The Crowd

Do not seek consolation

in the crowd:

weak minds are drawn to strong

like a cloud

of electrons to a nucleus.

The crowd is destruction, pain,

loss of identity:

skirt the crowd,

laugh at it:

the crowd has brought us to our knees,

and yet you wish to save yourself

by the poor consolation

that comes from large numbers?

No, avoid the crowd:

too many minds make the totality numb,

mouths drown each other out.

Truth, objectivity, might make us lame

as chance brought mind from madness.

Use your lights:

shine brightly, lest you should be crowded out.

Carry on, seek solace, peace:

keep your mouth silent, your lifeforce loud.

The Voice

The voice keeps me in check,

a little father in the back of my head.

A curled hard fist to the back of the neck.

The signalman out there watching ahead.

There's nothing wrong with it, you'll see:

we all need a little something to give us shape.

And if you're open I'm sure you'll agree

that life must be dealt with, and never escaped.

The voice is constant, and it makes one laugh

at oneself, at one's humour and spirit.

If it ever grabs hold by the collar or scarf

fight back with vigour and bloody well kill it.

There's nothing ill at work, 'tis nothing to be shamed:

whenever it's at work, listen and act.

For if you don't, you're only to blame,

and that's all there is to it. Matter of fact.

The voice can be heavy, it can draw blood.

It can cough up pure whiskey vomit, charred lung,

the rags of childhood, memories of earth and mud.

But let it show the light: let it be your sun.

A Farm

A farm is the Earth

attached to an iron lung -

the industrial ones, anyway.

Agribusiness has it wrong

if it thinks this holds sway

in the proper scheme of things.

A co-operative venture, they say,

with independent shops, giving wings

to newer ways of living.

But things scroll, they don't cling;

it'd be a sincere misgiving 

to assume there's not a better way.

So come, live in realm of day.

Night is cold, the sun tires not of giving.

The Earth must breathe:

farms aren't natural - wouldn't you say?

When You Think About It

When you think about it,

the birds' flight is utterly pointless,

but we're not the ones to decide

what's what.

Once you've shot it down,

you'll see the work behind God's hands

and the sky will seem to peel away

revealing an emptiness you never saw before.

The Earth is but scabs and scars,

the trees bristle like hair,

oceans are eyes, simple in their

monochrome blue.

And when you think about it,

thought is just a barrier to action.

Look, think, see, feel.

Then comes a distraction.

The Machine

We are all plugged into

                         the machine

but the machine is now

                         the Earth.

Its furrows are now areas

                         of low bandwidth,

its rivers the confluences

                         of cables.

But all I want is to be

                          a voice for it,

become the beauty, the suffering

                          the variety.

This grey machine still thrums

                          with colour

if you adjust your eyes to the light

                          so very carefully.

Strange

The television is a cardboard box of nightmares

dreaming loudly, and in three dimensions.

It screams its colours into our heads,

puts our own thoughts in suspension.

The telephone is a plastic bone

for human dogs to chew -

it rings at too high a pitch

to make sense to you.

Cars are metal ghosts, 

possessed by poltergeists,

their phantom electric circuits humming 

and brimming with unnatural life.

Craig Raine was a Martian,

his eyes frozen ochre rock

that freakish birds with massive wings

would idly perch atop.

Humans are sacks of cells

loosely held as one,

moving in terrifying patterns

(chemical reaction + chemical reaction = love).

Living is Dangerous

Living is dangerous,

and death is the price we pay for our lives.

Life-death is the worst:

it is not just the flesh that quivers its last -

so too can the mind.

Shuttered in in office blocks

and bars in cheap hotels,

with whores and tramps in crowded rooms,

the mind blooms like a night flower

into its poisonous bed.

Life can get put on the backburner,

death can go to your head.

Movement gives the illusion of movement -

you move whilst standing still.

And pills can make you healthy

if shell or shill's your thrill.

Weapons are burned and dismantled,

but your silence still flays and kills.

Words are breaths of wonder;

silence makes all nill.

Yes, living can be dangerous -

extending out, pressing in like a blade.

And round the bend you'll find, my friend,

the headlights have you staid.

Death, great redeemer, great equaliser, black sun,

come not whilst I'm living - 

dying's dangerous when your living's not done.

Metaphor

I like my metaphors to be violent,
as if I were punching a woman in the face.

I like them to defamiliarise,
to put things out of place.

