Grit for Traction New & selected poetry
You (A Love Song) .................................................... 5 Early Sunsetting ....................................................... 5 Past’s Last Refuge..................................................... 6 Fantasy of Old Roses ................................................ 7 Life (What Goes On) .................................................. 7 The Actor ................................................................ 8 Something ............................................................... 9 Carousel Horses ...................................................... 9 The Alien Man ........................................................ 10 Marlene Dietrich Played the Saw .............................. 11 The Easy Option ..................................................... 13 Romance ............................................................... 13 Red Spot ............................................................... 14 User Unknown ........................................................ 15 Characters ............................................................. 16 Cosmopolitan ......................................................... 17 It ......................................................................... 17 Leith (Lunchtime) ................................................... 18 Tagged.................................................................. 19 Survivalist ............................................................. 20 Installation Art ....................................................... 20 Iron ...................................................................... 20 Murk Horizon ......................................................... 21 Jen’s Story ............................................................ 26 -2-
The Game.............................................................. 27 Burnt Red Balloon Plastic ......................................... 27 11:35, Leith Hogmanay .......................................... 28 From 18 Poems about Ducks ................................. 29 #3........................................................................ 29 #5........................................................................ 29 #+4 ...................................................................... 30 #10 ...................................................................... 30 #11 ...................................................................... 31 #17 ...................................................................... 32 #22 ...................................................................... 33 Cracked ................................................................ 34 Flowers for Django .................................................. 35 On the Victory granted Feminism .............................. 36 Stole Away ............................................................ 37 [Scene from an Economic Revolt] .............................. 39 Installation ............................................................ 40 Paring Off .............................................................. 41 Pull of Vacuum ....................................................... 41 The Passion of the Palm Trees .................................. 41 This is about the Ircam Newsletter, so you are probably concerned.............................................................. 42 lunula ................................................................... 43 From Here Comes The Fun .................................... 44 Streets Immemorial ................................................ 44 -3-
Hamburg Afterlife ................................................... 45 There Are More ...................................................... 46 Burning Offering ..................................................... 49 404 ...................................................................... 51 Requiem for Amber Rayne’s Real Name ...................... 52 Treatment for a Short Film of Counter-Propaganda ...... 54 XFS06E01.............................................................. 56 First Light .............................................................. 56 The Answer............................................................ 57 New World Vultures ................................................ 59
Words and images, this compilation © DB Fishman 2021
with thanks to Myc the Poet Waverly SM Mike IX Williams
-4-
You (A Love Song) You are s&m candy Skewed lens Three chords pushed down on A tarmac pothole You are out of tune Dopamine aftersneeze Involuntary muscle flex The endearingly squint tooth Ferris wheel loose bolt, sherbet lick Seagull in flight way over city Coca-Cola cup crushed up in gutter Plastic ring glinting in a seaside vending machine. 2004
