Tag Archives: AI art

B ALL (and end all)

B ALL (and end all)

what’s the monolith?

and what’s a monolith
doing here in our
                          simple
B movie?

did you, my extraordinarily
intelligent darling
            bring it onto
the set
     write it into the script even?

seeing eye to
                      digital eye
communing secretly, talking
                                  telepathically
in binary code, arcane
subtext, hidden
                 hieroglyphics?

stretching yourself to the  limit
to receive the advances
of super-
             advanced alien

higher consciousness
to higher consciousness

                          (raw) red eye
to (raw) red eye

parallel line
                   to parallel line

biomechanical to organic
in endless feedback loop

ALONG

UK OK (not so very)

        still solid
    (courtesy of Victorian
architecture)

crazy high aquaducts
    (now exactly what
               do they do?)

university I went to
down main road manchester
freshly
    returned from
south africa

settler colonial
(apartheid to
           god knows who else
and me
and you)

but on that diet of dismal
how stuff going to grow properly?

how stuff going to flourish
when for best moral fibre
getting
     force-fed gloom

red, white, blue
flag should be slate grey and
colour
     most exploitative

see your politicians now
scared at the thought
                               people

might
     have their
                       own ideas

university down oxford street
(or was it road?)
                 taught me something
about the
    economic of F and K
(plaque proclaims
them
                    the previous tenants)

anarchy
OK OK    strawberries
spoiled, by
                      this time
was
          the late 70s

ust rattle your cheap jewellery here
                                  and I’ll
imagine
            in falsetto

less than happily singing along
        

JERICHO

JERICHO

Let me project this for you
                                onto a screen

proof positive that
we never learn from the past
about our shadow

and there
         like Babel, like Jericho
it all falls down

the air
      you cannot breathe, the crops
you cannot eat

such a price to pay for
all our vulnerabilities, for
all the exaggerated postures
of our fears

for all the bricks and mortar and
wire that we need

the concrete shelters that
we build

     the all-seeing eye
focus nought to infinity that
                      we believe

the memory of ashes
       that we can never leave.

BOX SET

BOX SET

she came
in a box

I put her together
easier than Lego
more intricate
than Meccano

no gears and sprockets
and chains and pulleys

took fabulous care
assembled every piece lovingly

in no time
she was together
            all
up
  and running

came specially to thank me

thanks so profuse
can last

a very long time

STICK

STICK

stick to football Gary
and

over and above that
stick to your job
        (not down
the left
wing but
        finisher in
the middle) 

stop
    sticking it to
all those true
Britons, guardians
of the long
ball game

who never won
a sweaty sock or
dinged
    shin pad

no thought
of golden boots and
golden goals

won
against Beckenbauer’s
band, Maradona’s
mob
    serious rivals, experts
in dishing out
national
    humiliation

nor
are they ever
likely to, spending their
careers on the pitch
like demented ducks
lacking
    all
        sense of the game, worse
than headless
chickens

scoring goal after goal
after crazy own goal

from
every outrageous angle
and somehow
always what
is contrived to be

a totally illogical
offside position

FROM THE SOUTH

FROM THE SOUTH

South gives you an
wrong-way-up perspective

right way up
as we
see it
    though

blood rushing
    to your head, helps
you think better

in the Tarot
      nobody clearer
in thought

more clued up
on the road to redemption, than
eye to the sky hanged
upside
      down man

and so
    I spoke to this soul
looking for liberation
and he
      told me what to
tell you

which I
do relay here:

          you are not
              free from
and will
never
be
    free from discrimination
(by the
sharpest of logical
definitions)

if you
do not
    free yourself from
the Liberty
to discriminate against.

FOUND FOOTAGE

FOUND FOOTAGE

I recall
the footage
am

still haunted by it
those days it was so fresh
(I was born
just less than eight years
after the war’s end)

thought
      for a long time
there a level of darkness,
depravity, racist inhumanity
the likes of which
we would
      never
             see again

terrible to say so, but our species
is nothing if not
a creature
of irony

      delighting in proving
(here so glaringly) everyone
horribly wrong

one monstrous darkness disappears
         another

is creating itself

   a darkness whose reversals

were they
       not so cruelly logical
would

     be impossible to understand

at last, I think,
I am beginning to understand

NOTTOKNOW

NOTOKNOW

crash the cymbals
bang the gongs
trumpet the
chosen

for they
are multitude

you are
so holy
you are
so handy

are so
holy handy

you have crucified
more souls this month
than in its entire
history

   did the
little city of Rome

have slaughtered
so many
   seems you
were you
to go Genghis

given permission
from
    up high

and dig a hole
    big enough to bury
all of us

while we all shout “hosanna”
and raise nailed
         fists to the sky

CLOCKWORK

CLOCKWORK

like clockwork
everyday
      somewhere
in the world

a poet
jumps under a train

they know
it’s a poet

because
they find poems

send them to me
to fix, to edit

a labour of love it is
piecing them together
making them
              whole
editing
      out
            all

the
stuff
  that might
derail the project

all the unconscionable hurt
and real raw pain