Shit happens

What happens to the world, when technology dies?
Poetry, painting and art came before,
Plateaued,
Once more.
The last switch of the circuit
Will become broken,
It's for sure.
And then, alas,
What is left?

A catalyst for change?

After Apartheid,
quite rightfully subverted,
The ashes of Mandela's revolution
Scatter on the whimsical breeze
Of Zuma, as he
plies the bribes
and piles the coffers.

Apartheid, long gone,
But better for who?
None of those,
Supposedly in lieu.

And Mugabe,
What comes after Mugabe,
The Zimbabwean Hitler.
It's all down
to the White Man,
the problems therein,
so goes the rhetoric
of the corrupt whim.

Farms, once productive,
Deserted as armed raids
Send them to flee,
Or murder them there.
"Shoot the farmer,
Kill the Boer,"
Lives destroyed,
The poor even poorer.

Out of revolution,
The violent
And fascists rise.
The whites replaced,
The repression inside.
Remains.
The song remains the same.
Corruption is colourless,
So who then is to blame.

Mugabe, gone,
A catalyst for change?

The Honey is Gold

Obsessed with money and gold,

but rather more blessed with honey,

once we grow old, what room do we have

for coins in the purse?

To live without food is a curse.

a life well lived is a life well nourished -

we need bold new ideas for a changing earth, to flourish.

With biteback, for Orangutans, we can fight back,

a sustainable oil better than palm-based toil.

Our rainforests might just be saved from the plight,

of a hooven stampede if our animal feed

is in fact made from MagMeal waste not from grain.

With nowt to lose and plenty to gain,

with a Thought for Food we can brighten the refrain,

and hasten the future.

Where we look beyond borders and antiquated roles,

and like Shahida Begum search deep in our souls...

To change what we can, where we can, if we can.

Bees not money, the honey is gold.

// As featured on the BBC World Service //

Merked it

Angela's Merked it once again,
A steady ship in murky waters
Where the crocodiles of past threaten to snap
At the heels of the wilderbeast as they pass
Across undrawn borders to taste the water
And strive to reach the other side.
From bombs to camps to reach more camps,
Like stranded pawns in a drawn out stalemate
Of kings and a queen
Strong like a rook, the bishops unseen
And the knights long left to save the dregs
Of a teabag left too long to stew.
So stale, this tale, that reoccurs
Through epochs, empires and genocides,
And tired, the weak sip meek chamomile
For a brief respite through melancholy nights
In the face of cold, hard, calculated spite.

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 to eat my bananas straight
I want to lose my flabby weight
I'll start once I've demolished the crate
We're all complicit.

I want my cashews from Iran
I want my ice cream from a van
I want my drugs from Pakistan
We're all complicit.

I want to watch a game of thrones
I want my slaughter done with drones
I want to ignore the screams and moans
We're all complicit.

I want my home cool in July
I want my winters warm as pie

I want to pretend I want to try

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.

I want my condoms lubricated

I want my condo renovated

I want to stay intoxicated

We're all complicit.

We're all complicit from me to you
From me to you from me to you
I want to say stuck on repeat
We're all complicit.

A rage against the machine

A vote to take the power back,
a rage against the machine,
backfiring as we turn
the rifle on ourselves
and tie the blindfold,
face the bullets,
shouting "fire!"

we crumple to the floor.

A vote to take the power back,
a rage against the machine,
vague and miscalculated,
backfiring as was past
in Hitler's Weimar
as like him then
an enabling act
passes laws

behind closed doors.

A vote to take the power back,
a rage against the machine,
which only gains in strength
as the rulebook
is rewritten
and the seams
of society
at once resemble

a distant, long lost, melancholy dream.

Take a step back

They say sometimes one step forward, two steps back
But we get there and fail to remember where we are
Or from where we came.

But the stark truth is that no-one seems to care,
What's won is won, what's lost is lost,
Two steps back we're all the same.

They'll have you looking everywhere.
To your left, to the right, we'll get on alright.
But they trick us into thinking someone else is to blame.

We stick the same picture in a different frame
And suddenly we think we're all the wiser.
But we just take two steps backwards again.

And there in the high tower they laugh.
Their power doesn't care for culture and creed
But whoever they can use to accelerate their gain

As lowly we spread and multiply through
This finite sphere while the few up top
Accrue to our lack, yet still we blame
The ones like us. It's a shame.

Arabesques

That blighted sound of pitter-patter riles my very soul,

as meaningless words are typed onto soulless screens

and, caged, my body squirms in a windowless vessel.

All hopes fade with every smack of the space bar,
separating lines of spuriously contemplated pish -
my head, erupting, amidst a cacophony of plastic.

The constant hammering builds to a crescendo
of a lamentable 21st Century symphony
where creativity has come to die.

Swap me that plastic for blissful ivory chime,
each key caressed with the guile of an artist's touch
while words typed as melodies kiss my eardrums

Or the glistening glide of a whittled feather
painting trails of masterful strokes,
each line, to capture, a heartfelt moment.

