Trinity

I've had with all those freakin' cats,
All those women fixing what she'd eat,
Or what they think she'd eat,
She'd race down Lexington,
Rather than touch more crab and avocado;
You and it make her (and me) more sick,
Than peanuts, cola and cold baths,
In the wind off The Cam,
After rations and week-old biscuits,
These whole girls, asserting some frail illness,
Are like cheap, 10 cent firecrackers,
With the fuses blown out by the Trinity Test,
Vaporized into next door and next week,
Still just waiting for the missing hero,
Which she (so manifestly) left out,
Not even parenthetical in her worlds,
(A clue you Harpies – it's all about her in there,
No sympathy or dread for you inside her head),
And wait! I have breaking news for all of you,
In your catalogue kitchens,
Preparing her “Happy Death-Day” cakes,
You think she'll RSVP?
I know she won't;
She's dead and won't enjoy it,
Standing there with all your friends,
All of you bated,
Waiting for her to say something,
You'll not quite understand,
You think you're sick and I suppose you are,
Not being so and yet longing,
For the solitude of a quiet ward,
With not-too-many crazies,
News again girls!
The others will all be well-and-truly mad,
Really off-the-scale,
All the meters over in the red,
Chasing you down the corridors,
Or flashing you when the nurses
(big, old bouncers By the way),
Aren't looking,
Or listening to the football,
Or trying it on with your only friend in the day room, “Place of safety” they call it,
And you seem to think you want to wake up there,
With the Valium seeping in,
And the world all soft,
While the wind lifts the detergent-white curtains,
And the crisp sheets clasp you in,
Like your mother on a rainy, summer morning,
Truth is you might be tied in,
Strapped and wrapped,
Like a maddened tom cat,
While they pump you full of Lithium,
And other chemical night-sticks,
Struggling after a while to find any veins left,
Perhaps you even think the ECT is cool,
Another badge of belonging or of not belonging,
Which is it today?
Membership of the club or the outsiders crew?
We want to know, if only for the paperwork,
But I can't warn you what this will be really like,
Maybe you could think of Trinity again,
That weird black sphere of lightning and hell,
Balled up in a split second,
Before all those demons leave the box,
With hope in the lead,
Racing for space and oblivion,
And you alone on that bed,
A crushed nutshell in a pile of them,
Just one of the mad and bad,
This is The Atomic Age,
And we are all just atoms,
Decaying from the radioactive elements of youth,
All the way to lead and lesser things,
Beaten down to inert metals,
Each of us a simple particle in the matter,
Which makes us all and everything,
And in Trinity we trust,
Betterment and godless bombs for you and me.

Complex Arguments

We are children of The State,
Fit for only nursery rhymes,
The metre of the nationalist,
Igniting the blood with anger,
Fuelled with artless argument,
That when observed will fail,
Like logic, spin and anti-spin,
To make annihilation,

A pilot only needs coordinates;
And querying his target,
Is simply insurrection?
But shaky politics is passed,
In empty houses, pressed to vote,
On nothing with a shrug,
A bell tolls in the members’ bar,
To lift cold gimlet eyes,

This is the stare of arms,
The dealer made of metal,
Gun metal if you want to know,
Funded through from prep,
To boardroom with a sneer,
This is the invention of
Inertial Dismay, Secured,
With mother’s money,

But now, the viscid senses,
Stirred by the scent of blood,
Are brushed away with mirth,
And rushed due diligence,
This is our worked solution,
Dismissed or left unmarked,
We are children of The State,
Ignored and forever ignorant,

The Last Dog Rose

Time is cruel, its measure forms,
Such barriers against our progress,
Stripping the world of syllables,
And rhythm until its simple blanks,
Are all that’s left to break a line,
Flowers wedded to design not space,

And if plants can muster thought,
And memory they must feel pain,
At loss, a grief for the ripped up,
Hedgerow, Autumn’s burning,
The unplanned fields of generations,
Turned to smoke and ash and lime,

Here’s our last pathetic Dog Rose,
Clinging to dead wood as if in flood,
It fears the current to the sea,
And salt which scours dry earth,
When artificial tides have turned,
And left the land for structure,

It drops its pastels to the stream,
That takes them greedily,
To drown or burn, no matter which,
(The project has no preference),
And we’re clear of them for ever,
Except for the wretched dealers,

Offering a precious stem for love,
A flower for your feelings and your bed,
It will sink beside you overnight,
Until disposed of in distractions,
Wrought from the pretend world,

And all are gone,

And all is gone.

