times during a time of unprecedented asset price appreciation.

and they think they are really smart because the system has worked fine for them. and that we should appreciate their wisdom as they foist fascists upon us.