Artificial intelligence

To prove
you
are not
a robot
tick
the box.

As if
any intelligent
artificial intelligence
would fall
for that trick.

Dare
say
more
humans
would
be
stuck.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Dumb

Every day,
calls to save
the world.

A moist sphere,
transiently
flying
through space.

Supposedly,
dying,
yet

facing
a much greater threat.

A giant red sun.

The world
will
succumb.

All that conservation
undone.

Calls to save
the world

seem...

Future Ape

Crash!
Bang!
Wallop!

The tidal wave of an asteroid splash

Drowns the rainforest we’ve finally learned to conserve

And we glance up to the pale red dot.

Humanity’s last chance,

Vanished in an armageddon,

Long since the last breath escaped Bruce Willis.

We die hard.

Driftwood from the Amazon sea

Becomes the coal of a future generation

Of amphibious octopuses,

Who’ll learn to combust it all the same,

Eventually.

The humans drift among the stars,

Existing on synthetically-derived products,

Yearning to return to a pale blue dot

Of balmy seas and infinite infinities.

Life on Mars,

Dubai was the practise run -

When the baking sands

Become too inhospitable,

The oil long since gone,

The caliphate will fly.

Beyond Burj Khalifa,

A million miles and more,

High on the sands

Of a cold, red planet

Barely insulated by

The distant sun.

But no matter how far we run,

We can’t escape the light.

On the Run,

From the Dark Side of the Moon,

No wormhole will take us beyond the bounds

Of the finite universe we traverse.

Mars,

Just a stepping stone to oblivion,

Perhaps a few centuries later than was forecast.

By the time we reach Andromeda,

Everything we knew will have passed.

The end of the world.

A hot sphere blazing red,

Searing flesh and melting roads,

Blocked as the exodus

In vain tries to reach

The dark side of the globe.

The end of the road.

At the speed of light,

Ages crumble into ages past.

The Super Ape expires, at last.

Dreams

I want life to be half
like the Matrix.
At night,
after abundant cheese
I'd plug my head
into the pillow
and dream.
Those best sellers,
quickly forgotten,
would instead be
downloaded,
ready to be lived,
once more.

The birth of the Super Ape

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.

A pale blue dot, of balmy blue seas,

An infinity pool of infinite infinites -

The origin of species,

Bubbling forth from the alkaline froth,

Convection currents in a hydrothermal vent,

Circulating through a primordial broth.

Four billion years from nucleic chance

To the mossy fur of a slovenly sloth.

What were the chances?

Before the watchmaker’s eyes

Were even there to go blind,

The mysterious chemistry of a land

Before an uncontemplated time.

If only we could delve

Into those first three minutes,

The quantum minutiae

Of two big bangs.

Two singularities, of two

Disparate but not dissimilar sorts.

Life, the universe,

And two beginnings of time

Brought forth

To all we see today.

From the eyes of the beholder, the eyes

Of the Super Ape.

Left and right

Who’s right, who’s wrong?

Left and right,

North and South.

The two poles

of the magnet

repel each other

such that we’ve lost

the centre

which lies, trapped,

crushed

by opposing forces.

Who’s right?

Who’s wrong?

Left.

Right.

Hold on tight.

What do we know?

We should write what we know, and what do we know?

What we learn through the lens of our experience,

Unique, for any one of us, what seems to be true.

But not the most reasoned of scholars nor chaste of priests,

Can ever really know, or understand, that truth.

The nearest is what we should reasonably do.

What is right, or even wrong, within reason?

As long as we do what we know we ought,

It might be that we come reasonably close.

As far as we are true, within the rights and the wrongs,

Then that, surely, is what we ought to.

Big bang

Crash!

Bang!

Wallop!

Something forged out of a massive nothing,

An infinite density,

The beginning of time.

A universe, at once infinitesimally small

And infinitely dense,

Foretelling our seemingly thin grip on reality.

As far as the eye can see,

Beyond even light,

The eternal expansion of a septillion stars,

Spells the story of how we came to be,

From the mist of nebulae long since scattered,

The shattered corpse of a rising solar sea.

Who can foresee where we are going,

In a universe of infinite complexity?

Is our goal to explain all at once what we see?

And what does it all mean?

What we see, obscured by notions of a creator,

Unlikely as they seem, in a universe

That lacks any arbitrary order.

And what does it all mean?

Toiletiquette

Seeing red, definition:

That moment when you're in joyous relief
and the door handle thrusts you out of Nirvana,
violently shaken,
as if the engaged sign were merely an invitation.

Brown nosing, suggestion:

The place where the face of the offender should be sent
in lieu of leaving streaks of brown in the u-bend,
as if that brush were there merely for the pleasure
of knowing that there exists a brush.

A quantum of solace

A quantum of solace,
mind blown.
It's nice to know,
amidst all that we do know,
we haven't a clue what's really going on.

