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.

Theresa DisMay

It's happened, since that fabled day - finally steeped into mad disarray.
Great job UK, one fell swoop and we're landed with Theresa May.
A new, centrist, righter than Reich
To delve us into turbid plight
As the opposition bifurcates in spite.

Not content with demolishing the poor, or spiting the disabled,
Failed plans to curb a deficit has clearly been enabled
By these immigrants, who give us life,
An NHS thus locked in strife,
Without whom the scalpel might well be a blunted knife.

These foreign workers, workers, still - blamed for taking benefits,
Despite the working title the English disaffected
Will blame it on them,
It's not our fault it's them,
It's not our fault, the 88%, of course it's not, it's them.

Well, not all of them, it's okay for some - we'll cheer on Mo Farah crossing the line
The Greatest British Olympian of all time,
Lauded, truly, one of a kind
Of Somalian birth,
When then do we mind?

Clearly, if you were born here, the rest are of no worth,
The ones who fill the jobs we need for which we have a dearth.
A register of foreign birth,
As Amber reaches from the hearth
The scolded words of a time gone by and a more unsavoury world.

Yes Theresa, forward we go, back to an insular land.
A global country open for business, as long as you understand -
You can't stay here, you can't work here,
A world citizen is of nowhere.
Well fine then Theresa, I'd rather be anywhere but here.

Seven days of scarlet nights

Right in the thick of it, I’m sick of it,

Seven days of scarlet nights,

Mornings pasted into white,

As days pass in a flash of spite

And spitting rage at morning’s light.

But painted on a face of joy,

Not more a man than once a boy

And perilously seeking still

A momentary respite.

---

Sullen eyes of red concede

A faded victory crudely torn

From sight ahead while shadows steep

On daisy-scattered un-mowed lawns.

Where streaks of green seem stunted yet,

Their hearts are cold and minds are set

To care for one and all for none,

Lest those out of sight beget.

Let those of sound mind not forget.

HSSCDRV – Donald Trump and the Human Society-Suppressing Care-Deficient Retrovirus

You look like a constipated lemon

That’s fading round the edges

Like the crusty volumes in Whitehall

Reneging on their pledges.

Your mouth spouts such spurious shit

Your rectum is redundant,

You could fertilise a thousand fields

With the vitriol your drainpipe spits.

But despite your abhorrence,

Like dung beetles, your scat-deprived audience

Savours, rolls and feasts the manure

Dripping from your every putrid utterance.

It’s you who exudes the stench

But they who make my stomach rile

My liver spit out bitter green bile,

My gut wrench against vacant lack of sense.

But it’s not just hillbilly cotton-eye Joe

It’s the vile velleity of apathy in-tow, Cameron and co.

Disputing your madness yet passing through

Deceit and ideals that make your callous words seem true.

It’s not a man’s world it’s a bigot’s playground.

While all around your promise of a wall gets slighted,

They’re shutting the borders to the plighted

To satiate blighted Middle England’s unsighted.

Yes, you’re two horns short of Balthasar

But are you any worse

Than Bush, Cruz, or any of the tools

Who pander to this mass of disdainful fools?

These crass, self-serving reprobates

Who populate the upper and middle classes

Turn out to vote in an elitist right

Who smugly smite down from up high with spite.

In spite of these, the “extreme” left wing

Suggesting such outlandish things

As equal rights and prosperity for plenty

A deranged ideal for the dung beetle gentry.

A deranged ideal for these vacuous vectors

Of a society-supressing care-deficient retrovirus

Supplanting genes of reprehensibility –

And splicing through the NHS with glee.

HSSCDRV

That’s the virus, it’s the only way to explain

The disconnected hatred that seeps through the veins

Of a society genetically manipulated to feel no shame.

Like a naked mole rat lacks pain receptors,

These infected, contagious guinea-pig sheep

Are rendered impervious to suffering and need,

Empathy epigenetically concealed.

Empathy switched off by the virulent press,

Promoting an apathetic, selfish plaque;

The Alzheimer’s strangles the prefrontal cortex

As we descend, confused, to a hatred-fuelled past.

I wish you were a constipated lemon,

Then at least your bitterness would be good for something,

I could slice you into pieces and sip you with my gin,

But it looks like you actually might win.

A pointy stick

Ideas flow in a maelstrom
But they seem to pop
Without a big pointy stick.

What ought to be

What ought to be, on the word of a whispering lark
that flutters over dew-soaked fields, masked
by the sun's bright, blinding reflection.

Refracted rays deflect the bird's flight
as my ears strain to make out his faded song.
Lost, my eyes scour the tips of the sparkling leaves

But the drips, with each minute, evaporate to clouds
as with them the lark's whisper wanes to a hush,
and still I contemplate what ought to be.