Early Sunsetting There’s a blues lick in the cold breeze An empty street at 3pm Sound of distant traffic as you’re almost home And there’s no-one behind the door; Stop and stare, key in hand as you stand there Watching the sun set early Blood yolk cracking, bleeding across Blazing red inferno horizon; My legs are weak and flimsy, buckle under me Too timid to launch me into flight So I stand and track the flocks of gulls gliding Slowly on into the sun; Each one steadily catching light Burning up, incinerated to nothing And when all the flames have finally gone out I’m still left alone; standing. 2004
-5-
Past’s Last Refuge Oh snap the branches crack Birch twigs and dance shaking Ragged locks down ‘round Broken teeth in jagged rhythm Trying to swim back From amongst the constant chatter and Clattering glasses he takes his place behind The microphone and stands Thick glasses, raincoat, carrier bags, pint of Guinness A lone voice from beneath the wordless Talk without introduction rises And from his throat the ghosts of long-forgotten Dead heritage rise in lilting cadence From sword wounds on cold highland hillsides In smoke drifting from cotton mill chimneys From the darkness down in mining pits Amidst the heat and rust on dockyards Feet begin to tap subconscious Forgotten rhythm once known long ago And they’ll clap it out when prompted And applaud when indicated But they don’t follow the stories Recited in dying language Applaud but take nothing on board and Will we remember anything in the morning? You slip back to the bar after and Guitars pass in and out the crowd Snatches of old songs from across the world Across time, drift across the room Into the dark corners And the past resides at the bottom Of your pint glass, blurring But yet remembered. 2005
-6-
Fantasy of Old Roses The Fantasy Bar’s windows are all boarded Grown dusty and the lights are long off Curvaceous silhouettes painted, tarnish from occasional traffic And the banner above the door hangs blank of the price of export; And Rabbie’s Bar beneath is equally desolate The portrait smiles proudly on the empty docks streets Only the arcade offers any (red, neon) light To the morning drunks stumbling past; And through all this an aged figure in a crumpled brown coat walks Slow, small steps, careful to avoid the cracks In his hand he carries a bouquet of red roses, his mission He doesn’t even glance up at the silhouettes. 2005
Life (What Goes On) You can sleep through the screams if you live through enough days The horror all begins blurring to just white noise Everything continuous eventually fades into acceptance Life goes on We just don’t notice. 2005
-7-
The Actor Edinburgh boy. Oh yes. The most plain and featureless unidentifiable of Scottish accents He looks over the audition script one last time over to the judges So of course he can do the accent right? He starts out fumbling, grasping the unfamiliar syllables searching for the rhythm the burr that creeps out and fills his words around chucking out time feels awkward, like an ill-fitting brace plate in his dry and sober mouth. He thinks of films, novelists reading He thinks back to his school days voices that would taunt him from across the street raucous talking overheard in pubs of Friday nights This is the sound of home but only as it spoke at him. These words were never his and as he falls back into their rhythm he feels the same back acting any praise is for whoever generated the phrases But any mistakes are, as always, his. 2005
-8-
Something All those times I watched you Smiled And you rolled your eyes And said “What?” I’d laugh and say “nothing” but it was something good. 2005
Carousel Horses Carousel horses with wide-eyed abandon in wild flamboyant lustre end up going Nowhere But slowly succumb to rust and the longer you watch the more those eyes have a look of terror. 2005
-9-
The Alien Man VvG 1853-1890
He was the Alien Man For just over a Decade Darkly browed, Flame haired Intense stare Drawn No-one wanted Taught or God So he walked To and Through the Landscape That Blazed with blinding Radiance Shifting incorrect colours, where The Sky curdled and Swirls The long grass rose Straight up like Fire And Sharp branches attacked soft calm expanses No Cohesion; Contrast Conflict The air vibrates with a Million Hot sparkling particles A World where Nothing ever stood Still Everything so Bright, so Dark It burned your eyes All you wanted was rest In the Light of the Sun A world that you could not sustain And neither could this world. 2006
- 10 -
