Just love

In the seat of power, at home you have little,
For Obama, it's Congress which plays the fiddle.
For Cameron, it's backbenchers laughing at his drivel,
The Eurosceptic morons who'll leave us in a piddle.

Yet on the international scene, these powerless chumps glean
Some megalomaniacal willingness
To interject in atrocities, and violent scenes,
But only for the giddy use of the blunderbus.

Far and wide, high and deep, in half the world, the world's asleep.
And dozing, dozing, counting sheep,
While Putin's Pussy Riot gets deep,
And jail awaits for those who seek
   just love with whoever they choose to keep.

Treading water

I tread the slowly evaporating water,
Which concomitantly drains down the plughole.
Where the plughole leads, no-one is sure,
While clouds from the rising steam unfold
Into the vaguely blue, yet dullset skies,
As thoughts drift, and dissipate, like contrails.

Science can be trusted more than economics

The Economist,
Head in the mist,
Bereft of wits,
Get the gist?

A daft debate,
I read of late,
I can't relate,
To this pisstake.

Should we believe
In science?
We know you don't bereave
The climate.

Science is knowledge,
Based on proof.
Science isn't shoddy,
While your field is a spoof.

An economist
Knows nothing of economics,
You're a comic
If you think you're on it.

The global recession,
Predicted by no-one,
While scientists, already,
Have predicted an outcome.

Global warming,
Is not an empty warning,
It's truly appalling
That science gets this scalding.

The world gets hotter,
The economy looks a rotter.
Get your own facts straight
Before you pursue this laughable tirade.

Save our Veggie Cafe - University of Manchester

They're trying to shut our Veggie Cafe,
Some awful news to cause dismay,
For where on campus, may I ask,
Is there to get good food today?

The butties in Sainsbury's are not cheap
And there's bugger all for a vegan to eat.
There's a Morrison's next door, that's poor,
While Food on Campus is hardly a treat.

If you're craving meat, then take a seat,
But if you're healthy you'll face defeat.
There's a dearth of delicious, nutritious fare,
Beware, Manchester, beware.

The Veggie Cafe is often teeming,
Hundreds of students aren't misleading.
The soup is incredible, and readily edible,
Unlike the junk in the Tin Can-teen.

It's obscene and abhorrent this may happen,
What exactly warrants this order to skedaddle?
Whoever demands this, get back on your saddle,
It's preposterous to lead this moronic shambles.

Just go there at 1pm, take a pen,
You can measure the head-count of cock and hen.
I'll say it again, veggie fare is rare,
There's a reason they're there, not any other where.

It's an absolute travesty we could lose this place,
And the tasty sandwiches with olive paste.
It's pretty thrifty, for two pounds fifty,
If you can't see this you're a nutty headcase.

I wrote these words in quite some haste,
While this outrage seems to pick up pace.
But if this wondrous cafe were to waste,
It'd leave us many with a horrid, bitter taste.
(Like the crap which is doled in University Place...
Backtrack, kindly, and you might save face.)

The shale gas contradiction

For shale gas, they are burning off methane.
This contradiction is clearly insane.
They're using acrylamide,
And toxic glutaraldehyde,
And further polluting
    with carbon dioxide.

Fracking, alas

Fracking for shale gas

Leaves me aghast, as we drill

Through coal seams, alas

English - the beautiful language

English is the beautiful language,
Broader than any other.
More words to rhyme,
To strike a chime,
Within your heart and mine.

Enlightened England

It's a privilege
to live in Manchester,
where our library
is more impressive
than our cathedral.

Where stained glass windows,
instead of being devoted
to St. Winifred,
are adorned with Plato,
and Socrates, instead.

NB.  Thank you to Chris Addinsell for the stimulatory chat!

Pigeons (lament of the apathetic)

Like pigeons,
everywhere
they gather.
Carefree,
unaware.
Then scatter,
afraid,
but only
in the moment,
to return,
unfased,
to the scene
of their torment.

Lament of the climate change deniers

Who are these cretinous idiots?
These despicable morons.
These neuron-free vessels
With lungs between the ears.

More than a mere nuisance,
These playdough-minded fools,
Refuse, point blank,
To absorb the facts,
But stare, vacantly,
Disregarding the future,
No repent for the fury
We bestow upon our present.