What are we to do?

What is the want of any one of us?
Get schooled, get work, get paid.

Get paid, pay it back, and frittered away,
Always into the same few pockets.

It jingles loudly, it grows and balloons,
The gold sits in vaults while interest accrues.

And each year it swells as the workers dwell
On their meagre pay that'll end there as well.

We need to stop, to stop the rot
We work, we play, we pay, we pay.

No shame the greedy billionaires bliss
Top down? Bugger off, this never was witnessed.

It's been bottom up since day one, and again,
The top one percent piss all over us.

The bastards burn, the bastards abuse,
The bastards rape, they take us for fools.

But what on earth is a fool to do?

A week since John fell off his chair

It's a week since John fell off his chair,
a week has gone and I wish I was there.
Karaoke sung 'til the early hours
with Britney, Whitney and a fiberglass cow.

We gathered together to uproot assumptions,
growing together in a lush Swiss jungle.
We thought, we built, we made and played,
expanding horizons in a post-it haze.

We dreamed of cauliflower with a better taste,
kithe chali hai gobi da phul banke,
a world that truly appreciates its brocolli,
mustard seeds, turnips, Brassicas and bees.

We scoured the cardboard mushroom maze
designed in famous Oupas! style
for pineapples amongst the swathes
of a feel-good, caffeine-fuelled, morning rave.

The comedown bites from each event
'til next year's family comes in search
of more ideas and space to grow
with positive minds, no room for no.

For sure, next year, more untapped minds
are bound to pitch and wine and dine,
as still the movement marches forth
and yet more ideas are born.

I await with glee to see Kulisha
sustainably feeding the Tilapia farms
as Biteback nourish our shelves with oil
and fight against the raging palms.

While Frooticycle fly from fields
delivering veg to market stalls
and yoghurt enriched by Peer-to-Peer
provides a fix to nourish us all.

It's a week since John fell off his chair,
I've never yet had such a laughter-ridden spree.
Four days, three nights, we giggled in delight
And my stomach aches for next year's glee.

25 hours in London

Friday night and sirens blare,
I try not to stare but look
As throngs of feet drip past
And there sit two fire trucks.

They pull a dubious u-turn
And almost collide head-on,
The bustle is confusing
For anyone straddling these streets.

The firemen watch me,
fag in hand, they think -
It's them that burn the houses
Down, whiskey bottle in hand.

Back inside the city hotel
I catch a chat at the bar
Practising my French for a while,
I've almost forgotten where I am.

I fancy a jar to clear my mind,
Addled by the constant buzz -
Normally I'd step outside
To think, but here it's unnatural

Unless, you're an ant.  This
Swarm of perpetual foot fall
Pounds in my ears and rings
Like I've developed tinitis.

I give up, back to the bar,
A double whiskey, a bit more French
And unprepared I head to bed,
My saturated mind to settle.

Down twelve quid only eight hours later,
A taxi drives aimlessly round
Pretending the pitiful length
Of the journey warrants a tip.

And now I'm in a post-capitalist
Wasteland, wondering how
Much it'll cost to buy outright
A measley one bed studio flat

Where the nearest decent shop
Is a DLR stop down the line,
Inflating the price of a pint
Of milk at five hundred percent.

And finally it's time to leave
This desolate, throbbing jungle
As my carriage sweeps through vast,
Crumbling, concrete estates.

Then the descent into the black
Of a train-sized manhole, packed
Until the doors slide open
And I join the wilderbeast

Which stampede toward the central line
And cram me to the wall as I
Attempt to stem the incessant flow
In vain to try and read the map.

Back in the throng, a bottleneck,
Of a fattening queue blocks
The steps of a perfectly decent
But overwhelmingly underused set of stairs.

I skirt the laziness and beat
The escalator, and narrowly
Avoid being knocked to the ground
As the wilderbeast peg it

To the gate, which slams
So suddenly shut that my bag
Was hardly accommodated,
Heaved through and over, before

I realise it's mid-October,
Umpteen feet under the ground
And I'm sweltering, wearing
Only a t-shirt and a Harrington,

Accentuated as I step inside
A burning hot tin of humans
Pressed against doors and squashed
Together, no-one catching an eye.

I ponder the words of Alan
Partridge, who said of London
That you can go there but
You'll either be mugged or unappreciated.

I've never been mugged but
I feel like a muggle, lost
In a mysterious metropolis
I'll never fully understand.

I eventually reach platform six
Of Liverpool Street Station,
Coffee in hand and I sigh...
Thank fuck I live in Norwich!