Tuesday 23 April 2019

Flying holiday

It’s hard to tell from way up here:
 the sea in sunshine sparkles blue
 and stretches far into the clear
 where misty white obscures the view
 of foam where ocean meets the land
 towards where boats with glistening trails
 approach the miles of yellow-white sand
 below the wisps cast by contrails
 which dissipate mysterious fumes
 invisible as wind in ancient sails
 to fill a gravity beholden room
 which some decry is off the rails
 while others will proclaim our doom
 and yet more still cry “fairytales!”


But all the way from way up high
 I soar above the rainbow fields
 the patchwork tulips please my eyes
 the oilseed boasts of bountiful yields
 which in my thirty years on earth
 have rarely ever seen decline
 but sadly this can’t spare the dearth
 of meadows in this land of mine
 where flowers once were wild and free
 unlike the wheat or cows or sheep
 and trees were spread abundantly
 though still I don’t find cause to weep


For happiness grows in the fields
   unnaturally sown
and from my vantage point up here
   I cannot be alone
in contemplating what we’ve lost
   but also what we’ve gained
and surely if we learned to fly

   we’ll conspire to make things better again.

Forum For the Future of Agriculture

‘What’s the role of the next generation?’
Asked a room full of white haired men:

‘Perhaps we might promote the youth
To lofty positions while passion has vigour?’

‘You’ll have your chance to have your say…
...In 18 years’ time when your hair is grey.’

‘Go figure.’

Notre Dame

Notre Dame burns,
and as the rich come out
My stomach churns
as if the church, without,
Would require these funds,
of malevolent benefactors
As the wealth, plundered,
resting in Vatican coffers
Remains unspent,
no remorse, no repent;
They claim to aid the needy,
Notre Dame burns and yet the greedy
Invest in a world
of paedophilia and hate.
Malevolent: money,
like the lady which burns,
singed on apathy
for the third world,
where unlike mine,
their stomachs churn
in need of infrastructure

and not a church.

Thursday 21 March 2019

Mammas and Pappas

Stars shining bright above you,
  Mammas and Pappas.
    If they feared the future,
      would they birth you?
Would we greet you with mirth
  as your head reaches the girth
    of Mamma's vagina,
      Pappa proud beside her?
Did they fear for your future,
  or perhaps their
    best wishes?
      Hope,
        surely,
          at the very least.

Monday 25 February 2019

Science, art and communication

Imagine:
A world without science posters.

Imagine
How
Wonderful
That would be.

If we left the communication to the communicators,
Let some things be,
Untainted,
By overzealous scientific pedantry.

Get involved, by all means, but -
Listen,
Don’t judge,

You’ll see
How meaningful science
Could actually seem
To a real, tax-paying, layperson:

Science:
The fascinating story of life,
The universe
And our miniscule,
Infinitesimal place
To wonder
Among its wonders.

So how do we tell it so badly?

So badly that hardly anyone even reads half the papers that are written about it anyway.

Even science doesn’t care about science.

Hey, Dr. Scientist!
What’s on your reading list?

The Guardian,
Twitter,
And non-fiction…

...some sci-fi at a stretch…

...Nature reviews,
Perhaps the latest science news.

Then,
Back to twitter
To vent your views
On Brexit,
Or spread
Some much
Not needed
Pedantry,
Laced with jargon.

Twitter 101:

Be damned if you dare even suggest, nevermind share, an innocently left handed DNA helix.

All the while, little Felix
Is reading his pamphlet
On quite how ring like
Our flat earth donut
Has become.
Sucking his thumb,
Sore bum,
Red raw with mumps,
Mum says vaccines are for chumps.
Vote Donald Trump.
THUMP!

Creationism is sold as science.

Conspiracies are reached down lines of loose
But loosely evidenced
Enquiry.

Science cannot hide behind science
When it is being so brutally flaunted:
Taunted,
To perpetuate myths.

How do we suppose
Does half the world hate GMOs?
Or oppose
Gene edited crops.

Who knows,
Why people still believe in UFOs?
A demon haunted world
Superstitious of crows.

Homeopathy,
Rocks for your yoni....
Or just go Gwyneth Paltrow:
Full on vaginal steaming.
Titanic
Bullshit
Pervades.

But we’re never going to change that
By telling people they’re wrong.

Us and them,
As pink floyd said:
After all
We’re only ordinary men...
And women.

So where do we start?
Science,
Explained through art?

A picture tells a thousand words,
And a poem can paint them in succinct verse.

Stephen Hawking condensed the universe
Into a brief history of time,
Minus any unnecessary equations -
And he made it sublime.

The beauty in nature can be explained
by physics, chemistry, biology, maths.
It can only be truly described
Through art;
  The stroke of fine horse's hair
  or a sharpened feather
  fine and fair.

And whether intrinsic or learned
the artist's guile is guided by maths.
A shrewd eye shapes and forms a scene
as a lucid mind equates.
 The stroke of fine horse's hair
  or a sharpened feather
fine and fair.