A malevolent band
Of cold-hearted flagrants,
Chilling within themselves
A warming so apparent.

Soon to lament
This sorry, blind reticence
To that which is more
Than merely a fable,
But unyieldingly plunders,
While they stew, unable
To accept what will come.

What will be.

What is fated.

If we lie down,
Discreetly,
To injurious apathy.

Raftery

Raftery wrote poems that concerned the people.

It would cause him quite some gall,
today,
that folk are not concerned at all.

Another IPCC climate change report

Another year, another report,
While the efforts on climate change leave us distraught.

We've been certain that humans are causing this tragedy
For long enough now we should have some clarity.

Clarity of vision, to change this position,
Fewer chimneys and fossil fuels, for greater contrition.

The abolition of greenhouse emissions,
Should be at the forefront of poltical decisions.

How un-fare

To add to the plethora of injustices
The Tories will get free trams, and buses.
Labour, too, were offered this deal,
Last year for a conference, in Manchester central.

The last among us who need this gratitude,
Are those who grant us pitiful servitude.
Cameron and co., never humble nor know,
The plight of the working man, in Manchester central.

Nurses, students, pupils and teachers,
Must muster a fare, not much change to reach for.
While the aristocratic swines on the carriage,
Sit idly by with no care for the masses.

Philosophy of the rational mind

1. Faith in God requires a distinct lack of willingness to think.

A science textbook is out of date the moment it is printed.

The bible was written more than mere moments after Jesus walked the earth,
and mostly through a series of "Chinese whispers" with which we all became familiar at primary school.

2.  Money is a make-believe concept.

The only things that should drive you are your heart and your morals,
which are two things rarely subtended by wealth.

3.  Care for all animals and all plants.  All microbes, archaea to algae.

We have shared this earth for 4.5 billion years,
We are not special.
We are no better than the sum of Gaia's parts -
A living biosphere.

4.  Don't make enemies - harbour rivalry.

Hatred can only cloud rationality.

5.  There is no finer exploration of knowledge than through the endeavour of reading with skepticism.

A brain exercised
Is eventually wise
To the fine things in life
And to see through the lies.

6.  Learn to cook.

Food, water, and love,
Are the three common denominators
For all of us.

Learn to cook,
With love,
And suddenly you may reveal a half-full cup.

7.  Do good things, for good people, and good things will follow.

Don't waste time trying to impress
Those who are fickle, and shallow.
Life is short, and sweet,
So long as the friendships you seek
Are true, and never hollow.

8.  Smile, though your heart is aching.

No wiser words have ever been stated,
The lyrics of Nat King Cole should never be understated.

9.  Always be pleasant, even with those who to you seem aberrant.

How are we to know what has happened during anyone's existance?
Be it years in the past,
or here in the present.

10.  Make millions of memories, with those you cherish.

Death, more often than not, makes a mockery of the miser.

When asked,
With each and every final gasp,
The dying cite time with loved ones, friends, and family,
As those things which really matter at the last.

Islam in Britain

Some harrowing news today,
28% of English say nay;
That Muslims should stay among us
For fear they'll be sheared by bomb blast.

It's ridiculous, and causes me dismay
That a quarter of our populus thinks this way.
What happened to education?
It's our brains that require some salvation.

There are arseholes, cunts, and wankers everywhere,
Not constricted to those who wear
A headscarf, turban, or native dress;
Don't listen to the tripe in the racist press.

Make up your own mind, don't fill it with air,
Read the Independent, not the Mail and Farage.
Most Muslims are good, have some common sense,

I'd rather deport the 28%.

Thought for Food, Berlin 2013 - a poetic tribute

Thought for Food convenes in Berlin,
Hundreds of changemakers network within
The old coinery, at zwei Molkenmarkt
To seed ideas from neuron to farm.

A cartload of cardboard from the talented Oupas!
Bedecks the interior of the teeming Alte Muntze.
Teeming! With thought, and those who care,
To drive solutions, make the world aware;

There's a crisis faced by one and all of us,
Billions of people are starving asunder...
As climate change rips through like thunder,
The net effect is ever more hunger.

But hungry we are to fix this abhorrence,
From India to Holland ideas flow in torrents.
We're all well aware of food in abundance
But cry in despair that we're drowning in waste.