The fabric of reality,
as tangible as a duvet
that floats away as the sleeper dreams
and therefore possibly freezes.

Intangible, it seems.
But, like a duvet,
comfortable.

Sweet dreams.

The left is not right

What's a man to do, or think, or say?
Doesn't matter, whatever it is,
We'll put it down to privilege anyway.
Equality is coming, come what
May?
Nay,
The left is not right.

Nay,
I sway broadly to the left despite
The prevailing wind. Slighted,
The wrongs of our forefathers,
Predominantly righted.
Yay,
The left is not right.

Yay,
Things fall apart
When the centre cannot hold.
What may come, an adage of old,
Equality feigned, oppression foretold.
Say,
The left is not right.

It's getting hot in here

It's getting hot in here,
in the sky, under the collar,
chop a tree, make a dollar.
Holla!
No doubt, some, rather
than standing firm would
be offended on behalf of the tree,
ignoring the wood,
ignorant of the roots
of this complex, leaf-littered mere.

Autumn is here,
the tree long gone, yet shackled
to a point of no return.
They yearn,
still offended on behalf of the tree,
the wood demolished,
the axeman admonished.
Free, yet shackled,
on behalf of a tree long gone,
they'll never learn.

As if it could get worse (Cuadrilla)

As if it could get worse.

A country persuaded
that cuts to the poor
due to wrongs of the rich
would warrant a change.

As if it could get worse.

The country, poorer,
wages slashed,
what backlash?
More banker's cheques cashed.

As if it could get worse.

What backlash?
The country's poor
persuaded
for richer or poorer.

As if it could get worse.

Finally, the day,
justice departed,
fracking started,
activists smarted.

As if it could get worse.

Crime and punishment
at the behest
of corporate greed.
A sickening precedent, to heed.

As if it could get worse.

Police,
Government,
Corporations;
Corrupted creed.

As if it could get worse.

The 52%

It's hard to resent
the fifty two percent
  when none of
   the options
    represent
     us or them.

How do you like it (Theresa)?

"Harder, harder!" She cried,
they cried.
"Softer!" We all shouted,
but it's them who decide.
Hard is how she wants it
but how will she hide
the blood?

Faith

Religious or not,
 deep down
  we all yearn
   for something beyond
    the end not the end.
Equal
 in that
  we all want a sequel.

Little do we know

The constant
is the enemy
of understanding.

The world
as we know it,
the universe baffling.

We have it all

We have it all
These days, we do.
Though carbon seeps
And debts accrue.

Walls have fallen
And keep falling, they do.
Though a generation weeps
For a promise untrue.

Glyphosate

Glyphosate
Didn't cause your cancer, mate.
Herbicides aren't great, but then,
Starvation isn't either.

Fashionable of late
To decry the use of chemicals.
Pesticides aren't great, but then,
The EU still won't allow GM.

Vaccinate your children

I'm an angry Northern poet
and do you know why?
It turns out that pigs
actually fucking fly.

If you're in South Carolina.

First case of measles
in twenty years.
Measles
should be so far in the past
the only reason
to use the word
is to rhyme with weasels.

Weasels,
an appropriate description
for the slimy anti-facters
the whiny anti-vaxxxers.

It should be a crime

to not give your child the chance
not to contract that disease
and very possibly die.

That's why.

The vegan class

The arguments are woolly

against sheep in fields,

wool sheared for clothing

and milk churned for cheese.

What grows in Lancashire

if not lambs for the slaughter?

Certainly not avocados,

that's for sure.

Cows pumped with grain

and packed to the rafters

are clearly in need

of rain fed pasture.

But meat has its place

in a world of diversity.

Veganism is born

of a mere lack of adversity.

Trigger warning

How do we move forwards
when dissenters won't heed dissent?
When molehills become mountains
it's tempting, then, to resent
a forced upheaval,
unasked for,
surmounting nothing
particularly evil.

The way we spend our days

It's funny
The way we spend our days,
Some play on easy
And pay minimum wage.

It's funny
This mysterious game we play.
Mistakeable reality,
Unmistakeably real.

All at sea

How are we supposed to know
When that's all that we see?
Refugees all at sea,
And where should they go?

All at sea,
Our ideals, some reality.
We see them drown,
But where would we go?

Power to the people

Power to the people,
The future in their hands.
A fickle chalice runs
Through our fingers like sand.

Flying buttshakers of death

Shake your ass, but watch yourself.
Shroomed to delusion,
Flying buttshakers of death.

Boris and Burkas

Boris is a berk?
Well I never.

Boris a Nazi?
Not even slightly.

Bring balaclavas back?
Northern Ireland stylie.

Pints of Guinness all around,
Boris stands his ground.

Well I never,
Boris is a berk.

Boris a Nazi?
Not even slightly.