A Medic Shouts for Bandages

I do not remember anything,
This unknown damage seems to be,
Just existing, always there,
But with eyes forced shut,
And my arms strapped down,
I only sense my own nerves,

The place of my face and eyes,
Runs red or white or blue,
With liquids, undefined by me,
Maybe viscous, slow-flowing,
Perhaps something thinner, rarer,
Brain fluids seeping towards earth,

It smells calm like camping,
But what breathes for me,
Is some form of blank mystery,
This enriched air forcing itself,

Inside me like a rough kiss,
But all the time wet and dripping,
As remembered summer rain,
Close before the second psalm,

Something is a slight burn,
A warm trickle in all my vessels,
An army holding the line of pain,
In an uneasy truce on the perimeter,
Out there in murmuring lands,
Wild with auxiliaries,

In this strange confusion of flesh,
And wet earth about my face,
Something not me, is tugging,
In the space behind my eyes,
The place of Self in quiet thought,
The fragile light of consciousness,

I feel a hook, dragging at my mind,
Liquefying  the useless cortex,
Perhaps I am in line for Pharoah,
Mummified, debrained and dried,
To keep for purposes now lost,
Stood up each week as non-voting,

And though pain camps in the hills,
Around its fires and standards,
I'd seem to welcome a blankness,
The gradual removal of memory,
Painless, voided and defuelled,
A lasting life, unbothered,

But another sense is mended,
The previously unheard ring,
Of extended detonations,
Fills the world with new sounds,
A doctor, with nowt but verbs,
Calls for picks and swabs,

Her voice a strained shriek,
Penetrates the worst of it,
And gently calls my name,
Still present in my mind it seems,
Held in the dulled grey matter,
Evidently not her target,

The hook has pressed my eye,
And though shut, it sees lights,
Mathematical progressions
Of dancing squares and dots,
And I tense in the white cot,
A straggling of near-corpse,

Soiling the clean rooms,
Vague medical facilities,
Erected in haste, memorials,
To those who died in filth,

The pals, the regulars,
the mud angels and martyrs,
Of a war we thought we'd win,
When the world had hope,

Brimstone

The photographer was felled by shrapnel,
Next to me,
His camera still clicking,
An ogive of decease,
Postmortem pictures,
Each focused perfectly by software,
Showed a line of steel and dead-eyed villagers,
Unshocked by just another life gone by,

My own skin, a little melted,
Caused no pain,
Until my fluids leaked into the chatter,
Of rescuers and outrage,
And carried by many bearers,
Like rivers between the makeshift ambulances,
I flew and fainted through the high dust,
Of felled and falling buildings,
Into an oven of bare and ringing metal,
Jerked into movement by a tuned hand,
That urged no delay,

But in a place of little safety,
Armoured with ragged crosses,
Painted hastily across the roof,
And struggling to be vertical,
I was marked as non-urgent,
By sleepless doctors,
Who made me sleep,
Until I woke up, automatically evacuated,
On the say so of my passport,
Empty of the memory of flight,
In a white room with curtains,
Lifted by the breeze of warm seas.

