POEMS I WROTE
The Seductive Dance of An Alcoholic's Bottle
I've been in a staring contest with her for a week now
And she doesn't show any sign of relenting
I've promised myself I won't win by default
By sampling her contents till empty
But I can taste her flavour from memory
From the pallete to the finish
She taunts me with her long thin body
To pull off her cork, I would relish
An orgasmic sensation on my tongue
Flows from mouth down to liver
But as my hand caresses the corkscrew
I have to fight the temptation to inch closer
But she pulls me in, I am locked to her
Our blood is shared once more
I console myself, she has won again
I lay empty and sideways on the floor
I've been in a staring contest with her for a week now
And she doesn't show any sign of relenting
I've promised myself I won't win by default
By sampling her contents till empty
But I can taste her flavour from memory
From the pallete to the finish
She taunts me with her long thin body
To pull off her cork, I would relish
An orgasmic sensation on my tongue
Flows from mouth down to liver
But as my hand caresses the corkscrew
I have to fight the temptation to inch closer
But she pulls me in, I am locked to her
Our blood is shared once more
I console myself, she has won again
I lay empty and sideways on the floor
Open Coffin
I once heard someone speculate
That we live to see our funeral
To gauge our impact upon those we loved
The final blessing before our passing
It's an egotistical idea
But it leads me to ponder upon
The funeral in its current form
Where the dead continue to live on.
In their profiles and photographs
I can't mourn their passing
RIP means a torn shirt where I come from
Not an acronym of ubiquitous mourning
There's no peace
When you're notified of every interaction
Each heartfelt message
Causes a small seismic happening
No peace
Now they've linked a webcam to your coffin
And Posted up a selfie
To show people how you're rotting
No such luck for us living
Who have to watch each hanging corpse
Paraded by their family
As the hero of their little world
We've always existed with death
But grieving is a process
Not a continuous event
To remind us of the accident
Or illness,
Or suicide, or murder
But it keeps me clicking on strangers profiles
To understand their motives
Fascination occurs when lives are kept open
When there is no answer to our intrusive behaviour
Like a vulture to a the cultural carcass
We're the professional mourners
We move like grave robbers
Every name a headstone of passive guilt
Now the local councils are more transparent
We get details with a swipe or a click
Our eyes transfixed on their former face
And we transform our memory
Juxtapose their time and space
Onto our historical inaccuracies
Moving from website to website
To spread our own personal faux grief
With a fictitious story that others cannot verify
Now they're face to face with a dead body
And as long it keep its mouths shut
And the grieving keep their lives open
The pall bearers will stand waiting to mourn
Staring at an open coffin
I once heard someone speculate
That we live to see our funeral
To gauge our impact upon those we loved
The final blessing before our passing
It's an egotistical idea
But it leads me to ponder upon
The funeral in its current form
Where the dead continue to live on.