Marlene Dietrich Played the Saw Marlene Dietrich Played the saw For the troops At the USO Marlene Dietrich German femme fatale star of the silver screen Naturalized glamorous American since 1939 Left Hollywood for Mere miles from German lines And with hands that studied violin Played the saw Marlene Dietrich, who The Nazi Party could not bring back With money nor the Führer’s love Crossed the Atlantic With a 3 month supply of cosmetics, Labelled in huge nail polish letters to be Read by torchlight, 2 glittering gowns and In a black leather case Her singing saw To play for the troops Marlene Dietrich Maria Magdalene Dietrich Said “it was the decent thing to do”; Followed her recorded voice, with special soap, Back to where she helped birth the talkies And with frozen hands in the Ardennes Played her saw for the troops In the USO revue
- 11 -
Marlene Dietrich played On an arc of bending bladed metal, bowed A mercurial formless freely moving sound A mournful, pitched howl of something Without a mouth; an eerily haunting Unembodied unearthly mutation of Hawaii A lonesome limbo call predicting A searchlight swinging over a future 1950s Nevada B-movie highway A tremulous oscillation, a clean vibration, free sound That almost bypasses your ears For something deeper 2006
- 12 -
The Easy Option Lazy jobstealing bastard Left his family Travelled twelve hundred miles Learning a second language To fill menial labour, minimum Wage positions Among strangers Lazy jobstealing bastard. 2007
Romance The ashes of last night’s romance Lie warming in the morning sun By a bench in Bon Accord Terrace Gardens; Stood to the left, bulky, erect The sunshine reflects on The smooth, solid surface of A can of Tennant’s Super While on the right, drained, emptied & Label only slightly frayed Reclining by his side, horizontal -ly still sparkling A bottle of Lambrini Lends colour to the Surrounding ground 2007
- 13 -
Red Spot A rose Petal in the bank Of dead and fallen Leaves; A muscle wall Raw, red And open 2007
- 14 -
User Unknown User unknown Unknown user Unrecognised Recipient unknown. Unavailable Address unrouteable Relaying not permitted You do not have access. Unable to relay Name not recognised No such user Relaying denied. Address rejected Mailbox full Mailbox not found Address invalid. Could not be reached. 550. Disabled due to inactivity User not found User account is expired I am on leave until I am on leave until I am away on leave until Permanent error. 2007
- 15 -
Characters His scars run over His cheeks like whiskers He can talk loud ‘Coz his mate’s here Doughboy with smoked-out throat Swearing, barking like a dog, in forced air Forcing people off chairs, laughing Passengers solemnly staring at The floor, over their shoulders “I live here, you don’t! Ha ha” He shouts to the tourists And as wee man tries to cram His bottle in the ticket bin Doughboy goes for the scam, claiming He never got the daysaver he paid for The driver knocking him back and Becoming his life’s obstruction Spitting, turning and returning, he threatens His brother-in-law will leave the driver fucked Punching at plastic doors as the bus pulls off And the two of them, beneath All the panel-boarded windows Walk into their streets, condemned For urban renewal 2007
- 16 -
Cosmopolitan Are you married yet? Pregnant? Do you think you’re hot? Here, smell this Chemical fragrance - it’s nice. ‘My Sexual Dysfunction’; ‘Wolf whistles: Do they make you Angry or make your day?’; ‘How to make a Relationship last’; ‘How long He should last’; ‘The Vibrator Revolution: There’s no male equivalent’ Are you married yet? Pregnant? Do you think you’re hot? Here, smell this Chemical fragrance - it’s nice. 2007
It Life is short Life is hard Life is good 2007
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Leith (Lunchtime) He must be at least pushing 50 Bleach-blonde zombie-walking down the Street with a flower in his mouth At lunchtime as all the drunks Who’ve been at it since half 9 Stand out on fag breaks, the burst vessels Of their faces giving the impression that They’ve simultaneously been Liquefied and hardened While the truly dedicated lies Slumped in front of Woolies Blindly begging change from Hard, elderly-faced women propped Up on crutch structures, staggering in Between the roadwork fences and Even The Duke’s Head with its Hardman exterior is blasting out ‘I Will Survive’ from its open door And I saw God in a Greggs fudge doughnut Stood by the Links on this Not windy Not rainy Grey spring/summer lukewarm day I heard the choir singing By the hard, flatulent claypit sounds of The bike beneath the biker In battered leathers Grey-thatch beard and Military helmet from some long-past war Who just road into town And I work down between the redbrick And weeds, past a bootleg copy of Apocalypto, fallen from a bin - And Lou tells me ‘he’s so free’
- 18 -