The Edge of the World

It's not true North as far as we can see,
Just the gusty edge of sun-swept docks,
Emptied of shadows by half-day closing,

An even sky lights a fisherman and his wife,
In an eyeless, slow-panning separation,
Black and white heroes of old labour,

Each not wanting to signal fears,
As he departs to the bobbing deck,
Of a boat that dares the sea to rage,

That dares the sea to sink it in a blink,
With heavy swells and temper,
Magicked from this flat calm,

The grey guttering town retreats,
Leaving the small speck of farewell,
Waving the boat to its far horizon,

Then slowly home to the empty chair,
And the fire, now less warming,
But alive now with the gathering wind,

That tunnels down the chimney,
Bringing the marshalling weather inside,
The smell of salt and the turning sky,

And now a book and bread and jam,
And the light failing in the North,
Just the wind now gets inside,

Faith sustains sleep now in this house,

But the returns are quietly marked,
The imagined ticks on the far sea edge,
Signal a mast or two and then a hull,

Then hulls of this entire little fleet,
The wood scraped to paintless wastes,
The hold brimmed with ice and fish,

The True North burns away in the sky,
Shining on shy reaquaintances,
The slight touch and held-back joy,

And Faith sustains sleep now in this house.

Drone (Two Fractured Sonnets)

Upside: detail left alone,
Becomes jagged outside your head
Spaceflight takes collected knowledge,
To networks out of system,
Where the undiscovered orbit,
Strangely, a swarm, a mass of,
Drones with little purpose,
I missed a breath here,
My autonomics failing,
Empty of air,

The lack reached consciousness,
A considered inhalation,
No longer drowning,
In the sight of awe,

The scraps of thought attached,
To almost-sterile hardware,
Careering, reactor-first to other stars,
Take news of no-gods to other minds,
There is no plan for spinning worlds,
This path is born of rocket scientists,
Those who scorn freewill like light,
Computing with complexity,
The orbits of these three bodies,
Impossible things for breakfast,

Demolition comes to me,
I would crawl with charges,
Through the rough excavations,
The incompleteness of our time.

Nighthawk

Headlights sweep cold retinas,
And the rain can't keep us safe,
Deep in the eaves, in shadow,
It's just red, suspended eyes,
A silent, patient sniper,
With a scan, a laser knife,
To build models of the world,
Thought logical and constant,

Sanctioning is, they say,
Non-lethal, a trivial incision,
To help one with focus,
So precise and targeted that,
We're supposed to welcome,
All the shocks and nudges,
The suggestions of employment,
Designed to suck out hope,

In this dark world, the hawk is king,
Distributing advice, a prophet,
Submerging the dead in debt,
Streaming flesh on barbed wire,
Under the shelter of rotten wood and,
Calming the fearful dangerously,
Karma would be a welcome echo
Sent like a shark to quarter men.

Vanishing Point - On The Randomness of Ceiling Tiles

It's a long view to the vanishing point,
Somewhere out with all the cars,
A roof interior dotted and self-similar,
To suggest a natural feel and texture,
Some stone wall in a childhood garden,
The ever-green fields and rushing river,

     With pockets full of stones,
     Something tepid and awry,

The analysis of patterns and thunder,
Breaks some simmering processes,
It's just the calculations stopping you,
Holding back the decaying ideas,
Of manic and maniac to terminate,
To set an escape clause in the mind,

     Perhaps a fault with gravity,
     The river bed is flying,

There's strong bass melody in the line,
Tracing a rhythm down to earth,
Catching the final invisible touch,
Of where all the constructions meet,
In relaxed focus, we build dimensions,
And the airy demons leap out at us,

     White water sucks out everything,
     Reaching into the mind like surgeons,

On the history of ceilings, chapter 2,
There's a philosopher hidden here,
An old, bearded thinker lunging,
Sparking with heavy logic, hard ethics,
Questions to resolve in seconds,
For God on how to kill and not kill.

     You move me like music,
     I dance with you for seconds,

Stakhanovich in The Library

It's eating at the coal face,
A rough swipe across the mouth,
And the scran goes down easily,

Perhaps not satisfied enough,
You lean back against hard rock,
Stealing sleep from the company,

Ten minutes of production,
Up the wall, gone forever,
A notch in the five-year plan,

Comforted that days later,
Some poor Apparatchik,
Will get it loudly in the neck,

Or more likely will fake it,
Rounding off his figures,
With a guess or two,

Standing tall with Laskier,
With Feng and all the other,
Poster-boys of revolution,

This evening is austerity,
In the eternal low wattage,
Of grime and leaks and rot,