As my mind wanders through each letter scribed,
the chains around me seemingly come loose-
the patter muted under sweet Arabesques.

The end of the world

Last night I dreamed of the end of the world,
A hot sphere blazing red
Searing flesh and melting roads,
Which were blocked as the exodus
In vain tried to reach
The dark side of the globe.

All the king's men

Humpty dumpty sat on a wall
But he was black, so a white man shoved him off;
The cracks of bygone days revealed once again.

And all the king's men watched on,
Not in disgust but in disdain.
How dare he sit on that wall?

Fake news

Fake news, fake news, fake news is the word since Donald first spread it,

not like his alternative facts were ever in arrears, he just said it,

and like a wildflower starts with a stubbed out cigarette,

now we come to regret printing the words of this toupéed baguette

as they ravage the world like a ram on heat savages his herd of willing sheep.

Fake news, fake news, fake news is the word since the Daily Mail spread it,

not like the left wing are impervious to it, bending over prostrate to its will,

printed one day, round the pub the next, before we know it it's locked in your head,

repeated online and the BBC headlines, through Question time poisoning innocent minds

and suddenly, we all hate the Muslims as well. It's all their fault we're going to hell.

Can't they tell? It's a plague, it's not even vague how these taglines pervade

through our sickly lack of social awareness, the unfairness never ceases to fade.

It pervades the consciousness, it encroaches each day.

Fake news, fake news, fake news.  

For the many, not the few

How much of a plank do you have to be?
The greatest tank in history,
Don't you go waltzing Matilda with me.

Authoritative to pejorative,
your entire presence is derogatory.

The holding hands makes a lot more sense
in your illusionary majority.

Like a crisp packet in a microwave,
as soon as it's pressed you cave.

But the sparks died dismayed
from the mandate that you craved.

But sickly the red flag rose aloft,
A society surely lost to toff,
As Murdoch's rag and Dacre's cape

Laid him bare upon the block.
The guillotine of spite sent down
But weary of the crock

Of shame and lies, through bloodshot eyes
The rebellion ceased to mock.
And like a phoenix, rising, from the flames, despite

The Tory-lite recalcitrant flock.
True to a cause and to himself,
To save a nation at the behest of wealth,

For the many, not for the few,
For the NHS, the state and schools.
For the right to choose, not to be fooled.

Robbing the Hood

As if the fairy tale were to be lost,

Robin Hood and his gallant men,

In the gallows, at the end, they are found.

Theresa not one for sympathy,

Nor those that vote her in.

Give to the rich, steal from the poor.

Robin Hood, Robin Hood,

We want to frack in Sherwood.

On biodiversity we live or die

As the fine orange grains of desert sands
Expand with the rising sun,
Into new lands, aflame, the soils erode
To meandering dunes and smother
The withered fields in June.

But all the while and under the surface,
Barely scratched, the next great deserts
May be the wettest ones of all.
Amid tragic waste a vast expanse
Of liquid drowned by solid mass.

A message in a plastic bottle, lost
Forty years in the stomach of Nemo,
Swept up and aloft by the wings of a gull
And found once again by a rugged carcass
Lying next to a rotting skull.

On biodiversity we live or die,
No matter if cruise missiles rain from the sky,
A nuclear winter is no more of a splinter
To mother nature's beating heart
On which our civilised world relies.

In the eyes of the destroyer
the savage lives a simple life,
But the want to be at one with nature
Is the elixir for all to thrive.
On biodiversity we live, or die.

But let's all be aware that organic is a lie.
Also gluten has never ever been in rice,
So can we please stop paying an extortionate price based on disproportionate, bullshit advice?
Organic and gluten free are as provably healthy as homeopathy.

Let's also be clear there's as much medicine in here as there is truth in a crocodile tear.

And please, vaccinate your children. Measles is real.
Anti-vax roughly translates to vacuous prats.

The same vacant beings who believe in anti-vaccine probably also believe in vaginal steaming,

Honestly, that's a thing.

Detoxing on organic kale, ignoring the fact their liver and kidneys will prevail.

Organic is not gonna save the world.
There's a point, to a point,
But every sip that we drink
Is taken from the drips of an unnatural sink.

A rain-fed human is as rare as a grass-fed steak.

Though,

Not all cows are created equal,
Not all meat is evil.

#NotAllCows

Nature and nurture are intertwined
And since the very beginning of human time,
We've adapted our habitat to suit our needs
So now we have flour and bread to knead.

Now we know of proteins, genomes and genes,
We can splice a slice of sense into seeds
and train a new breed in the biohackosphere,
So on this sphere, we can use our lands
With a bit more nouse and temper nature's destructive sands.

Last year,
I painted a painful picture
And this year the picture gets murkier still,
Though Angela Merkel is holding the fort
While the English world splutters
Through buckets of pigswill.

On both sides of the Atlantic pond, we've got two twits waving a magic wand,
One's backing Brexit, the other's packing exit visas.
Theresa's not the brightest spark either and Donald's hair flies like the lark,
They're both chatting breeze.

