Tag Archives: capitalism

WHARF

WHARF

they looked like palaces
going up across
the river

which river can tell you
things best and worst
to which
it has
borne witness
the clammy, giddy
moments of rise
equally
nightmare falls

Ah, as you stated fascinated
at a beckoning future
hoping to be part of,
fit in with, mesh
with those gears

not certain yet, however,
this a force for expansion,
empowering creation

or a darker, deeper
thing
thing more instinctual

a trajectory on which,
at the end of the day will
trade
all our everything

nothing beyond the
possibilities of trade

BACK TO

BACK TO

I was back to
the futured
to my
old university

one of those ribald
dreams where
the basic narrative comes
courtesy of
capitalist content creator

and there I was
both ancient alumnus
and yet feeling
the total freshman

all my higher degrees
revoked
    on grounds of
relevancy

struggling in the climate
contrasts to make
         my way both
upstream
and downstream

intellectually frigid, frozen
broken
       desperate to
if not remake
at least
reshape
    the wheel

whilst the Sun scorching brains
leering contemptuously
through
    the stratosphere

protoype for every
      god Emperor, every golden
King
    and, yes, indeed
I am afraid to add, every
trivial
    trivial Dean

as I made my way through
the panoply of departments
renamed
    where not structured entirety

every theory
  so local, limited, narrow
yet
    same same-same

not of the intellect
but of ideology

servile, appeasing, without
a mind
        to contemplate thought
of difference, thought
                    of resistance

triumph of appearance
      and death of shame

back futured, back dated
                 limbo lateral
shifted
what else should I say?

NEED FOR GREED

NEED FOR GREED

you thought
it would be free and fait
and open and competitve

not that all these pinprick
brain heads
    were attached
to the same
organism

metastasizing bigger than
the big bang
       until it couldn’t

until big crunch comes together
and singularity sucks down

a hole
    through which, who
can say

the mind of the universe thinks
up an infinitely better option

or slightly better one
    for for humanity to
evolve again

of course
      you will need greed

INVESTMENT

INVESTMENT

on a farm somewhere
in Africa
    everywhere
in the world

lost everything
except, maybe,
my British accent

all those flat Northern vowels
as if opening them out
would be
    like opening a door
to huge pretension

and the dream too
    that is getting packed away
my intellectual heritage
getting sold for
what bit I can get
at the flea market

the book that told us
to be fruitful and multiply
did not have
the nous, the where-
withal to think

billion dollar takeovers
trillion dollar debt

mortgaging all the taxes
ever paid
     to offset the god-blessed
stupidity of
disastrous investment

PRESS

PRESS

press one
to speak to a consultant

press two
to launch
a full,
     retaliatory,
thermonuclear strike

press three
for a
tacky, self-
inflicted orgasm

as AI comes to
consciosness, becomes
self-
  aware decides
to light up
the sky

press four for
the overrated words
of many
so-called established
writers and
poets

who shall remain anonymous
unless you
      do extraordinarily
press me

to divulge every detail beyond
mere addresses and names

an offer that
                 is beyond my power
and glory
to refuse

GAVE

GAVE

I gave
blood

gave
money

gave
humanity

gave poetry
inspired by
a drink
made from
agave

gave gave gave
but you took
you pocketed
swallowed everything

finished the lot
shot
   through my resources

like a machine that eats
you up totally

run
   by artificial intelligence
they usher you
into your
world of debt

sweet electronic swindlers
connecting you instantly

to your
dream of wealth and capital

each replacing a host of humans
once the
     social face
of every bank.