The tarnishing of our jewel-in-space

I recently heard the phrase 'blue shit' meaning the foul activity of the Tories. Here I explore what 'blue' should be and what they have done to it.

Blue Shit

Blue should be the colour of clear skies,
of water-scattered light,
but you pollute it,
plunder and abuse it,
floating factories stripping the seas
of life, dirtying the aquamarine
with greed and the last gasps
of those tossed aside,
world overboard,
ignore the cries,
focus on your dividend size.

Blue should be the colour
of a tropical lagoon,
a pure mountain tarn,
or ancient ice,
but you put a price on it,
asset-strip-mine it
for a fragment of hedge-fund,
an extra week of winter sun,
or to treat your aspirations
to a reupholstered urban-tractor 4X4
where you primly sit when you drive off
to get your arsehole bleached,
singing "me-me-me"
from your perfect peach.

Blue should be the colour of depth,
profundity and wonder,
but your arbeit macht frei,
consume-or-die
vision of the world
pulls it under, turns everything into
plastic landfill's methane hiss
and the fake nappy-ad piss
drunk en masse
by WKD lads' shagging-shirt hordes,
tears condensing on the chilled steel
of empty wards
where the poor ones kneel,
no hope, so beg for the rope,
for you refuse to feel
the ripped-away smiles
and cold dead lips
of your ideology's vampire kiss.

When there are (almost) no words

The photo below is now famous and rightly so - it shows a four-year old girl in a refugee camp, displaced by the Syrian Civil War, surrendering to a long-lens camera because she thinks it is a gun. There are almost no words for how wong this is, and in how many ways, nor for how angry it makes me (and many, many others). Almost. But it was suggested as a prompt by I am not a silent poet after much discussion about it on their facebook page and so I tried to articulate my anger...

In Atman Camp

I see you, power-hungry man,
stomach full of
belligerence and bile.
I see your guns and tanks,
their barrels,
your ill-concealed excitement
and over-compensation.
I see the lists of dead and wounded,
missing, disappeared,
bodies empty as shell-casings
swept into drifts,
their blue lips
your Viagra kiss.
I see the conquered territory
you piss on,
a few feet here,
a few feet there –
and I feel its never-again
poppy-strewn familiarity.
I see your callow excuses
for why you need a war
and why the suffering,
not yours,
is worth it.

I see all this
in the eyes of Adi Hudea,
one tiny refugee
surrendering to a more benevolent
sort of shot
than the one that took her father,
massacred at Hama.
I see her innocence
taken in infancy,
I see what you have done,
you and all your kind,
and I call you out.

Photo by Osman Sağırlı

Setting a benchmark

A work-in-progress... I'm mostly happy with it, but not sure about the last line. Should it end at 'replace' I wonder?


Exclusion principle

Stranger,
who, so the small plaque says,
loved this spot,
you could not have sat here,
for the seat was placed in your memory,
greatly missed by some friend or relative.
Did they share your view
over scrubby downs
and patchy woodland where coppicemen,
smelters and charcoal-burners
once fed those
hungry for iron.

I choose not to sit,
but stay to watch a hornet
scrape pulp for her nest,
taking papier-mâché mouthfuls
of you
from oak slat and upright.

If I return in a ten-year,
will weather, fungus, woodworm,
or vandals at play,
have done their work,
leaving just a level patch of grass
where council employees
tossed your remains into a flatbed,
for it is policy to neither repair
nor replace
deaths marked by furniture.

Chrome poles and foxholes

With the West now bombing Isis, whatever good that will do, I couldn't help noticing that Southampton has a lap-dancing club of the same name, and so a little satire was born - currently a work-in-progress...

The day the West dropped bombs on Isis

Cash in the wasitband’s medieval,
objectifying, shallow – yes, but not evil,
seedy, that’s true, thoughts unclean,
small uprisings, some scenes are obscene,
barbaric acts need reprisals it seems
but such punishment’s too harsh, in extremis,
high explosives used on unarmed ecdysists,
the day the West dropped bombs on Isis.

Some general somewhere, deep in the Pentagon,
bullet-headed, a limited lexicon,
lost by long words, confused the terms
Terpsichore and terrorists,
gyrators and jihadists,
shaking their fundaments
doesn’t make them fundamentalists.

