Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Adam Smith's Sock Problem

Sock, Sock, Sock, emergency
There are no Socks upon my feet,
There are no Socks that I can see
Socks Socks Socks immediately

Woke up in the morning
Birds are singing in the tree
But I see toes in front of me
So I seek Socks with great urgency

Sock, Sock, Sock, emergency
There are no Socks upon my feet,
There are no Socks that I can see
Socks Socks Socks immediately

My Socks are vermin dirty or
My Socks are soaking wet
But I gotta wear them or go barefoot
I got a marked absence of hosiery

Sock, Sock, Sock, emergency
There are no Socks upon my feet,
There are no Socks that I can see
Socks Socks Socks immediately

But am I gonna sit here
Til my feet grow fur?
No! I’m gonna get up and get going
Be a Sock entrepreneur,

Sock, Sock, Sock, emergency
There are no Socks upon my feet,
There are no Socks that I can see
So I gonna start up a Sock factory

Gonna raise up some capital
Gonna go it alone
Get them third world kids knitting
Inna Free trade zone

Sock, Sock, Sock, emergency
There are no Socks upon my feet,
There are no Socks that I can see
Make more Socks immediately

Now I’ve started moving, I ain’t gonna stop
Like a shark in the water,
I keep swimming or I drop
I won’t let anyone else make any socks

Yes it’s Sock, Sock, Sock, emergency
You all gotta buy your socks from me
I wiped out all competition, so now you see
I gotta Sock, Sock, Sock, monopoly

Thursday, August 30, 2007

I am writing this with a mouse that has just eaten my brain (open letter to Quobble)

As a dead critic I am writing this with a mouse that has just eaten my brain and I would like to deplore the directionless neologism so typical of the neo-modern so called 'bloggospheriglobe' now displayed in the trite tractor-stewn pages of the so called shiny new shopping precint style zolan quobble website http://www.zolanquobble.co.uk/.

You can cast your pods as far as you like and stick your feeds right up your RSS. What we need are the old classics that we used to ignore while drunk in upper rooms of Croydon pubs, some of these are sights of special scientific ignorance in their own right.

eg The Quobblishads
The Epic of Quobblamesh
The battle of the immovable leaf covered quobbles
Beoquobble
Quobble's Cattle Raid
The Quobblignion
If you gave me a car

Sunday, July 08, 2007

My name is Albert Ross,

My name is Albert Ross,
I live up in the sky,
There is no where for me to land
I fly, I fly, I fly,

I glide above the ocean waves
Tween Antarctic and equator,
I estimate, I caculate,
I am a navigator.

I search and then I’ll find an isle
I’ll land and then I’ll dance
I’ll clack my beak.
I’ll reproduce
And when my young are full of fish
I’ll glide away again

I fly, I fly, I fly, I fly
Away, away again
touching wavetops
with wingtips
Tween Antarctic and equator,
I’ll navigate, I’ll estimate
I fly into the future

Saturday, May 19, 2007

TOM ANT 19 5 07

I am an ant
I love a mass,
but I am not
adam ant
my name is Tom
but that is not my name,
There is no me,
you see, I am ant
I am not an ant
There is no I
There is no me
I am just a part of a colony
It follows from
This that
I am not Tom
I am just a Tom
So I am Tom ant
A tom in a mass

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

some new poems march2007

THE LAST TRUE MAN

The last true man looks out over the plain,
The thick hair on his brow ridge
Keeps the sleet out of his eyes
As a squall blows over.
Its cold wind is as sharp as a flint flake,
But he sits as still as a brother to the boulders
That he sits among.
His gaze goes out level with the eagles, hawks and vultures
Drifting round on the thermals
Coming up from the flat lands below.
Sometimes the birds cluster
And one or two drop down at first,
Then more and more follow
Like a slow feathered tornado forming.
He knows that here will be fresh meat down there
and remembers the days when he dared to go down to get it
with his fathers and brothers and sisters and mothers
but now he fears that arrows will meet him
as so many met so many of them
swarming like stinging bees from cover
stinging bees that sting forever
so he sits up on the mountain
his family now
are only the boulders that he sits among.

THE SALMON OF GOWER STREET

Rushing like salmon maddened by a need to spawn upstream
Each lone individual calculates
Without thinking
which piece of pavement to move to next,
Who to overtake, who to brush past,
who can almost be pushed aside,
When to swerve, when to accelerate,
even when to stop momentarily,
Step off the kerb into the gutter
Or seeing a gap in the traffic
To dash across the road.

Collectively, or each alone,
I doubt if they’d care
If a gargantuan grizzly bear
Standing on top of the hotels and universities of Gower Street
Swiped down with a massive paw
Impaled some poor commuter on its claw
And lifted the screaming wretch
Up into the sky
I reckon one or two might look up
Shrug and rush on
For their work awaits
And debts must be fed.

THE 5 ODES OF THE BORED BARMAN

1
I can’t think of anything but
How much my feet hurt
They feel like they’re being
Simultaneously squashed, sandpapered and grilled
As I slave for the minimum wage
By leaning on the wrong side of the bar waiting for someone to ask
For another fucking cappuccino

2
If that bloody woman
Comes on the video jukebox again
Yowling, screaming twitching and howling
It’ll be the fifth time that I’ve seen and heard
Her damn video today .
I have no idea what her lyrics are saying
or failing to say
But it is undoubtedly inane
And I hate her more and more
With each slowly passing second of each
slowly passing minute of each
slowly passing hour of each
five year long working day.

3
I got the job as barman,
Just after the bar had been refurbished
The first customers blew in that very day
They flew in on slight, barely visible gossamer wings
Little black moving air borne things
That did not go away
When you stopped rubbing your eyes
Yes, the regulars were already here
Ready to die for a drink
Prepared to drown in fine blond Cuban rum
Or even the brown slops of Bombardier bitter
And every day since that I’ve worked here
I’ve served them politely whether I wanted to or not
Because the customers are always right
Even if they are barflies.




4
This job only appears to be unskilled, you know
It actually involves the cutting edge of intellectual effort
Like deciding exactly when
To fill up the paper cup on the bar in front of the coffee machine
With wooden stirrers.
This action has to be precisely timed
And performed with a view to possible management surveillance
So as to signify
A productive and eager operative
Able to act on his/her own initiative
Then there is the related question of
Gauging precisely the right amount
Of wooden stirrers to put in the paper cup.
Personally, I do this with a kind of instinctive Zen feel
Hand feels, but eye does not see
As I grope in the wooden stirrer box in the dark barside cupboard
Hand almost always emerging clutching
The right amount of wooden stirrers
It is a skill that I will carry with me to my grave.

5
Green leatherette chairs, stools and sofas
Now featuring a cigarette burn here and there
Beige angular tables
Like parts of a Stonehenge made of shiny laminated wood.
A billiard able that seldom works
A quiz machine beloved of a coterie of librarians
Four plasma video screens
Strategically positioned and constantly on
So that no-one can escape from fun
Clear glass Bulgarian ashtrays
Sensibly and centrally placed on each table at the start of trading each day
Then chaotically rearranged by an anarchic and unstable clientele
These are the barman’s horizons
Which sometimes extend
To pigeons perched outside the window
These birds seem smug to the barman
Since they know that they can fly away to
Horizons that he cannot see.