A change to this stasis is now taking place,
A global community who'll bust a gut to make
A food secure future, nutritious, full plates,
That'll leave, for all of us, a joyous, sweet taste.

Independence Day

A year to go,
to go, to go,
To Referendum,
say no, say no.

Scotland is only as great
As the first in the title of this Great state.

The Syrian Dead

One hundred thousand Syrian dead,
A rifle, bomb blast, shrapnel to head.
 There are no good guys,
Lunatics on either side.

Assad looks to Russia,
The Rebels to the USA.
 Aha! Chemical warfare,
There must be foul play.

Let's go to war, blindly
Fire missiles into this desperate pit.
 The USA decides,
Whether chemical warfare is legit.

Apparently, napalm over Vietnam,
And nuclear fury over Japan,
 Does not fill the criteria,
No mass hysteria.

One rule for one,
Another for the others.
 The USA should have no say,
After years of rampant slaughter.

No matter gunshot, missile or nerve gas,
The crisis in Syria will long be nervous.
 The western powers may well inferfere,
But history suggests we'll just deepen the mere.

Bale out

The world is split in two.

There are some who
Give generously without
And others, who
Take and give nowt.

To Spain, moved Bale
For a Real fee,
While the Spanish purse
Still owes plenty.

Imagine what that money could do...

The Western Goldfish

Like a goldfish, the West
Glistens with beauty
But travels in circles,
Trapped in a glassy net.

Hindsight is something
beyond a goldfish,
Who's memory lasts
not much longer than the last.

This earth we inhabit

Earth we inhabit,
And in resources we're rich,
Yet they are finite.
Let's look after what we've got,
and let us please pollute not.

A day in the lab

Buzzing, whirring, clicking, stirring,
Bottles chinking, bunsens burning.
A laminar breeze flows soft over face,
Hands float in a sweaty sea of latex.

The putrid stench of Agrobacterium
Does for the nostrils that of spice to rectum.
A callous row of mutants in line,
Nutrient jelly under cabinet lights.

A constant tremor from vibrating rubber,
Liquids mixing like whirlpools in tubes.
A mortar and pestle chinks and grinds,
Powdering leaves in clouds of steaming nitrogen.

SDS, Virkon and dry ice sit whistling,
Bubbles burst into a cacophony of twittering.
Whitney Houston blares on the stereo,
White coats splay to How Will I Know.

An appropriate phrase for research in science,
Unsure and sure are concepts intertwined.
The sounds, sights and smells make a hazy environment,
Each day a race against the onrush of time.

Thought for Food

Thought for food, that's right... really think about it.

For years, people have been telling me
"You're so lucky you are skinny,
you must have such a high metabolic rate."

No - I just put less on my plate,
there's a reason you are overweight.
You're eating too much red meat, fat and sugar.
How about you run a little, and shovel
less into your mouth?
Lo and behold, you've lost a few pounds.

And hey, the world might lose a few cows,
which truly, weight for weight, consume more
and take up more room than even the humans
this world can hardly house.

We have no excuse not to change this lousy situation,
Uproot the status quo for all our salvation.

I wrote these lines in the world's fattest nation,
where the average man is unfased by his expanding waist
due to inhaling four and a half thousand calories a day.

Compare that to the DRC,
where the average man gets by on scavenging less than half that amount to eat.
It's pretty hard to compete,
when three quarters of that man's salary
is spent on food with half the calories.
While,
the fat cat in America
spends but a quarter of that figure
on twice the fast food crap
and making his expanding figure bigger.

Go figure.

We need a revolution,
'cause at the moment the Chinese
are planting palm oil in the DRC -
so how are these people
supposed to grow enough food crops to eat?

There's not one solution,
but we've got to do something to stop mass toxic pollution
on our bodies, fields and forests.

We're almost looking at agricultural absolution.

At the moment, we chop down trees
to grow more soybean,
which we then feed to cattle
so they put on more mass -
but waste most of that
through excreting methane gas
and egesting tons of festering crap.

For fuck's sake, let them eat grass.

If we run out of space for that the so be it.
We'll eat something far more appropriate
like
asparagus, cabbage, avacado...
or something really sensible like locusts, crickets and ants.

There's already seven billion people on this earth
and already there's a dearth of good, nutritious food
for one seventh of the human world.

They have every right to complain
because their pain
is unnecessarily compounded
by the one billion overweight
who eat the cows
which eat one third of our total grain.

