This is how it starts

'Austerity' - used by our current crop of particularly nasty politicians to justify their harmful ideology

Only following orders

ATOS assessor rubber-stamps another
triple-bypass case ‘fit for work’ –
sends them off to die
but ticks a box on
this week’s target-sheet –
who cares?
They probably don’t vote Tory anyway.

Benefits administrator
could turn a blind eye
to trivial claim-form imperfections
or the odd slop
of supposedly tell-tale emulsion
but does not –
homelessness beckons,
children hunger at school,
all for less in a week
than a politician’s breakfast bill
and the futile feeling
of a job done by the book.

Police Constable
could refuse to take
that homeless person’s bedding,
driving them out of sight
to freeze
and scab over
where the rich won’t have
their rose-quartz eyes
polluted by the poor,
but prefers to tug a helmeted forelock,
hold onto that maybe-promotion,
tenuous pension,
peer-acceptance,
while knowing it is wrong.

This is how it starts.

Digital wampum

Inspired by some of the works in Offending Frequencies (Poetry Review 102:4 Winter 2012), especially the photographic responses by Yemisi Blake to new poems by Elmi Ali and Jo Brandon, I produced the following:

The hanging piece is entitled 'Digital wampum' and uses plastic components from VHS cassettes (a defining technology for someone who was a teenager in the 1980s) to depict key dates in my life, the black and white arrangement encoding them in binary. The words indicate the events these dates relate to.

Not necessarily respecting the normal

Normal activity

Parallel parking, 9-to-5, five days a week,
parakeeting advert science-bits,
(please do explain what Ceramide-R is)
paralytic Friday nights,
paraplegic by Sunday,
paragons of easy virtue,
parallax blurred by C2H5·OH,
parabolic bottle-lobbing,
parading with shagging shirts and handbagged heels,
paraben-product hair,
Paraquat down the drain,
paratha stuffed with vindaloo,
paraffin by the gallon,
paracetamol the morning afternoon.
¶
Parochial tastes prefer Cars and Planes to
Paranorman (too alt),
paraphrased as ‘a bit weird innit’,
paradise is never standing out, achieving
parity with the next-door Jones’ consumption
paradigm,
parachuting in the latest style of gravel,
paradox as misunderstood as
Paracelsus in this company,
paranoid about peering above the
parapet, not straying beyond accepted
parameters, a comforting
parasol for
parasites;
parody almost, but not quite, too easy
apparently.

A blog post writing I am

Written in response to a fellow poet's prompt to 'write a Yoda poem'...

yodadiary.blogspot.co.uk

Like a Jawa used it as a toilet
my mouth tastes this morning.
Ached my head did, not now
(Paracetamol, not Jedi mind trick).
Old Thumper I tried – liked it I did, yes,
karaoke night at the Star & Falcon it was, mmm;
“more, than this, much more, my way, I did it”
I sang,
“geroff, frog-face”, lads shouted –
green I am,
small I am,
Kermit I am not;
in the Serpentine
thinking they are ducks,
quacking
they are now
(Jedi mind trick) –
muppets.
OLL.

Free-verse texticonography

Following a recent workshop on using 'new media' to generate poetry, here's a short one using emoticons and similar, plus its associated explanation...

Took a dip in a \___/
found an old Black Sabbath LP –
playable
\m/>.<\m/
u like CraaAAaiiIIig DaaAAaviIid
:p

Translates as:

Took a dip in a skip
 
found an old Black Sabbath LP –
playable
 
[symbols indicating listening to metal - it's two hands raised with 'finger-horns' either side of scrunched-up eyes]
 
u like CraaAAaiiIIig DaaAAaviIid (mocking Craig David's uppy/downy, oversung-but-bland vocal stylings)
 
blowing-a-raspberry smiley