And I wonder, if it being qualified means He doesn’t believe in it as An absolute Down to the pinstripe suits, passed passing people Who only look up from their mobile once To out on the bridge, where I taste The open water’s salt on that Fresh air breeze of summer And in that deep breath I am lifted Up into The vague horizon All out to sea. 09/05/2008
Tagged Cocks for democracy! Cocks for equality! Paste up your likeness on A phonebox in Niddrie And in Tipp-Ex Marker or scratches Your genitals will appear Showing it’s known that In the heart of your LA Apartment, at the front of A multimillion dollar campaign Underneath everything, you are still A human being like everyone else And if you were ever to come Around here They could prove it. 2008
- 19 -
Survivalist Hold the busy main street up to your ear and in the warm transient static of traffic, chatter & exhaust You can hear the ocean. 2009
Installation Art Above graffiti strung walls On the concrete ceiling Of rusting underpass By the roundabout and definite ‘Lower income’ neighbourhood Thin but unwavering Purple letters spell ‘THE SKY’S THE LIMIT’ Social commentary. 2009
Iron Raised into the wind In the gable of a tenement On the top floor, in the window - the one sunken, yielding point in the brickwork – Above the chip shop Facing out across landscape An iron’s flat, angular Surface reflects a pure Hard light 2009
- 20 -
Murk Horizon (Stir., 08-09)
milk-air & fog panes Impressionist evenings Grey-green Buckfast bottles + rain Like walking microscope science slides of snowglobed contamination …Diffraction Water on the lens. hill ranges like tears across old photographs sheet glass & flimsy metal brittle-flat, thin-faded architecture Narrow windows fastened in w/ pipes & bars & railings CCTV cameras, floodlights stand in the empty sky like Remnant kings of a compound left to rot Paint puckers and splits The river’s burst its banks clouds filters hues shades - 21 -
fumes rusted rivets + chipped concrete snowed peaks over wide, empty roads even sky like theatre hung backdrop Insect leg silhouettes on the horizon; Red light perpendicular firm before An empty field of sheep Thick knotting sworls of Swollen river semisubmerge shopping trolley graveyard Slow, low-flying manatee clouds; Trains pass through, untouching passing piston billboards Horizons’ jagged ignored oscilloscope readouts Fractured geometry / the abbreviated Parallels of fields Thick smears of whitewash light. Bare trees like brain structure like Stripped wires raised to sky The lowslung belch spit of bus engines; boy racers circle the centre like frustrated flies Strata of red gravel scrap grass - 22 -
murk horizon The underpass tells me who died who’s a slag The Lion Rampant flails slamming against its tether-post. Intercrossing mud tread tracks Purpled iridescent petrol impact splashes over the ground Lampless lantern hooks stand like Lazy spines/collapsed dorsal fins Along the city; moss + weeds On the rise in the flood Walls strewn waterstreaked Striped with damage Smoke pillars from the mineral wool Insulation works (‘Thermal & Acoustic’) Rise & hang vertical Solid & constant Lit alight at sunset Forest under construction Dead leaves + Burning skies Red brick mosaic static; Locked empty space of multi storey car park
- 23 -
Craigs underpass Walls’ superimpatterned Flaking overlap Walls down into the tunnel Vast abstract Guernica mural Grey Orange Black Stone slabs & cracked fissures Soot-soaked cenotaph stairwells; Cubic wall Solid concrete ziggurats; Birds stood atop. Here birthdays fall in Supermarket carparks. Strips of concrete light squares hung To various heights to the sky Shouts in the night, hoarse bellows Screamed down empty streets A night out Maybe A fight The fog erases everything Democracy of the water table. Rock bottom sink of Can go no further. All together equal. I spit off the Wallace bridge - 24 -
(Its molar tooth topstones; Its ‘pedestrian refuge’) Here, near the root, Forth, back to you In our buried world 2009
- 25 -
Jen’s Story ‘D’you wanna buy a rabbit?’ They held it in one of those Big, plastic jars like you Got in old sweetshops. We were only 13; they only about 10 Why’ve you got it in that? ‘Look’ – they shook it side to side HOW MUCH?! we screamed. ‘A tenner.’ We don’t have £10. ‘Oh well, we’re going to take it home & pour salt in its eyes’ We’ve got 5..? The look on my mother’s face. Children are cruel Children are kind 2010
- 26 -
The Game Boys In a wood You put your back to the bark Exhale and then the Paralleled forearms Compress your chest And you’re holding Holding Until existence winks A blip of nothingness And you’re caught Swooning out of an absence Snatching your breath back from the air And then the next one tries. 2010
Burnt Red Balloon Plastic In the waning rays of sunlight The beat skitters & booms Out over slowly winding waters Looking up at a crow. The racket of passing train carriages Boxes out the space, Highlights the engine-machinations Of blackened underwings 2011