But we have civilization,
Present in the dusty shelves,
Plato stalks the corridor,

Like a hawk of the high lands,
Its shadow swift across the ground,
Stealing knowledge from the party,

The drip of density, of science.
Always undisputed on the page,
Lies still and true for ever,

Fight fiercely in your sleep,
The mind will always know itself,
Facts are facts, and love is love,

Kuiper (New Horizons)

It's aimed at the stars,
Gunning for a gap between planets,
Barreling like rain from the sky,
And fractally repeating,
Forever outwards,
To the clouds and belts,
Of the outer systems,

It's just so, a sweeping eye,
To define in near space,
This last unknown, cold rock,
Pinned for a single probability,
Into an orgy of imaging,
Scanned and beamed, then gone,
A scream of near-zero friction,

From here on it's all toroidal,
The thousand trillion small worlds,
Comets and primordial accretion,
All unsentient yet planet killers,
Dressed in the dust of eons,
Kicked up by our passing,
And turned into a new entity,

Distant generations give it form,
Object, year and number,
Calculate its risk and orbit,
And then leave its end to systems,
Made autonomous and mad,
Serving humans without oversight,
They nudge it with space drive,

Psithurisma

There is the continuous whisper in psithurisma,
The shuffling of atmosphere through empty forests,
Winding the unheard sounds of the dead and gone,
Across The Steppes, up through the lost lands,
And into the endless, treeless deserts of ice,
Where all the mix of souls find ghostless peace,

Remember on days of no weather, the trees calling,
Like screwed-up, torn-out pages, dead biography,
Bent by time and elements to fragments of talk,
Long forgotten by humans but saved in air,
Until brought back and decoded by the movement,
Of cyclones, anti-cyclones, turning the words again,

Until they leave you with no more than a guess,
As to what the argument was actually about,
Or how it was resolved in making up that day,
It's all just history, everything that ever happened,
Running headlong to the absolute end of entropy,
Where the universe is nothing more than this,

And how this sky-seen manifests is moot in black,
Its mechanism all bright thought and nothing else,
No thing of mindfulness to see or hear its end,
A scrap of hydrogen and what goes for white noise,
In it, where the storms abate to long-lasting eons,
With nothing but cooling and all time imprisoned,

We are watching for the last moving particle of light,
And finding it, watch it slow and end this murmur,
All things and time ending in this quadrillionth second,

But Time still passes .....

Time still passes ....

And now the hiss of ideas has coalesced, repeating,
The whole, evolving, eternal show reconstructing,
From a whisper through a tree.

The Jazz Age

It's a wall that hits you here,
Your own noise back at you,
A room-sized plate echo,
The reverberation of architecture,

Brought to you by no one,
This is the noise of the future,
The past and all in between,
Dissonance in red and grey,

Where the ore of all that's precious,
Sweats astronomy into the air,
Stealing the humidity,
To make the dry air sing the more,

Unobstructed by pollutants,
This wail and thump and screech,
Will reach you unattenuated,
Raw and free of the dirty world,

Where the work day ends,
And the dead of politics fails,
The sexless group will fill the space,
The jaded empty mind of gods,

The bandwidth fully occupied,
By frequencies in wide ranks,
Ejecting the unreasoning voices,
With skip and scratch and jump.

Spiral Arm

Weather is just the child of tilt,
A season made cruel by angles,
Arbitrary physics and accretion,

We brought no shelter with us,
And fell to sleep in a bitter wind,
Which raced itself across the dunes,

Bringing singing, stinging sand,
In graceful curves to landfall,
To drift like snow immune to sun,

And the speakers crack the air,
With all that is approved and true,
Bouncing the grit in resonance,

Twisting it to dry, bleak graphs,
Of how society is constructed,
In the ministries of maths,

It's just statistics to them now,
A section of us labelled red,
And sanctioned to despair,

And so the world orbits more,
One further arc of history,
Spitting the river in our faces,

It is bleak for those forgotten,
Those dropped like dry ballast,
To let some ascend without thought,

In another quarter turn in space,
They'll be no more than dust,
And memories.

Starling in the Garden This Afternoon