Poem/Spooks In The Machine

Warning the First: This is what happens when I read about Twitter coverage of the Iranian election and start thinking about Little Brother, Serenity, The Gone-Away World and The X-Files in confluence. (With apologies to Cory Doctorow, Joss Whedon, Nick Harkaway and Chris Carter.)

Warning the Second: I am a giant geek.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin.

 

spooks in the machine

 

& in my head I hear them shouting –

Take it back! wrote Doctorow; & as the smoke

of bloody bombs and tiger-fires lights the way,

young fingers dance a typeset revolution, row on row, and say! –  

don’t updates sound like Mr Universe? You cannot stop the signal. 

True. Technology’s an everloving curse.

 

The youth are fighting back. From pens & swords

we battle guns & tweets; and shockingly the old wives’ mandate 

(tell it to the bees) has proven true:

the hivemind waits, a hydra craving news.

The truth is out there. All along the pipe of pipes,

we raise a cry: the The FOX is going up! 

& when we look and look again

there is no lie, no crawling, poor excuse to tell

that begs our ignorance of broken men,

the brimstone-charred apologists of hell.

 

Words thrive in spaces other norms refuse: they

grow like ivy, breed like mushrooms, eat the smart refuse

of dreams, & when the firewalls are trashed 

they revel in it: long live youth! whose busy thumbs in World War III

(should trenches ever come again, & schnapps, & soccer skirting bombs)

might save the Christmas Truce!

Poem/Wine & Wildness

The following poem is all Nick Harkaway’s fault.

wine & wildness

Poets are creatures of wine & wildness,
rose-wounded, briar marked by their
insatiable insensate longings: let them
go forth & craftily beggar the branches

of Idun’s gold tree; let them ferment
the apples of youth & drown in nepenthe,
crossing the Styx with four cold coins
for a return journey. Moon-touched

let them howl at the atoms of sky
and the jaws of surf; let them be wrecks,
mahogany bones jutting skywards
through a billion billion grains of desert

sand; & while they have strength, let them
bear that rage, that terrible sharp love
from which we shrink, until it silences
their music, blood, hands

Poem/Fingers

I seem to be in poetry mode at the moment. Weird. But also fun.

fingers

when precisely was it that my

fingers (scrap-nailed, bent)

 

became

 

lined with use, adult tools that do not

resemble those slim fronds

with which I learned

to grasp crayons, doorhandles

 

firmly, with a child’s sense

of seriousness in such simple tasks; when

 

did the callous below

the ring-finger of my left hand,

flesh-caramel dot beneath a silver band

form; or when

 

did the sharp creases of

my palms first tar

in lines of life, heart,  mercury

 

the hidden onwards road,

the wandering star?  

Fire/Poem

1.

just a spark. a tiny star,
winking in dropped glass
beside sticky tarmac, or else
an ember squeezed from a cigarette,
a sharp red dream in a firebug’s heart.
what madness, pain, will it impart?

2.

roaring gold, the maw devours
homes, lives, plants
as easily
as terror, longing, grief
steal hours.
a cancerous lung, the smoke consumes;
pauses, gathers strength
& then resumes.

3.

the wind is wild as a witch’s curse,
stinging with scarlet thorns
its Phaeton-mares, frenzied,
pulling a charcoal hearse.
sun’s chariot falls like a hammer-blow,
a wall of burning grief,
a searing loss, & while the anguish lasts
it will not cease.

4.

they hide in the earth,
seek sanctuary
that Dresden’s force denies.
above, dams boil & hearts explode
& weep as dogs lie bravely down,
a sea of guardians who will not rise.
they could have strayed,
but faithfully did not:
their masters stayed.

5.

trees shatter into swollen skies,
bursting like ripened fruit
in the fire’s hard hand. we knew the risks;
we understood
the perils of our lovely, sunswept land.
they were not this: to stay or go, but burn
without a choice. birds died aloft:
small angels, lacking voice.

6.

now only ash remains, & twisted shells.
where once sang lyrebirds,
we sift the wrecks, the dark, unlovely hells
of loss. such wounds run deep,
& still the fires burn.
we dare not sleep.