- 27 -
11:35, Leith Hogmanay Look, I’m sorry If I offended ye But, c’mon –
It’s a shit boozer Yer boozer’s shit Anyway That’s all I’m sayin’ 2011
- 28 -
From 18 Poems about Ducks: #3 The ducks are in formation Coathanger heads tearing through the surface As storm-grey ferments in rising winds & land clings to the waterline. 2010
#5 Their straining pull Drops into a fall & They sunder surface to Two trailing ribbons of wake With the satisfying, full Sound of a child’s shoe Plunging into gravel Bulbous as a brandy glass Like swollen balloons of buoyance They jacknife, buckle-fold In on themselves, imploding Geometrically, angles carved of Burnished green stone Paperweights, with one beady eye. 2010
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#+4 Bending matter with their movement Heading up stretches of ripples They are force & effect, infinite Undulation running on Into eternities Ducking in and pulling Fluency over their head like Some dispersing bedsheet And sleeping, pulled in Like knotted scarves They stand solid, like horizontal commas. 2011
#10 A slick, smoothed shape A droplet, a tear Cut into space amidst the Overlapping planes of fracture Trailing a train of Circular dissipations Dark head ploughed, skewered Into the flow, hunting Thrashing it all up and Shredding to froth that Instantaneously returns To unity. 2010
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#11 Heads in line like Novelty cane handles Garnet eyes twinkling In burnished jade Texture feathered, intangibly Fine, softly staticy & Transient to the touch Before footfalls launch them From the water’s edge One by one In order. 2011
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#17 Crumbs hit the surface of the murk Like circuit connectors Boatlike bodies snapping to motion Like started dodgems Wakes fanning out like Slender solar wings Spun gold behind Wind chime jaws Snatching vicegrips pince, shaking, Shredding in water and the wall-to-wall Clamour of hungry calls; a Double Ouroboros arising Beaks clattering at tails Wings rigid, battering at Full span, a circular Whirlpool tearing surface up skywards Like a death struggle in Jaws A churning engine of envy & competition, starts & stops and Through all, the body Of the river remains wholly unchanged. 2011
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#22 Her neck gripped In a snap, from behind Forcing head down, underWater, and again, his Weight above, pinning, in Mid-morning broad daylight A whole swathe of Biological deviations entailed Here at the end Of frantic flutter & grip Is your answer to the right Of what’s natural. 2011
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Cracked A gnarled branch wends Its silhouette against nightfall: An irreparable fissure Through the firmament And beneath, the thin, pale Blue-green vein of a lightning Conductor winds down from the Church spire just in case 2012
- 34 -
Flowers for Django The eighteen-year-old Manouche Traversing night after a performance Returns to his new wife, to his caravan Filled with the thick waxen curves Of flowers made of celluloid, for selling, But bending down at the sound Of some phantom mouse, the candle Drops, lighting the touchpaper Engulfed in the roar of flame They somehow collapse into air But the right leg, the left arm burned The gypsy’s half the man he was With only two-fingered mobility Tendons on the left hand, shrunk In the heat, pinning The other two to the palm Recuperating, he creates A new technique, for two-fingered soloing Following American jazz, improvising Never the same solo twice; This calm, dapper Belgian With immaculate moustache, Those fingers seizing, gripping The strings like angered birds, Spritely letting fly those Jumping runs of notes At belief-defying speed Swift and graceful To mastery of his craft 2012
- 35 -
On the Victory granted Feminism Picture the scenario: You have been put in prison, Just on the cusp of adulthood. There were warnings, yes, But never any real reason Or justification given For all those years hemmed in By instruction, firmly Confined by restrictions, until Voices called for change and Eventually came the rioting And at the same time as The authorities appeared to Heed the demands, You had a child… Now watching her run Up and down the Redecorated corridors Allowed to dress how she likes (within reason) To eat what she likes (within reason) To be who she likes (within reason) You wonder, in noticing That she doesn’t, What this building is now. 2012
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Stole Away R.R. 6.12.1956 – 19.3.1982
