‘PREDATOR’ or

Why drive a vehicle along these roads,

Which has the word ‘PREDATOR’

Emblazoned on it. In large letters,

In a sort-of-aggressive font with jagged edges?

Is it supposed to look like the sharp teeth,

That you might glimpse in the mouth

Of an imagined tiger, or a sudden shark?

Who are you trying to impress or frighten,

When you are only a naked ape

Encased in a movable steel and plastic box?

Not a fierce wild stalking carnivore,

Nor any type of soaring eagle or hawk,

As anyone would see, if you just walked.

But maybe it wasn’t you who

Chose the logo.

Maybe some designer somewhere

Thought that it was a good idea,

Which could sell cars to

Those who believed one scary word

Would designate a striving driver,

On their way up some social pyramid

Or at least some one with

An aggressive intention to ruthlessly rise.

Whilst in others’ eyes

It just shows that

You are a mechanised rat.

 

When you use a plastic claw

 When you use a plastic claw

And kick against friction on the floor

Just to get your socks on

And that’s the morning’s pinnacle.

When the sight of someone walking,

Unaided with sticks or a frame,

Just anyone walking anywhere

And that seems like a marvelous miracle

When putting dead veg on a compost heap

After another restless night’s sleep

Is a epic that’s almost biblical

When your faculties start to fade and fall

One after another like skittles in a line

And you tell yourself that it’s really all fine

Because these things are all cyclical

You could come back another time

As bird or beast or fish or slime

Or go to heaven or hell or nowhere at all

You might then know if myths are mythical.

Waiting for results

Waiting for results

Used to mean

Listening for the letterbox clanging;

And the thud of letters dropping

Onto the doormat.

Some messages still arrive that way

But now it’s more likely to be

Suddenly flashed up on a screen

Flickering suddenly

So you may look twice

To read and believe,

Also it could arrive

With an irritating phone noise

That informs what the diagnosis is,

If the exams are passed

Or who has been elected

And which one fool will rule

Outside

While inside the body

Another disease is named.

MISTAKEN MACHINE

I did not get the drink that I wanted

Out of the vending machine,

So, I immediately concluded

That this was my mistake;

Since a mistake is something

That a machine never can make.

My fumbling fingers are fallible,

Which a machine can never be,

And I know this to be completely true,

Because I need total certainty

In a revolving uncertain world

Which always changes around me,

As I also change and age

And my body fails gradually.

Yet long before this decline began

I was told of an infallible, all-knowing god

But even as a small orphan

I began to doubt his plan

As unanswered prayers

And ominous hints

Failed to convince

That there was any god anywhere

 I shrugged my shoulders

Got drunk and worked away years

As I could not know

And did not care

So, now a machine that makes mistakes

Is the only thing that’s there.

Always too previous,

 Always too previous,

Start to do the next thing

Before the last one is finished

And leaving the one before that undone.

Never happy when I am

Unable to freeze any moment

In the torrent of time.

Before it arrives

It’s only a dream

Then it’s here

And, in a flash, it’s gone;

Only fragments are left

To be reconstructed

In memory whilst

The next possible event

Has grabbed my attention.

But I’m trying to focus on

Whatever could be

Looming up after that

So I try to concentrate

With the attention span of a gnat.

THE LATE WAITING ROOM

I am a patient patient,

In waiting rooms I wait,

With ever increasing anxiety,

In case the waiting room is late.

It might be due for an appointment,

But forgot to set the alarm,

Or missed the bus or the taxi,

Or couldn’t start the car.

It might have go the address wrong.

It might have mistaken the date.

Then I would be aghast

If the waiting room flew past

And I couldn’t wait any more.

I might feel deep frustration,

Alienation or anomie

If the waiting room

That I was waiting for

Hadn’t waited for me.

listening to a history podcast at present

 I put on the headphones

To drown out the news,

I have an information addiction

That I need to feed.

I want to get drunk

On useless detail

To hear byzantine factoids

About Byzantium

To clutter up my brain

With the intricacies

Of the build up to

The American civil war.

There’s no such thing

As enough of this stuff.

I want to find out

More and more and more.

Because it’s done now

 It can’t be undone

And I hope that

This knowledge might

Make me numb

To the numbers

Coming up everyday

On the radio or the computer feed

Forty-four, or seventy-three, or thirty-one

Have died today

So, I use history to hide

From everyday’s genocide.