In their profiles and photographs
I can't mourn their passing
RIP means a torn shirt where I come from
Not an acronym of ubiquitous mourning
There's no peace
When you're notified of every interaction
Each heartfelt message
Causes a small seismic happening
No peace
Now they've linked a webcam to your coffin
And Posted up a selfie
To show people how you're rotting
No such luck for us living
Who have to watch each hanging corpse
Paraded by their family
As the hero of their little world
We've always existed with death
But grieving is a process
Not a continuous event
To remind us of the accident
Or illness,
Or suicide, or murder
But it keeps me clicking on strangers profiles
To understand their motives
Fascination occurs when lives are kept open
When there is no answer to our intrusive behaviour
Like a vulture to a the cultural carcass
We're the professional mourners
We move like grave robbers
Every name a headstone of passive guilt
Now the local councils are more transparent
We get details with a swipe or a click
Our eyes transfixed on their former face
And we transform our memory
Juxtapose their time and space
Onto our historical inaccuracies
Moving from website to website
To spread our own personal faux grief
With a fictitious story that others cannot verify
Now they're face to face with a dead body
And as long it keep its mouths shut
And the grieving keep their lives open
The pall bearers will stand waiting to mourn
Staring at an open coffin
An Existential Crisis of Structure
Moving at high speed
Over metal planks that are wearing
The 7.37 from Glasgow Central
Containing its energy within
The stillness lost for a split-second
On this life-size brio, set aground
One part of a network of incisions
That unobtrusively connect our towns
I have not laid down a finger
To engineer this feat of labour
But I'm free to enter its carriages
Within reasonable standards of behaviour
The network of wires and rails
Bulldoze through the past lives of the line
But when when a train misses its schedule
Everyone becomes obsessed with time
And not the opportunity to be able to reach
The capital from the North
My generation has it easier
Than it's ever been before
But I realise in that statement
I remove myself from the convention
That aligns itself with Declinism
Because we need instant gratification
We're more intelligent creatures
But that's also our cotton shroud
Where physical objects were once pertinent
Now, we only know about the cloud
And, I couldn't tell a cumulonimbus
From the faint ether of WIFI signal
The rain shall wash over my ignorance
But not over the invisible
Maybe each generation has its labourers
Leaders and guilty passives
Flummoxed by the specifics
Of the technological massive
But it can only take one so far
In the pursuit of pleasured zeal
I'm at the mercy of this technology
I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel
Moving at high speed
Over metal planks that are wearing
The 7.37 from Glasgow Central
Containing its energy within
The stillness lost for a split-second
On this life-size brio, set aground
One part of a network of incisions
That unobtrusively connect our towns
I have not laid down a finger
To engineer this feat of labour
But I'm free to enter its carriages
Within reasonable standards of behaviour
The network of wires and rails
Bulldoze through the past lives of the line
But when when a train misses its schedule
Everyone becomes obsessed with time
And not the opportunity to be able to reach
The capital from the North
My generation has it easier
Than it's ever been before
But I realise in that statement
I remove myself from the convention
That aligns itself with Declinism
Because we need instant gratification
We're more intelligent creatures
But that's also our cotton shroud
Where physical objects were once pertinent
Now, we only know about the cloud
And, I couldn't tell a cumulonimbus
From the faint ether of WIFI signal
The rain shall wash over my ignorance
But not over the invisible
Maybe each generation has its labourers
Leaders and guilty passives
Flummoxed by the specifics
Of the technological massive
But it can only take one so far
In the pursuit of pleasured zeal
I'm at the mercy of this technology
I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel
Lang-
I'm not so good at writing since computers were invented
My grammar is appalling and I can't join up my letters
Language is evolving faster than the human species
You can't attribute that to god, nobodies rhyming words with Jesus
But we still celebrate the atoms that make up our bodies.
If I die before you do, make sure I get a street named after me
Although a word would better
A Buclaw (noun) Someone who makes snide remarks against humanity without a counter-argument
Example: I wish he would show some respect and stop being a Buclaw.
(Just for the record my surname, Buclaw, is Polish and has an accented L, so should actually be pronounced Bootswav.
Much the same way the Polish City that looks like Wro-claw is pronounced Vrotswav)
But what does a word I don't understand mean?
I can guess at the pronunciation of each letter using phonetics,
Or not in the case of a language that uses an alternative phonetic system
But it still doesn't give the word a definition
I can put letters in new orders and reassign meanings
Accept the plaudits of literary critics
While I bluff my way to win at the Scrabble World Championships
But I can't be on a panel show of intellectuals
Without first deciphering the context in which the word "panel" is being associated
I could be contractually obliged to enter these intellectuals houses
Standing hunched over by a Laptop
While the intellectual searches online through photographs and 3D models
Picking out the perfect panel to fit for the extension
All the while Melvyn Bragg is discussing the history of the Panel
A process which takes some time, due to the nature of academics precisely defining each word
Including words within the definition of each word
After a lengthy consultation with Oxford, we have enough material for a half hour show
And I am forced to do the manual labour by a rogue producer armed with a Victorian Camera
Each time I struggle I take a blow to the body
As I shakily start to fit the panels, for the amusement of an audience
But since our knowledge takes years to develop
And our specialist subjects even longer to master
I feel am parachuting into enemy territory armed with a pronoun and a verb
But I like the democratic way language evolves
The way communities and generations build their own dialect
And then foreign invaders, like me, come along and take them into my own context
I'm not so good at writing since computers were invented
My grammar is appalling and I can't join up my letters
Language is evolving faster than the human species
You can't attribute that to god, nobodies rhyming words with Jesus
But we still celebrate the atoms that make up our bodies.