To add to that,
methane gas causes climate change
and ammonia from cows
is the single greatest contributor to acid rain.

This needs to change.

If you can't see it, then so be it.
But you're either a prick,
or too thick to realise
we're heading quickly toward needless demise.

So please, heed these words
and don't entertain the lies
of those deniers
who conspire
to mislead you otherwise.

It's easy to cover your eyes and close your ears,
but in one hundred years,
if you're still alive,
you might just be here
to see the whole wide world
drowning in tears.

Too sunny for science

On a day like this,
It becomes ever more apparent
That science, as it is,
Is an inefficient waste of talent.

Why have fine,
Analytical minds wasting time?
Machines exist,
Yet mundane labwork persists.

Surely money
Would be better spent on automation,
So when it's sunny
I can sit outside and give the data some serious consideration.

Freedom of thought

Our brains are malleable
And at some point we've all been fallible.
It's nice to think we always have free will
But some have ways to fill yours with pigswill.

Morality is a minefield
But clearly many are blinded by zeal.
Yet even before they learn how to feel,
Young minds are repressed behind a shield.

California depleting

Driving route five,
up through California,
Surrounded by sunflowers,
olives and vines.
Predominantly, either side,
I see paddies of rice
drowned in water,
which rarely drips
from clear blue skies.

Alas, what rice is there
When the aquifers run dry?

Yosemite, it's better to be it

Yosemite park is a sight to behold,
But most people stick to tarmac like bitumen to the road.
It's a beautiful world we inhabit, with so much to see -
It's sad most people prefer to view Attenborough on the BBC.

Lankyshire's present

Up passages so narrow
  Th'as to squeeze,
Through steep terraced rows
  'gainst raw Pennine breeze.

Streets once cobbled
  Under hoof and wheel,
Now not a hobble
  Nor cloppity reel.

No mares, no foals
  Lest for deceitful treat.
No mines, no coal,
  To labourer's defeat.

A walk down't' canal
  Old Liverpool to Leeds
Still pit heads at' banks
  But no barges int reeds.

Horse-drawn loads long forgotten
  Unto rod and reel.
Gone the glory days of cotton
  And factories' ferocious peal.

No more are't' bustling mills,
  Now flats or crumbling shells.
No chimneys to adorn the hills
  And bugger all to sell.

Lankyshire once was mighty,
  Weaved the crown its jewels.
Lankyshire now blighted in Blighty,
  Out of work, unrenewed.

Alas in modern times to stride,
  A Lanky lad must leave.
Pints of Wainwright to London Pride,
  And tertiary sector slave.

O'er Watford wider still the Gap,
  Divide grows deep with greed.
Alas, the South would sadly lack
  If not for industrial creed.

Big Farma

It's commonplace these days to chastise the banks.

It's commonplace to chastise genetically modified maize.

It's commonplace to chastise big pharmaceutical chains.

Just think, though...

Without banks, where is your globalised society?

Without genetically modified grains, where is your food?

Without drugs...  ...  ...  ...

Chastise all you will; we were all subscribed, while apparently lacking one.

No EU turn

It's quite funny,
Cameron and co.
Fully well know
Britain cannot afford
To break this accord.

They won't admit it,
No space to fit
An EU turn
In this highway
To fiscal dismay.

Instead they pander
To the idiotic
Mail reading masses.
Postulating a referendum
That cannot possibly happen.

Gaia abandon - A poem for Earth Day

A glorious, technicolour bundle of life,
Abundant in ores christened within a fiery core.

Blazing a dizzy path around a glistening star;
Flying through infinite, atomless space, and time.

Each passing day a mere revolution among the trillions,
Among the trillions, evolution unto Gaia.

The giver of life and alive of its own accord,
From molecules, to cells - and species in their millions.

A perpetual cycle, over billions of orbits;
In delicate balance until the hordes of voracious hominids.

What was recycled through nature's shrewd proclivity
Now deposited in mounds or spewed out of chimneys.

Alas, of late, whimsical dismay towards cleaning our act;
Decades of promises to enact, yet all have sadly lacked.

We had better revise our Gaia abandon,
Lest we discover that which will surely come
And may well already have happened.