In Manchester, the town I got both my degrees,
Just this week blasted to smithereens.
Children and teens.
A city of invention, which drove me to dream,
The home of feminism, the commuter, the computer and factories,
Where the atom was split and we just discovered graphene.
A community brought to tears, but never to its knees.

And let's never forget the refugees who pay the price for these malicious deeds every single day.

But let's not let these extreme Dis-Mays get us down in the Donald Trump Dumps these days.

See, while we've got isolationist jeers
Drowning our statuses in emoji tears,
We're coming together, not falling apart,
Though Facebook ain't the best place to start.

It's fine online to rant and rage
But better to dance in a morning rave
Surrounded by people who spend their days
Making a difference not public displays.

Inspiring solutions like agrilution,
TFF is at the heart of the next green revolution.

Cultivating companies like Henlight and FoPo,
Since our adventure started six years ago,
From Bombay to Brasil and Trinidad and Tobago,
It's been a thrill and delight to watch this movement grow

And sow the next generation's seeds,
Ensuring 10 billion will not need
To worry when they'll next have dinner

And I'm sure you can't wait to find out the winner.

A Painful Picture

Part 1: A painful picture

It paints a painful picture,
A technicolour world rendered greyscale.
Coral reefs bleached and deceased,
algae, pickled, under battery acid seas.

A fickle audience consumes
Organic vegetables in a plastic bag.
And in the stomachs of seabirds exhumed -
plastic bits of plastic shit in plastic fish of plastic doom.

Plastic thread on plastic looms,
As if the wool of two or three billion sheep
Is somehow a luxurious commodity.
2016 - a batshit insane odyssey, through scorching fields and burning rain.

This swarm of seven billion sprawls,
Slashing trees and spitting fire.
Orangutans toasted in napalm pyres
For palm oil, so we can eat Nutella.

Part 2:  Venereal disease

It's like watching Fern Gully on repeat -
A self-perpetuating cycle of folly
In which we go to the cinema, guzzle down 24 ounces of crap
From buttered popcorn to Coca-Cola,
Repeating the same mistake over and over.

We're living a real-life Avatar,
Paving the forest with bitumen tar,
Trucks penetrating far inside
Lasciviously as Rasputin pleasured the Russian court
With a mangled crown of genital warts.

This pestilence we spread,
Like venereal disease through a harem
But in the form of soybean.
It's like super-gonorrhoea, no antibiotic, we can't stop it -
I've got to have my steak.

No round of applause
But just like the clap
Doing the rounds between young ones unstrapped,
The drugs we pump into fat-laden cattle
Will leave us last in our bacterial battle.

Part 3:  The chicken-cow-shellfish-human caterpillar

SARS, swine flu, bovine TB,
Do we really need to vaccinate against all of these,
Or should we just eat less bacon?
Maybe that's the mistake we're making.
Seven billion hungry mouths parasitizing a world of fat-laden sows.

It's not that we eat meat, it's the way we farm it.
To put on mass, cows used to eat grass.
Alas, now one third of our total grain gets farted out as methane
From the arses of cattle
And lashes back down as nitric acid rain.

Soybean, maize - all goes to feed chickens, caged.
Chickens, writhing in mounds of piss and shit.
Piss and shit, scooped up and pelleted,
Then fed to cows to produce more shit.  We feed chicken shit to cows!
We eat meat that eats shit because we can hardly produce enough food for us never mind it.

100 000 metric tonnes of shit produced each minute
In the USA alone.
Flows straight into the Gulf of Mexico...
A six and a half thousand square mile deadzone,
Expanding each year, forget BP oil - there's a Mississippi sized sewer.

Excrement starves our seas of life,
Amidst ocean acidification and temperature rise
We've got eutrophication and toxic red tides.
The algae back to bite us,
Despite us.

The irony is,
That toxic algae make toxic shellfish.
So the shit we feed to cows,
Which shit into the seas,
Comes back to haunt our own evacuating bowels.

There was a moose, who drank a lot of juice.
Elk only rhymes with whelk,
Which is just too strange a comparison.

What a pity for wapiti,
Is it a deer or an elk?
I guess we'll forever wonder.

A soggy desert

As the fine orange grains of desert sands
Expand with the rising sun
Into new lands, aflame, the soils erode
To meandering dunes and smother
The withered remnants of fields in June.

But all the while and under the surface,
Barely scratched, the next great deserts
May be the wettest ones of all
Amid plastic waste, a vast expanse
Of liquid drowned by solid plastic mass.

A message in a plastic bottle, lost
For years in the stomach of Nemo.
Swept up and aloft by the wings of a gull,
And found once again by a rugged carcass
Lying next to a rotting skull.

Same tactic, same result

So again, it begins - the satirical masturbation of the left wing,
A protest for only those who subscribed in the first place.
Attempts at humiliating the epitome of privilege,
On deafer ears has nothing ever been less heard.

Before, and after, the same tactic abounds,
On a flurry of social media rounds
To be seen by the seers, unseen by his peers,
Ignored by the ones who vote in arrears.