I like them to be dead and clean,

an unsolvable murder case.

I like them to shuttle off


into linguistic outer space.

I like them multi-shaded,
like the naked human race.

I like them like my friends;
but I like a new, strange face.

And when I'm all metaphor'd out,
put a statue in my place.

The Blakean Eye

The Blakean eye has scanned the sky, seen birds like cold stones rent

and in the marred decay of theirs, the death of innocence.

The Blakean eye regards the babes as clean of earthly sin,

yet watches on as, year on year, their joy grows deathly thin.

The Blakean eye has seen the Drakes, white and pure as air,

as their complexions dim to grey, life emptied, grey and bare.

This Blakean eye has sure surmised the deep heart's darkened core

in whose shadows it has seen the light come pulsing raw.

This eye has seen nature's gleam, has caught its violent light,

and in this dark malay of life has glanced the human fight.

This dappled eye knows not itself, its colours none, unknown;

in place of inward sight it sits atop a supernatural throne.

Mystic vision and clear perception, the eye informs the heart:

it leads it blindly by its strings to territories dark.

In destitution, unfair abjection, it lives not by its means,

surviving not on sustenance: on divination, magic, it feeds.

what is mourning?

having never grieved, it escapes me like vapour.

is it pain and shock, pure and simple?

does it change with age - and wrinkle?

is it feeling given in fear of feeling nothing at all?

in that case, I've mourned often, and full.

can closure come only through streaming tears?

or does that type of grief keep dancing for years?

maybe those who grieve best know most well -

after years lived with such love, they inherit loveless hell.

yes, it seems those are the ones who mourn best:

they know their loved ones more fully

than their own lives, and blessed

were their loves, their passions bright and fair;

so now stop all the clocks: there is nothing left to share.

The Open Mind

The open and enquiring mind

can wrap itself as if 'twere twine,

when open means the same, perchance,

as thoughtfully veiled ignorance.

A mind whose holes, plugged as a sieve,

starched and full of little bits,

can only so disguise its truth

before rushing water shows its proof.

Open knows when to close,

and verity when to disclose;

empty knowledge should not scoff:

it shows its tattered smile thereof.

The open and enquiring mind

knows where to search and where to find:

if answers lay at its feet,

it gives warily, lest it give nothing sweet.

Nirvana

Do you know why I love you?

It's because without you, my philosophy

would be incomplete.

Nirvana is not somewhere to sit in isolation -

that kind of peace is brief.

No, you complete me,

complete my situation -

allow me to complete myself.

Not through the repeated use of drugs -

no, not that alone.

Love is the gateway to peace -

Nirvana, my heart, my home.

On Social Injustice

Social position is all in the mind -

some gold is iron pyrites, you'll find.

Some silver spoons are made impure;

the plainer the silver, the purer the ore.

Some common blood is with fire infused.

The hierarchy rests on a bed of sand - it moves.

You'll find some people in shackles chained,

their minds held down by mighty weights.

But aspect of thought can pick the lock;

there's no such thing as caste or stock.

No, just preservation of blood and name;

through generations, bonds broken and bonds made.

Death

Death does not only take away:

it puts something far worse in place.

It gives wise men doubt, superstition;

in place of knowledge it puts supposition

and wishful thinking;

it taketh away eyes and hands,

rendering the sober insensible.

Fear slinks in on its stomach 

to bite at the heels of those etched in concrete,

it freezes those whose thoughts were fluid:

it turneth the mind against itself.

Death puts a sword in one's hand -

a sword which it commands we shall turn inward.

And in the illusion of life and spirit,

it inflicts its ultimate punishment.

The ultimate joke -

but no hands are there to clap,

and no mouths are there to laugh,

and no tongues are there to declaim,

and no crying echoes through the great

halls of humanity.

There is no compassion there,

each tongue twisted in the lie of death.

Humanity's Heir - Petrarchan sonnet

It started with the planting of a seed:

He ploughed her, tilled down into her rich loam.

After several weeks she knew her home

To have a third member: with child, they agreed.

They began preparations: changes decreed.

She didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, her body a throne -

A royal palace, an ivory dome.

But soon, water broken, she was due to conceive.

In labour for hours she pushed on through

Until she was born, their darling daughter.

But how queer! Her features were so unlike theirs,

Her nose was unlike, her eyes were too.

But for this they did not slight nor fault her:

World in miniature, she was humanity’s heir.