With art we can open doors,
And open access.

With rhyme,
We can inspire more minds
To explore and play,
Try a little DIY...

Bio at home,
Now that we can sequence
A genome
Quite comfortably in it’s comforts.

PhDs, though oversubscribed
And still yet overabundant
Soon, perhaps, to become redundant.

Science, like the world
It seeks to explain
Must move with the times.

Bio by design,
Synthetic,
Not necessarily aligned

To stifling institutions,
Over hours,
Underpaid.

Innovation,
Not anathema to academia,
But made more swiftly possible
With time to play.

Tinker, tailor,
Start-up maker.

Writer, painter,
Storymaker.

Engaged and engaging;
Science told the proper way.





Brexit apoplectic (a monumental shart)

Brexit apoplectic,
No-one knows what they want
Except for those of us
Who hope, more in vain than despair,
That Spain might invade Gibraltar
And the whole problem would disappear
In the foggy fever of war.

And what's been revealed
From this monumental shart?
An imbecilic political elite,
Opposed by a wet paper bag
Against an undercurrent of bigotry
And mass neuronal redundance
The likes of which might justly cause
Brains to spontaneously combust in protest.

About as robust as an Italian road bridge,
May's knights of a three-legged table
Stand aghast, as Boris cackles,
Watching it teeter with the saw in hand,
And Juncker spanks May with the leg,
Cantankerously, deviant,
Tusk and all.

Mansplaining

Humble;

not easily ascribed to a scientist,
adjectively speaking.

Any man in need
of an insight into mansplaining
need only utter
a fluttering thought,
reasoned as it may be,
in the presence of a man
with a PhD.

Science;

the pursuit of the uncertain.
Its practitioners,
certain that they know it all.

Juxtaposition,
Troy will fall,
brains in balls.
Fumble,
mumble,
stumble,
stall.

It was written

Read more (books):

it puts a certain
perspective
on life.

Other lives,
lived,
never forgotten.

Easy, so it is,
to forget
what feels like
a modern day calamity
has happened,
repeatedly,
time,
and time,
after time.

What, then,
but to absorb
what will,
surely,
come again.

All aboard! (Dream of the Brexit steamer)

Last night,
a ship churned in belligerent waters,
tossing,
turning,
waves high above the bow and stern,
brown,
murky,
unable yet to return
to passages clearer,
onwards,
delinquently ploughed,
a hopeless dredgery
channeled within a channel;
no space to turn,
the ship,
set,
the only way forward, now,
to dig the hole
deeper yet.

Always the same

Always the same,
the vain hope:
that the self-considered "experts"
might defer

to those in that same,
perhaps vain,
self-considered position
going by a different name.

Sunday 24 February 2019

Witless: in defense of Aristocracy

And there they descend, one and all,
to rob me of my wits,
defenceless, against their witlessness,
driven up the sea life aquarium wall.

And there they flash, despite the wall's
clear sign. Splash! The turtle's wits
vanished along with mine. What line?
Oh, don't mind me, barge right on in.

And yet they may descend, one and all,
equipped with voting slips
in hand, despite their lacking wits,
I stand idly by, lamenting it all.

Why? Is it legal for them to vote,
but I am prohibited
from punching each of them in the head?
There's nothing in there to damage of note.

And so they descend, one and all,
my redundant fists
quivering, yet listlessly,
clenched into unsatiated balls.

Wednesday 20 February 2019

The longest yarn

Drops Felting Fever sale now on!
The website proclaimed,
A mere search for yellow and grey
Wool, became
Much more intense than previously expected.

Life before crochet,
Was a more simple existence.
Now just hoping for some consistency,
At least on the edges

Of my new yellow and grey scarf.




Saturday 16 February 2019

Too loud on the Brexit front

The only thing certain about Brexit,
is that, far too many books
have already been written on the subject.
So, I thought, abjectly pondering
the wretched pile of self-righteous dogma
stacked to meet my browsing eye.
As if All Quiet on the Western Front
were as boisterously penned in 1913.
An affront to historical record, this
wretched pile. Better left, unseen.

Tuesday 29 January 2019

The Houses of Parliament #2

I arrive
at the Houses of Parliament gate,
Inside
lies
May's pointy, bedraggled face,
tongue bent into a U-bend,
licking the shit
of a monumental floater
left by Cameron;

Refusing to plunge
but too slippery
to unblock,

deadlock:

Between a shitty brush
or a shitter flush.



Monday 28 January 2019

Lord of the shambolic dance

I am lord of the dance!
Cried Farage
as he waltzed into Strasbourg
and dragged Britain out.

I am the wide mouthed frog!
Cried Cameron,
lord of the flies,
mouth full of piggy.

I am the lord of the pies!
Cried BoJo,
scratching at porkies
in a world full of fibs.

I am irrelevant!
Cried Crobyn,
missing the point,
missing the chance.

I am lord of the rings!
Cried May,
wishing she could disappear,
Gollum teetering on the edge.