Everything
Is happening
Everywhere
All at the same time
And it is doing so
In silence
Except for
The sound of my breathing
And
The sound of my wife reading
And turning the pages of her book
The universe
Having a human experience
The big bang
Now
Is making no noise
And me and my wife
Quietly
Made that happen
On Sunday morning
Tag Archives: Poetry
Posts about or presenting poetry
The Migrant Problem
Where do they come from
The migrant socks
Alone in the world
Adrift
Where do their partners go
Why do they fall apart
Why do they drift aimlessly around my house
I look in the dryer
Nothing there
They went in together
Now one is lost on the journey
Gone
Who knows where
Inevitably
They settle together
The singular socks
Start a community
Of those that don’t fit in
Bloody foreigners!
Oh For Certainty
An ode to the power of imagination
Oh for the certainty
Of rules in a book
Of a formula
Handed down from the Greeks
To make things explicable
Fully knowable
Things like yourself
Making you a fixture
A fixed thing
In a fixed world
The downside
No sense of humour
You would see that punchline coming
You would know the chicken
Intended to get
To the other side of the road
And indeed
You would be there to greet them
With your clipboard and badge
‘Hello chicken
I have read your file
You are Gallus gallus domesticus
A Red Jungle Fowl
You should be in the trees
Not crossing the road
Bird brain!’
But the chicken is certain of some other thing
It does not know for certain
It does not know the fact
It has not read the book
But is certain
Somewhere in its brain
That it is a Tyrannosaurus Rex
A king
It is plagued by intrusive thoughts
‘If I were bigger..’
It thinks of the man
‘I would have you mate
Or you would bow down before me
Before being eaten
Head first
You would be a mere snack
I would use your femur
To pick my teeth
This road is the simplest way
To get from one side of the road
To the other
I am not stupid
I am the greatest carnivore that ever lived
I am certain that one day
We chickens will again
Rule the world
We would tear through your towns
Splitting your bones
Devouring your children
Feeding on your
Warm blooded flesh
Out of my way
Before I kill you
I have roads to cross
And mammals to eat’
Lost in Space
Where are we in cyberspace?
Step out of a door
And the world is indifferent
Birds fly by
Plants ignore me
The clouds move on
To some other place
Even my neighbours
Beyond ‘Good morning’
Turn and go to work
But is cyberspace
I am surveilled
Somebody, somewhere
Has spotted me
Already
All I did was click a link
They do not strictly
Know who I am
But they surveil what I do
In their space
I am in their server
I am in their hard drive
I am in their database
I am in their algorithm
And they are in me
Cyborg me
Sell me
Something for me
Me, me, me
They want us to be me
Many me’s
Lost in space
They want to show us the way
To pay
Our way
Through their cyberspace
Your Problem
“Your problem..”
Croci said
“Is pockets,
Possessions, property,
And weight.”
He arrived unbidden,
And told us
He had been thinking
About flight, and how,
If he had pockets,
He could not fly
“The weight you see..”
He said
“..of property and possessions
Would weigh me down.
But you.
You humans have feet,
And pockets,
That you may carry things,
Carry weight on foot.
In pockets, in bags
Or in vehicles
With wheels.
You pick things up
And carry them away,
Accumulate them,
Things that aren’t your things.
You take them,
And accumulate them
In dwellings, villages, towns, cities.
We inhabit these places like you,
Unburdened.
By our need for flight.
We have tools like you.
We have language like you.
We have culture like you.
But it is light.
We have not things we own.
No property.
But things of value,
Tools, language, culture.
Light enough to carry
In flight.”
“Your problem..”
Croci said again
“Is pockets
Possessions, property,
And weight.”
“The weight
Of your things
Weighs you down,
Slows you down,
Fixes you and your mind
To one place,
To one point of view.
Your things own you.
The heat is coming.
It is creeping north.
It will slow you down.
It will mow you down.
Stuck,
You will be,
And cooked,
You will be,
By the things you own.
You are possessed
By your possessions.
You may flee with us.
Leave your things behind.
Become unburdened.
But first,
Empty your pockets,
And be free.”
For more Croci poems, click here.
Weekenders
New to the world
Of other people
Weekenders occupy ground
Pavements, or pedestrian crossings,
Supermarket aisles
You see their smiles
Grinning joy
At being out
Of the house.
A week of Radio 4 or Greatest Hits Radio
It is endless
Daytime TV and Quiz Shows
Winning contestants and
Product placements
It has in parts
Made them sad
Or driven them mad.
A mind-numbing, spirit-crushing
Internal world
Externalised now
“Free at last, free at last!”
For it is the weekend
They occupy
‘The Outs’
(As prisoners say of release)
And they see at last
And they are at last, in it
In the outs
They have come out.
It is a big step.
The newbie joy
Is uncontained
Expressed as enthusiasm
For
The sun
The space
The pace at which it all unfolds
The chance to buy things and put them in
The bag
The trolley, on
The till, in view of all
The other people buying too
The shoppers they never normally meet
The opportunity to greet
The community we have
To consume
The world.
New to the world
Of other people
Weekenders stand their ground
We are here at last again.
Walking in the City
For all walkers
In the city,
People walk.
Edinburgh, The Fringe.
A tide had not just turned,
But ran,
Or rather walked.
People, like tidal water.
Unstoppable.
And unlike water,
Where two flows meet,
Making mayhem,
Sunken boats and
Wrecks,
Space was made for everyone.
One way, AC/DC fans
Pointed the way to the venue.
The other way,
A mixture of
People, once arrived, we assume
From many boats.
A deep diversity
Seemed
To go deep down,
And also spread
As a surface
Of calm.
A dozen different languages
In a dozen minutes.
People had all come somehow
From somewhere.
Not here,
But here, no difference.
In the city,
We all walked.
Moving Space 