The Edgware Road is very old

The Edgware Road is very old

Roman paving laid over ancient track,

So legions could march northwest

To crush druids

Into blood, bone and ash.

Empires do what empires do

And still do until this day

Oppress, enslave and denigrate,

Cut down anyone in their way.

And the Edgware Road still stands,

Like a doddering elderly man

With a dodgy prostate gland

It has burst a water main

And pissed all over itself.

This has backed up lines

Of lorries, car buses taxis and vans

Full of fatty foods and loads

And fat people eating fatty foods.

Will the whole metropolis

Back up, seize up and stop,

As the imperial artery

Clogs, chokes and blocks?

EARLY MORNING RADIO NEWS

Prittle, Prattle,

Wiffle, Waffle

The radio drones on

In the next room.

 

Spittle, Spattle,

Piddle, Widdle,

I ablute my ablutions,

In the bathroom nearby.

 

Mumble, Bumble,

Grumble, stumble.

Now I can hear

Fool talking to fool.

 

Argule, Bargule

Refute , Convolute.

Half truths and lies and prejudiced mush

I’d hear more sense if I

Went back to the bathroom

And listened attentively

As the toilet flushed.

arse end of the island

 Sitting on the arse end of the island

On bench at the beach

In the drizzling rain

As clouds close the horizon down

I can see a cormorant flying low

Over the grey waves

No sign of any other land

Or anything else

Though I know that out there

People crammed in flimsy rubber dinghies,

Wish they could skim over the sea

Like that cormorant

And join landlocked objects,

Like me and that bollard.

THE COUNT

 I walked into an ancient computer,

In an echoing suburban sports hall,

I watched its components all working

And they looked back at me.

I watched them processing the data,

Which was my task to see.

Paper data arrived in boxes

It was spilt out onto table tops.

A component checked around carefully

For data missed or dropped.

Human hands sorted the data,

By human eyes each item was seen

Could there be fewer errors

If fed through a digital machine?

Bribery blackmail and prejudice

Can alter what humans do,

Machines are not intelligent enough,

But they can be corrupted as well.

Waged workers sitting at tables

Are the ancient computers parts

They might care about democracy

Since their votes will be counted too,

But a soulless machine

Just rapidly does whatever it’s going to do

Counting votes, dropping bombs

Or playing a stupid tune

Or all of these things at once

And it does not care because it cannot care

About anything that it has done.