A daily dose of hate from the Daily Mail

There's a newspaper in these fair Isles that's called the Daily Mail,
Though news is a kind word to put in place of the lies beyond the pale.
And if you're not pale, they'll spin a tale,
Of immigrants coming in dressed in veils.
There's a daily dose of hate from the Daily Mail.

The Daily Mail is the right wing's holy grail.
A racist paper trail of hate
With distorted views on the welfare state,
There's a daily dose of hate in the Daily Mail.

The Daily Mail is a holy grail for the right wing in't UK,
It circulates to a couple of million people every day.
And if you read between the lines
You'll find that almost all of the time,
Minorities are the source of the UK's ails.

The Daily Mail is the right wing's holy grail.
A racist paper trail of hate
With distorted views on the welfare state.
There's a daily dose of hate in the Daily Mail.

The Daily Mail is a sad indictment of society,
Polluting minds of Middle England over cakes and tea.
If you watch Newsnight, you'll get a fright
When you hear their readers chatting tripe,
And citing half the spite in the Mail on Sunday.

The Daily Mail is the right wing's holy grail.
A racist paper trail of hate
With distorted views on the welfare state.
There's a daily dose of hate in the Daily Mail.

The Daily Mail has a hang up about Eastern Europeans,
Yet these fine people pay their way and fill the jobs we leave 'em.
Without immigration, this grand nation
Would be stranded in bland stagnation,
The Anglo-Franco-Saxon-Norse Great Britian.

 In the Mail on April 3rd there is an article rather dotty,
Welfare UK is to blame for the actions of Philpotty.
But the welfare state would be less at stake,
If the top percent shared a slice of cake,
And the Daily Mail is a fat cat brand of folly.

The Daily Mail is the right wing's holy grail.
A racist paper trail of hate
With distorted views on the welfare state.
There's a daily dose of hate in the Daily Mail.

The jet stream's icy drift

The jet stream abnormally low,
And temperatures follow.
The march into spring
More like winter;
In April, more snow.

As the jet stream drifts north,
Cyclones rage forth,
More voracious than ever before.
And in the South, future drought;
Soon to be without
The bread basket of yore.

The Black Prince

As the Black Prince feasted in Carcassonne
One can only imagine,
No matter plague, nor warfare;
The hot sun, vineyards and wine
Had never ceased through time's elapse.
Nor ever shall.

Agricultural revolution

A new agricultural revolution
Will only ensue
If we begin a cultural revolution.
We must pursue
The only novel available solution.
Therefore I imbue
That we dine on insects reared in farms.

Plant breeding has taken us so far
But yields plateau.
Animal farming has been spread too far.
And it shows,
As the climate changes due to pollution.
We must sow
The seeds of this new revolution.

Insects are the only novel solution,
A true agricultural revolution.

Bye bye Benedict

About time,
This decrepit man resigns.
In his time,
Infirm but firm,
As his medieval cult
Turns a blind eye
To choice, freedom and love.

Look at the stars

When you look at the stars

What do you see?

I see plates of algae.

And like sun splashes,

Bright green flashes.

Microscopy sure beats

Molecular biology.

And makes a PhD.

Impatient with patents

Patently, patents
Are becoming impatent.
We must innovate.

Intellectual property

Like a broken egg,
IP should not have to rot
But become omelette.

Maya's climate apocalypse

Since civilization's empires ruled over,
Irrespective of power, or order;
From ancient Mycenae to Tang and Maya,
Collapse has been wrought through nature's plunder.
Bouts of cooling, droughts and flooding destroyed
Irrigation, farming and trade's finer joys.
Civil crisis brought famine and stark employ;
Invasion, finally, to nations despoiled.
Fast forward to globalized society,
Interconnected from France to Tahiti.
Rather than salvation in numbers, surely
Climate collapse will wreak mass insecurity.
But unlike Mycenae, Maya and Tang -
We have read the signs...  it's in our own hands.

Industry

To accumulate
You must speculate.
But what use is speculating?
When there's nothing
To accumulate.
Unless something is made
Of our situation,
Remiss has bade.
We must manufacture
A fiscal future.
Time is better spent
When there is something
To show for it.

Debanking the myth

Imaginary
Basis for economy.
Where is the money?
If the US owes China,
Does China own the US?

Fiscal dreams

As venereal disease
Sweeps through the hareem;
Fiscal dreams
Lead us to lascivious oblivion.