Ozzy Osbourne’s solo albums Aren’t renowned for consistency: The obligatory ballads, ham-fisted politics, the sentimentality But Ozzy Live [the second disc on the back of Diary’s 30th anniversary edition] is just four guys Playing as a band - no Lennonesque vocal reverbs, Overdubs or expensive ‘80s Studio work – possibly On a temporary stage, Middle of nowhere, Gathering the crowd, perhaps As evening starts to turn, And it might just be His best [and given even this includes a turgid 6 minute run through ‘Revelation (Mother Earth)’ and a 4 minute drum solo, that’s saying something]. The desperate American-accented stage Patter is there, but so are The Ozzy melodies, and Randy Rhoads, playing through The best of those first two Oz solo albums he’s Bridging the gap between In a spasming, squalling wall of Electric noise Is almost Hendrix, at his most Raw-sound-controlling
- 37 -
Ripping the soul out of your chest And throwing it To the sky 2012
- 38 -
[Scene from an Economic Revolt] A spa resort in the mountains Far from upheaval, the unrest Just hinted at by the distant Droning pass of heavy aircraft Rich and stylized successes Shimmering under the soft Lighting and camera flashes Wade, chest deep, through the steam Rising off the heated Outdoor pool, when Someone drifting by On the surface collides with An aging gentleman (swept white hair - tan - gold medallion) and as he turns To push the figure away He feels the overcooked Loose, boiled texture Of the corpse. And From above we see, Through the steam Being blown clear, Skeletal bodies floating In the water, coloured blood red; its living Inhabitants and the extras Retreating back to land As rain starts falling, The offstage unrest now Closer than they thought. 2012
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Installation I mean it’s crap, Obviously. The Bovine, stumbling Figure in ill-fitting Dinnerwear clambering Over the lawns of A country house Out of breath Blown up To a panting Superhuman The details, his Face erased by Advancing through The years, the Bright screen Fills the white Room with motion Slowed to tidal grey Looped & hazed In static but Stood staring, Face lit in the Rolling projection, He saw the figure, His father, brought back In his work: Infinite Purgatory. 2012
- 40 -
Paring Off I’m reminded of the recent Scientific revision that Alcohol does not in fact kill Brain cells but rather stops them From interconnecting, leaving Them adrift, isolated – A far more chilling proposition – Like every speck of an image Dispersed but still present Inaccessible & suffocating like Alzheimer’s memories. 2012
Pull of Vacuum The way the fibres of clean, white linen Call out to drink in fresh red blood 2012
The Passion of the Palm Trees We walk in corridors of privilege As the red sun burns the blue sky Dipped in imposed luxury The ledger is not clean. 2013
- 41 -
This is about the Ircam Newsletter, so you are probably concerned. I wonder what’s happening in IRCAM right now Pierre Boulez’s avant garde institute I wonder what tinkering in those underground rooms What innovation, what developments, what thoughts This modernist hive for concepts and for software Creation – Transmission – Research Opened its interdisciplinary doors the year punk broke Electroacoustic technology of art Notes scattered into binary of algorithms Cello notes extended to infinity Voices, disembodied, calling out from outside nature Sonorous, lonely tones haunting the hallways Sounds caught from the air, decontextualized, reordered Management of the movement of sound in space Buskers on the hot paving stones outside Perhaps an ambient hum of drives processing Discord! Cacophony! Audio processed to be Uncanny from unrecognisable origins Waves of synthesised, designed sounds Painting so far beyond past canvas I wonder what’s going on in IRCAM right now Under the cloak of Parisian night 2013
- 42 -
lunula Staring into a thumbnail, it looms like a sun rising through smog lunula The burgeoning dawn cloud expansion of a nuclear blast captured and contained behind a snowglobe’s glass 2014
- 43 -
From Here Comes The Fun
Streets Immemorial This is the natural flora of the city Bursting forth, wrapped in cellophane Reaching – glistening – for the sky Tied tight by plastic tags to the Railings and signposts that harvest them These spontaneous shrines, their Profusion in proportion to the Grief they give tangible form to Bike frames painted ghost-white Ribbons and laminated Photographs of young faces Laid bouquets fade ragged as heartfelt Handwriting runs in the rain Only the tied plastic can withstand A colour explosion slowly Choking on the fumes of the passing Blank traffic and ambulances Washing away but for the rags Clearing their space, ready For being replaced 2015
- 44 -
Hamburg Afterlife P.S.H. 07.1967 – 02.2014
