Saturday 25 February 2012

Poetry Month: Metallosis


The people had a plan;
they would construct
Dalek suits from plywood
with rollers for mobility
and flashing lights on top

So that the Daleks would
not exterminate them.

At first they were mute,
so they installed vocoders
and suckers
and fake Dalek guns that went
fizz-fizz-fizz
which they fired at accomplices
who pretended to die

But the Daleks might notice
that the victims were not dead
and so volunteers were sought
to sacrifice themselves;
they were compelled to die
so that others might live

The tides of war changed
and the Dalek fleet withdrew.
Faced with the removal
of their raison d'ĂȘtre
the people were appalled.

"We must go on;
their sacrifice
will not be in vain"
and the Dalek suits
had cost a fortune

And so the fake plywood Daleks
continued killing
so that the
continued killing
made sense

And the dead screamed
stop, for pity's sake
stop





Wednesday 22 February 2012

Poetry Month: The Manifesto

Look at your champions. The men and women you chose to represent you. Look at them. Well done. Thousands of years of human art have produced a society where they are your master. When the alien ambassadors arrive, they will not greet you. They will greet your leaders, not you. The aliens will not know of you or your kind. Instead, they will return to their home world with tales of vain men in suits, and of yachts, and armoured limousines. They will not notice the sub-species that served drinks and opened doors for the real men of Earth. Whose fault is this? It's your fault, and that of the revolutionaries of the past, who failed. They all failed. I ask you: which revolution had the current state of human society as its intended outcome?

Human society is inherently rotten, because human beings are inherently rotten. They are swine that observe the pearls cast around them with baleful, suspicious eyes. The libraries are deserted. No-one ventures inside. The human animal is not drawn to heaven, instead it must be forced, its face thrust against beauty like a piece of fruit forced into a pineapple slicer. Our resources are finite. If the choice is between a world choked with a swarm of mediocrity or a glowing sun lit from within by radiant beings I choose the latter.


Synonymous Mutations

The mass of humanity processes reality at the level of instinct. They are unaware that their lives are manipulated by animals slightly more shrewd than them. Even if the illusion was shattered they would be unable to act, for they do not have the weapons required to build a new world. My weapon is poetry, and with poetry I will drive a metal spike into the heart of human society. Rats will feed on the corpse, and then each other, and maggots will feed on the rats. There is no lower limit to the chain of organic parasitism.

They say that God made the human form in his own image. He also made humanity vulnerable to the viruses and fungi and cancers that kill millions every year. Our killers are our superiors, and God made them, too. If I could choose an ambassador of Earthly life to present to the alien visitors, I would choose a virus. Not a man. Human beings are grossly inefficient. Viruses are elegant. A short chain of data that kills and reproduces. Not a wobbling mass of fat and bone and flesh that drowns in water, huddles from the wind, reproduces with great expenditure of energy, consumes so much to produce so little. The human animal is not a triumph of complexity. It is a baroque aberration, an insult to the principle of economy. This is not our world.

Human society is not what was intended. It has not worked and there is nothing to be gained from its preservation. Each revolution germinates the seeds of its own destruction, for the revolutionaries are the product of the society they have overthrown. Their perceptions are ingrained, their framework outdated. To the revolutionary minds of the past I say: "this is the world you made; this is the product of your revolution". If you did not anticipate failure, what went wrong? Insufficiency of mind, or of method? Or were you betrayed from without?

Even islands in the ocean are affected by the tides, that coat the beaches in plastic waste from afar. I will sing a new song, with new words, new music, for a new race of post-human beings. The counter-revolutionaries will deny the music, and they will perish in darkness and failure. My new poetry will melt the world from within. Its aim: the total destruction of human society, and of humanity in general. Its means: I will show you.

I stand alone on the beach. Content to watch the planets rise.

Friday 17 February 2012

Poetry Month: The Kill Screen


The internet wants to know;
could the Nazis have won
Pac-Man? And the answer is
no, they could not.

No matter how many rabbits
how many hats; how many patterns
Albert Speer found -
and if one of those devils could find
patterns in Pac-Man, it would be him -
but still
the kill screen was waiting
abrupt and final

The fruit overflowed
overflowed
and overwrote the universe;
a palsy of fruit and numbers

Blasted and impassable
trapped
in a ruined maze
half dead
half alive

No way out and
no way through;
the ghosts
will not be kind




Thursday 9 February 2012

Poetry Month: Recede


Inside the box there is a square
you will find me there
alone with the whole world
punching holes

punching squares of flesh
cut fresh from
the flanks
of the freak show city

squares of brick
and blood and hair
shaped
by windows
rooms and doors;
made
by the prison
it had made

Made of
men and women
who grew and burst;
where flesh met,
the swelling fat
spat

In agony
the creature dies
the insect men
swarm the corpse
and plant a new seed

the freak show city
sees a box, shoulders
the shutter sound lost
in the background
of the freak show city sound

form the meat
work the winder

force the herd
through the grinder

-

You thanked your luck
as they put you on the cattle truck
and said you would be free
You sigh
as the clouds roll by
and you recede
towards the bolt
and the blood-drain
and the land
of no more pain




Monday 6 February 2012

Poetry Month: Pearls


Pigs have no use for pearls
by-product of an oyster's pain
consumed and excreted
not appreciated

by some fat-necked woman
who squeals at the pretty
the expensive pretty

at the library of
iridescent books
dusted and unread
bought for their bindings
bought and bound

-

If oysters ruled the world
they would have found
a cure for pearls

all around their shells
a chain of cancers
cut from a man

Sunday 5 February 2012

Poetry Month: Fox Talbot


Plate II: The Boulevards at Paris


There's a gulf in perception
between artist and technician
the former walks in eternity; the latter has a spanner
and no soul

Young girls do not disrobe for him
galleries do no open for him,
writers do not write about him
except to note that he was an engineer
who developed such-and-such a process
at a certain date

quote it was not until the artist arrived
that the process had meaning
the engineer's photographs
had no soul unquote

Never mind his eye for composition
his choice of subject, his decision
he was not an artist
just a technician

with his workshop;
not a studio, or atelier
although the magic was the same
it was a workshop
defined by the role
imposed on him
because he was a technician
no soul

Saturday 4 February 2012

Poetry Month: All the Way Down


Ancient fleas
had dinosaurs
upon their feet
to stand on

And dinosaurs
had the earth
which drifted through the void
until it hit
an asteroid

Thursday 2 February 2012

Poetry Month: Frontogenesis


In the space
between bombs
the elephants
outline their plan

Safe passage to Australia,
the land
that appears
when they share their dream.

We are doomed either way;
how will they remember us?

Plaster rains on their backs
as the shelling resumes
their children
dream of the crossing

the machines that bore them
and the spirits
that steered the machines



Inspired by this news story

Wednesday 1 February 2012

Poetry Month: No Birds Singing


shot the oficer
in the head
heard screaming
drove off
the sun

it's a good day
a good day

my brother
monster
u shudnt come here
he ddint have weapon

almost turned around

almost

herd another scream
no birds singing

kept walking
faster

normal people
zombie goasts
messy
bloody
at piece

leave this place



From an original
by Squirrelking