Between the mountain and the sea: Thought for Food

Between the mountain and the sea,
A city emerges,
Dancing
To the samba beat,
Which builds as the waves
Lap along the Copacabana shore;
Clapping along with the rhythm,
They rap on the door
Of the House of Carijó.

Rio,
Caipirinha in hands outstretched
In a fine Brazilian welcome;
For a multispectral carnival
Of Thought For Food
And food for thought.
Ideas,
Building to a crescendo
Of next generation dreams.

Dreams,
Which become reality
As the finalist teams come together to pitch
And learn, and share,
As part of a global family
Of change makers and game changers,
Who care
For a world in which, for many,
Food, water and nutrition are scarce.

A globally connected world,
Where ideas once stale
Now fly
Through optical fibres;
It is no longer good enough
To sit back and wonder why,
Who,
How, 
Where?

When many have plenty
But plenty more to give,
It’s on us to say here,
Now,
It’s time, let’s begin.
To catalyse a change,
We must innovate without,
Uproot the status quo
And renovate what’s within.

And where better to start than in Rio?
Between the mountain and the sea,
Where ten finalist teams
Come together to pitch 
And learn, and share,
As part of a global family
Of next generation dreams
That with Thought for Food
Become reality.

"Us and them" - Thought for Food Global Summit slam poem by Peter Bickerton, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2018

Us… and them.

As Pink Floyd said, after all,

We’re all just ordinary men

And women.

The media paints a painful picture.

Right versus left,

Black versus white,

Rich versus poor,

Humble versus might.

But a tinted lens

Blocks out shades of light

That might cast doubt

On crystal clear assertions.

The light shines

From every direction,

Reflects and refracts

Through multiple dimensions.

If, in election we’re defeated,

We must reach out and make the best of it,

Not retreat into bubbles

And preach out against it.

Yes, Donald Trump is a prick,

And it’s very easy for me to give him stick -

But he’s been nominated for a peace prize

And South Korea is backing it.

Multispectral thinking

Means looking from different perspectives…

Because...

Whether a climate change denier,

Or indeed - a believer,

Opulent omnivore,

Or frugal vegan…

We’re all complicit...

I want to to buy a fancy car

I want to travel near and far

I want to fly to Zanzibar

We're all complicit.

I want the latest Apple phone

I want to let my data roam

I want my life engraved in chrome

We're all complicit.

I want the latest fashion trend

I want to watch the money I spend

I want my Primani H&Emmed

We're all complicit.

I want my showers steaming hot

I want the stove to heat my pot

I want it all I want the lot

We're all complicit.

---

And what are we complicit in?

Overpriced tonic and German Gin?

Russian interventions in overseas elections?

Cambridge Analytica and Donald Trump’s erections?

<Google search> Ivanka Nudes </>

And there it appears on the news.

That wasted polar bear.

We all know the image, a billion shares.

Skin sagging over bones.

We pretend to care,

Hashtag “save the polar bear.”

But we don’t care about that bear…

As the climate quickly changes

We feign despair.

The mirror fills with steam

As the hypocrite

Shampoos his hair…

...we’re all complicit.

<Google search> Extinction </>

<Google search> Deforestation </>

<Google search> Environmental destruction </>

OK Google: What’s inside my smartphone?

Oil for plastic,

Copper, zinc -

And where do we find it?

We mine it.

And where do we look,

Once the reserves run dry?

We plunder the rainforests

And the animals still die.

It’s easy to chastise big business, big pharma, big ag:

But are we any wiser?

And where would we be?

Paper straws are a soggy needle in an oil-fueled haystack.

To uproot the status quo,

We must innovate without

And renovate from within.

Like all of these ten, wonderful finalist teams

Next generation dreams:

From snails to feathers,

Water and weather,

Fertilising grains,

And optimizing value chains.

Dairy and yoghurt,

Carrot-based chocolate,

Coating for shelf life

And respect for refugee life.

---

So a slice of positivity,

Through all this complicity.

In this globalised society

We have greater connectivity.

Yes, maybe a touch of human interaction

Would gain us a little more social traction

But just look at the tide of social action

Being played out through touch screens and optical fibres

Across the seas,

We’re making waves

With people, who otherwise,

We’d never have made acquaintance.

E agora cá estou eu no Brasil

Prazer em conhecer todos vocês, eu estou privilegiado de estar aqui nessa cidade maravilhosa.

I would never even be here if I hadn’t reached out

On Facebook, to Crissy Spice,

About Thought for Food and feeding the world

With ideas as much as calories.

Like every one of us here,

From Agriman to Agrospheres,

Connected.

Our biggest fears hold us back,

And keep us apart.

But together we’re set.

And where better to start than in Rio?

The House of Carijo...

Between the mountain and the sea,

Where ten finalist teams

Have come together to pitch

And learn, and share, and care,

As part of a global family

Of next generation dreams

That with Thought for Food

Win or lose,

Have every chance

To become

Reality.