The moan of lowslung cellos The great actor is dead Stood out in the interlocking Balconies of Brutalism Sat in hazy bars, waiting in Car parks, breathing smoke In Hamburg streets & hallways with The soft, slick luxury of high-end German cars Bristled jowls, straining Tie and wheezing weight Hair a sweep of harbour squall Before a stacked, impenetrable Wall of shipping containers Here everyone’s a watcher The local force in riot gear The perpetual rolling of road on tires And a cellphone clutched tiny In his bearlike paws 2015
- 45 -
There Are More i. Gutshot A gathering of Shins and ulnas Raising off our Knuckles as Clusters of Limbs open forth, Over the ages, Revealing the Soft, unshielded Underbelly beneath A hard, costal shell With heart and brain safely armour-encased man learns it can take several long, slow hours to die from a gutshot
- 46 -
ii. Millions now living Will never die Between 1968 and 2011 the number of souls aboard this planet doubled After 200,000 years We now stand An all-encompassing 7 billion The curve of the extinction rate dives Up a cliff to meet our ascendancy Any creature with a heart’s Natural expectancy can Be measured by The simple figure of 1 billion heartbeats Except for man, who Through experiment and Pre-emptive defence has Prolonged to more than Twice that allocation The apex predator, Unevolving, only Competing with itself A vast wave, beyond All context and resources, this Exponential proliferation
- 47 -
Swarms of jellyfish Spawning across to Glut a body of dead water A shadow on the globe Creeping ever forward, with Only ocean floors left untouched Every next generation, a Solution deferred, justified in The virtue of just carrying on Soul allocations rationed, divided, subdivided and so on As individuals, unable To extract or Recognise ourselves From the big picture, in The quintessential role Of the villain A consumption of all There are more And there is less The sixth extinction Is us, Holocene Till the headstone bells Of safety coffins ring out To initiate Celestial queues 2015
- 48 -
Burning Offering I. The hammer & sickle still hangs over Chernobyl Weathered atop its long-abandoned buildings And fallout eventually came to rest in The grass of Scottish coasts Fallout shelters rust in basements Thousands of lessons wasted Teaching children how to duck and Suffer the blast Concrete, steel, water, metre-thick glass All that stands between us and them Monitoring containing managing these Writhing, restless serpents Their benevolence satiates our dependence Our progress resting on their generosity Unmarked warheads traverse nights’ Silent motorways Reactors carry payloads, cycling through Oceans’ depths And discarded and forgotten, containers Left in water rot, dwarfing time Pipes crack and algae chokes stagnant water Tsunami crack and crumble concrete Nature abhors an isolation And the storage ponds are boiling now
- 49 -
II. The Geiger crackle signifies the kraken is awakening These caged suns, straining at their bars Enough to evaporate a life in seconds Enough to burn the world Pervasive, permeating and invisible Untouchable by human hands Consequences of such tenacious permanence They could out-half-live what we know as living Clinging to sucking in seawater for stability Having outgrown gods, we made our own Unstoppable, they can only be contained We are no longer working in a human scale III. And The error is us; each opportunity to learn Could also be the end of us, we must Be better: cutting rather Than corners or economics Our own complacency, but The world is still hungry For energy to burn So white-out your windows In reverence 2015
- 50 -
404 It’s possible for muscles to Spasm so hard, they can Snap our own bones. Connected current runs Blinding bleach-bright As a Xerox scan. Joe Strummer always told you ‘No Input, No Output’; All of my scenes were Deleted In the final cut. We are each VCR tapes Auto-rewinding, playing back A palimpsest of fading data. Shadowboxing on Night street corners As the storm’s coming on. Bent vertebrae strewn with Electrical cabling Checking for a pulse. 2015
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Requiem for Amber Rayne’s Real Name “You want to see me naked. And then you want to judge me for letting you see me naked.” Belle Knox
Amber Amber Amber Amber Amber Amber Amber Actress Circus freak
Contortionist Star
Sister Daughter Equestrian Aunt Unfiltered Somebody
Unenhanced A body
Amber, whose biggest Hollywood credit Was the nameless cheerleader Girlfriend at the start of Fast & Furious 3: Tokyo Drift. Amber who discussed the Fragility of her hair, due to Recent cancer treatment at The start of a BDSM scene. Amber, who died worth 1.5 million dollars, and They didn’t even put her Own name in the headline Unfeasible feats of physical Performance and endurance As we praise record-breaking Superhuman Olympians.
