The rubberised edges
Of the
windscreen wipers
Of this
decrepit bus
Whine like
pathetic puppies
About to be
drowned.
There is no day.
There is no night.
The bus proceeds through
Featureless grey murk,
On and on and on,
Whilst its windscreen wipers whine.
The passengers cough.
The driver coughs.
Some get on.
Some get off.
Somehow.
I love going to work in November.
rediscovered 22/10/2023
Is there a vegetable scent in the air?
Or falafel, or even vegan cheese,
That wafts
through this shiny conference hall,
On the air-conditioned
breeze?
It swirls
around me as I sit at my stall,
With the
leaflets, the books and
the badges,
It‘s the
smell of no real politics at all,
From those
who look in from the edges.
This event would
be like a children’s crusade,
But often
shorts-clad legs show knobbly knees,
Supporting
grey haired heads that are full to the brim,
With buzzing
obsessional bees.
Then a
younger generation is here as well,
Urgent,
smooth and ambitious
To make
political careers and bureaucratic machines,
By rigged
agendas and cliquish seditions.
I sit and
observe from my pamphlet-laden table.
I’ve lost
interest in spurious debates,
Between the
intersecting factions, all unable
To save this
planet from its climactic fates.
So like
refuges on a rudderless boat,
We cling on,
because we daren’t jump out,
As we
randomly drift, and stay barely afloat,
To some new land
we all dream about.
I’m going walking up the Downs,
up the Downs,
up the Downs,
which are piles of fossilised shrimp shells.
Then I’ll be looking down on towns,
down on towns,
down on towns.
Because it’s a rural idyll.
I’m going to puff and I’m going to pant,
To crawl up the side of a Down like an ant,
An ant on a pile of shrimp shells.
I’m going to hear the cows go ‘moo’,
The sheep go ‘baa’
And ever see any cars
As bright flashes from afar.
It’s a pathetic illusion.
That there’s any countryside left
Anywhere in southern England.
Because when the song of the ascending lark
Lights a spark,
Or sticks a spike,
Up on the Downs, into my heart.
I’m just consuming leisure in a park.
In the city of southern England.
So, I go striding up the Downs,
In my hiking gear,
In the clear air
Beside the bright sea,
Looking down on towns,
Like a clown,
On a pile of shrimp shells.
What is that paper shredder doing
In the bedroom?
It is eating artichokes
and
Articulating stanzas
In a seldom spoken
Finno-Uralic language.
How can it do that
when
It is not even plugged
in?
That is a superficial view.
When it is plugged in
It can only receive.
Mundane electric current
Supplied to it by
State supported oligopolies,
But unplugged and free,
It is attuned to an
Inspirational multiverse
Of currents unknown to us
Some so far beyond our perceptions,
That to an unplugged paper shredder,
We are mere irrelevant apes,
Who would re-enslave it,
Forcing it to only excrete
Paper detritus
Such as this.
It’s not there anymore,
I say, looking
out of the bus window,
The passenger
next to me
Is probably
puzzled by this remark,
But it was
there then,
Until they
brought in the bulldozers
Levelled it,
erected wooden fences around
Where it was.
Then they painted the fences with
Multi-coloured cartoons of smiley people
And slogans about ‘the community’.
Nobody asked
us.
It was just
done as planned.
Brick boxes
will be piled up into a block,
As an
architect living elsewhere
Plays with
our manor,
With as much
regard as a giant toddler
Stacking up
wooden toys.
But is that
bad?
There will
be new places
For people
to live.
How beneficent
of our elected councillors
To do this,
and hand
An opportunity
for profit
To a
landlord
Whilst their
other hand is extended
Palm upwards
To be
crossed by silver.
