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: Written Word
Items about writing and literature
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
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.
Post Factual
I’m just in the process of bringing some fiction writing to the site. It is partly started, I have a few episodes of a fictive theme on global warming and how to have a response by writing fiction about it and not going mad with fear or despair.
It developed a block, and I unblocked it last week, interestingly, about the time I committed to writing a poem or a post a day. Funny that! It will appear sometime soon as posts and I like the idea that it will be shared as posts and it will work in a post-factual way. We don’t have to get stuck in ‘facts’ but we may see what may follow after the fact, in fiction.
Anyway…
I found this below on Tumblr. It should link to the site.
No idea what ‘Periodic rent-lowering-gunshots:’ means. Maybe inform me.
But this just gets to what the power of fiction, especially fiction you write yourself FanFic, Pomes, stories, whatever.
This could be a bit like an arts/writing/reading manifesto.
I chose the picture ‘cos I like that you can close the book and the writing is still there, but in a closed book. I think that just as online life for many people took off, Harry Potter came out as a book. People found they could close the book, and the writing is still there, but in a closed book, but they cannot close off social media.
It controls sensory overload.
#dvolvd
Croci Liked Crow
For Ted Hughes
Croci liked Crow and
Flicking the pages
Tapping ones that looked interesting
The old man read them out
Croci listened, head cocked
Did not understand them all but
Said that whoever wrote them
Knows about crows
Knows their blackness
And their eating habits
But went no further
Croci
Flicked on to other pages and sat
Again, head cocked
The old man spoke on
Croci comprehended, compended
And collected
Morsels of poems
Choice items
First the eyes
Then the tongue
Then fat, flesh, bone marrow
Then stolen eggs, earthworms, insects, fruit, small mammals, amphibians
Croci had a strict order
Favourites first, fluids, then
Fast fatty food
When the ground was frozen
In the winter
This could save lives
So it was passed on
As poetry
Bird to bird
Eat…
Eyes, tongue, fat, flesh
The old man talked about
All the words
Written
About Crow
By people
Who never wrote
The poems
About Crow
And
Croci huffed
Phewph
What do they know about winter
In their warm houses
With their warm toes
And their warm hearts
The man who wrote Crow
Knew about the cold bleakness of winter and
His frozen heart
Had eaten carrion
To keep himself alive
The poems in Crow said this
Which is why
The people with warm toes
And warm hearts
Wasted the warm air
That made words
Instead of eating
Eyes and tongues
Whilst still warm
And moving
And in silence
Speaking
About
Survival
Croci said
Poetry does this
Chris Reed
Moving Space 