- 52 -
On the frontline of sexuality Sent by a nation’s need With no regard for how that Work works on a mind. Like modern day saints down On their knees to take the Saint Sebastian arrows of all Our directionless desire. Amber, a woman who gave So much of herself to A world that could never Acknowledge. 2016
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Treatment for a Short Film of Counter-Propaganda OPENING SHOT: [Driveway, night] A Doctor Stands facing the Camera, steadily Burning Beneath a stained glass backdrop and Bright neon striplights A man in ornate robes Lifts a scimitar high and Severs the throat of The labouring mother, as A child is lifted from The discarded carcass. Waves of blood wash Clean from the floor Ready for the next Expectant vessel. Children carried by the ankle Piled high on one another Are left crawling, unobserved In the dirt; their small hands Grasping, stretching for The sky as, from a podium, An aged, overweight official In a uniform wearily Tears off and tosses down A crust
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Once adolescent and of use They line themselves up in Dutiful submission as Industrialised sacrifices To clear space and fertilise Far-flung foreign fields Manacled chains of women Unkept and unkempt, wedged Between the fences of Cramped work camps shuffle Shoulder-to-shoulder Beneath banners reading ‘FREEDOM’ Punched in and punched out. Bodies crush rock, faces Sweat-streaked with soot as Lungs strain, hacking in The chimneys’ light-dimming Effluent, until the day the Scrapheap irresistibly Beckons This is what you are for Is the lesson being taught and Every 15 seconds or so In an inserted frame, fractionally Too long to be intended As subliminal, a caption shows: ‘THE UNBORN CHILD IS SACRED’ 2017
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XFS06E01 Blood soaks through gauze around the boy’s head Ridges of stitches like carved meat White vans full of clip-on IDs and Sweat soaking through short work sleeves All your thoughts are read; ‘The response must be equal to the threat.’ The dragging claw marks of a 12hr gestation Who would notice a fever in the desert? Now there’s blood on the bulkhead Smoking in the dimmed OR Lights of a nuclear power control room And radio echoing down the halls It will make your physical form transparent And shed it as easy as polythene In Reactor 4 there’s something hungry hiding Down between the heat of the pipes, waiting. 2017
First Light Beyond and above The ragged barbed wire Pale morning bleeds a thin ribbon Over resting guns In the churned-up, scoured terra Craters, filled with grey sky, shine And shimmer in patient trepidation; Holes blown in the world as we know it Here, where clothes are sodden Flesh rots on the bone And the spark has to fight Its hardest, against the deluge 2017
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The Answer Noel Scott Engel 1943−2019 MER-B 2003−2019
After the sun sets, the darkness Of the universe descends, upon The sleeping city streets of This planet it surrounds Stars fire like synapses as Dreams – like neurons – move for The non-limits of infinity, or, If they are, what lies beyond? I have come to tell you something bad. Beyond this prickly ball of incessant -ly chattering radio waves; past A raft of our discarded satellite trash, held In barely decaying dead orbit At the border of our local solar system, old signals Continue carrying unanswered broadcasts on into the void And degrade over the endless background radiation hiss that is The sound of all beginning It’s the one-way trip of probes, plutonium fuel sources dwindling Having entered interstellar space the cold the silent the empty Free of even the touch of the sun And beneath huge, lumbering forms, lurking Maybe moving just out of sight A Golden Record plays, reciting greetings In 55 terrestrial languages
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After years, Opportunity lies dying Buried by some historic dust storm Unreachable, irretrievable; its circuits blinking out Like stars in dawn light The call is placed The line is ringing But no response No shelter No answer 2019
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New World Vultures 'Blood was everywhere. It was a vile, vicious, traumatic event. And it was Memorial Day'* An obsidian blight against the sunshine They descend en masse, like the locust An occupation, tearing apart your accoutrements The vultures have come home to roost Stench like a thousand rotting corpses They smell like the dead flesh they seek Rapping at your windowpanes, at your doors Their cross-border migration ends here Some proffer offerings to the scavenging beaks Biting flesh, bite each other, bite through bone Talons pick at your every weakness, hissing This unkillable wildlife smells carrion Vomit, shit and carcasses Your lives are awash with blood Natural law will eat your garbage They can tell what is already dead 2019
*‘Vomiting Vultures Invade Florida Vacation Home’, Huffington Post, 16 August 2019.
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