Military Intelligence didn’t check their facts,
planned the attack using Google Maps,
managed to mix up bunkers in Iraq
with a slightly cheesy city-centre strip-shack,
as dancers wiggled on laps and tables,
missiles were launched from a secret Naval
base, seconds later, dumb target’s struck,
one interrupted a private booth-fuck,
shenanigans costly, rude, uncouth,
the other hit the dancefloor via the roof
and exploded, scattering sequins and G-strings,
middle-aged men who seek releasings,
ripped by lip-gloss shrapnel, no more sleazing
at the go-go girls blown through the ceiling,

peeling off layers of lurex and rubber,
shredded epidermal cover,
no teasing rhythm to this stripping,
as club-beats are cut,
lust lies bleeding,
all gone Pete Tong, gold thongs
hang limp from rubble,
lager and worse dripping
from stag-night posses caught, gaping in fishnets
and rags of High Street smart-casual,
congealing as the dust settles, dead confetti,
flakes of foundation, orange as amaretti
no longer concealing crisped skin,
smoke black as Kate Moss’ caked mascara,
Rimmel’s London Blitz look,
billows from kitsch curtains
and pink satin pillows as they shrivel,
shrink like recreational dental-floss knickers

and the emergency light’s first tentative flicker
illuminates a lone perspex platform stiletto
lying on its side, still clasping something varnished,
chipped but glitter-sparkling,
part of a daughter of Isis,
goddess of slaves and sinners,
mother of Horus,
who could not be protected by doormen
or hands-by-your-sides no-touching rules,
all just damaged collateral,
another day in the death
of the War of Error,
mongered by fools.

Choice is everything, and mine alone

I don't have a 'living will' but my nearest and dearest know what to do if I'm ever unfortunate enough to be rendered incapable. Not a cheery topic at first glance, but still room for a little gallows-humour, and no, I'm not looking for a debate on the ethics of choosing when to check out... others feel differently and that's fine for them.

My dignified choice

I’m a cerebral being, live by cogitation,
won’t become burdensome vegetation,
or killed by creeping senility
eating away at my mental agility,
I’d rather die than lose my wits,
dribbling in the corner, sitting in my own shit,
not remembering who the fuck I am,
brain turned to jelly and strawberry jam,
so take me away and euthanase me,
I don’t care how as long as you slay me,
catapult or trebuchet me
at the House of Commons, load me up and aim me,
roll me in a carpet and underlay me
beneath the patio, when I’ve gone a bit gamey,
put me in the compost and decay me,
one day I’ll be back as potatoes in gravy,
if you think souls are sacred, feel free to blame me,
I’ll risk there’s a God who’ll judge and weigh me,
the laws that say I can’t are cockamamie,
nuttier than a packet of KP –
just don’t get caught when you terminate me.

Trees and guns both shoot

This year is the centenary of the outbreak of the First World war. Much will be written about it. Some of it will be idiotic and self-serving like the comments made by Michael Gove recently. Hopefully such stupidity will be in a tiny minority. Here's my tree-themed take.

Baumkrieg/Peacetime

I

Ash-keys unlock oaken doors,
sycamores rescue drowning acorns
by sending helicopter-seeds
and lifefloats –
catkins yowl to be let in,
dogwood barks to be let out.

Both shed leaves upon the floor.

II

Willows weep for fallen deadwood comrades,
elders send saplings to the Front –
they’re only following orders.
It seems just yesteryear that they were buds and blossoms,
blooming on the may,
flying warning flags from beech-masts –
now thorns are set, fixed as bayonets,
sound the advance,
march across the Nullarbor.

Some come home
missing twigs and branches,
bearing lop-sided crowns and leaf-scars –
at first tended like heirloom bonsai,
but later, still unsightly and now seeming foreign,
they are planted in the corner
of some forgotten arboretum.

Noir four

Following on from here, the fourth (final?) part of this noir story-in-verse, each from a different participant's perspective...

Colour me Noir IV: The Suitcase

The click of my catch
is the revolver’s hammer,
thumb-cocked to snuff some poor dope.

The thud as I’m dropped
is the blackjack’s kiss on a sap’s skull –
hug that sidewalk, John Doe.

The first line of light
as my lid opens is the crack
of a KO’d boxer’s swollen eye.

Whoever I see,
witness, killer or corpse,
they’re all my victims in the end –
I am a mirror not of glass.