If I die before you do, make sure I get a street named after me
Although a word would better
A Buclaw (noun) Someone who makes snide remarks against humanity without a counter-argument
Example: I wish he would show some respect and stop being a Buclaw.
(Just for the record my surname, Buclaw, is Polish and has an accented L, so should actually be pronounced Bootswav.
Much the same way the Polish City that looks like Wro-claw is pronounced Vrotswav)
But what does a word I don't understand mean?
I can guess at the pronunciation of each letter using phonetics,
Or not in the case of a language that uses an alternative phonetic system
But it still doesn't give the word a definition
I can put letters in new orders and reassign meanings
Accept the plaudits of literary critics
While I bluff my way to win at the Scrabble World Championships
But I can't be on a panel show of intellectuals
Without first deciphering the context in which the word "panel" is being associated
I could be contractually obliged to enter these intellectuals houses
Standing hunched over by a Laptop
While the intellectual searches online through photographs and 3D models
Picking out the perfect panel to fit for the extension
All the while Melvyn Bragg is discussing the history of the Panel
A process which takes some time, due to the nature of academics precisely defining each word
Including words within the definition of each word
After a lengthy consultation with Oxford, we have enough material for a half hour show
And I am forced to do the manual labour by a rogue producer armed with a Victorian Camera
Each time I struggle I take a blow to the body
As I shakily start to fit the panels, for the amusement of an audience
But since our knowledge takes years to develop
And our specialist subjects even longer to master
I feel am parachuting into enemy territory armed with a pronoun and a verb
But I like the democratic way language evolves
The way communities and generations build their own dialect
And then foreign invaders, like me, come along and take them into my own context
God's House
Sat in God's house drinking beer listening to live music makes me think
About how the diversification of religion has already begun to take shape.
At what point did the Devil's music enter into God's house?
To survive in a world driven by the economy
One has to turn a blind eye to old principles and old rhetoric
Regardless of whether they still resonate on Sundays
But as the symbolism still hangs over us
It serves as a reminder that we are in a foreign place
One that does not usually see the lighter side of our faces
But one that would sooner encourage us to take a more righteous path.
Ironically of course, we indirectly are helping to fund the very thing we do not believe in.
But yet, we do believe in a beautiful place that does not discriminate
Brings together the diversified segments of our generation
In a place whose ideologies no longer ring in our ears
But allow a beautiful new aesthetic to sing from the altar
Sat in God's house drinking beer listening to live music makes me think
About how the diversification of religion has already begun to take shape.
At what point did the Devil's music enter into God's house?
To survive in a world driven by the economy
One has to turn a blind eye to old principles and old rhetoric
Regardless of whether they still resonate on Sundays
But as the symbolism still hangs over us
It serves as a reminder that we are in a foreign place
One that does not usually see the lighter side of our faces
But one that would sooner encourage us to take a more righteous path.
Ironically of course, we indirectly are helping to fund the very thing we do not believe in.
But yet, we do believe in a beautiful place that does not discriminate
Brings together the diversified segments of our generation
In a place whose ideologies no longer ring in our ears
But allow a beautiful new aesthetic to sing from the altar
I Want To Marry An Intellectual Property Lawyer
I want to marry an Intellectual Property Lawyer
And show her my favourite infringements
We can make love to the sound of Pirate Bay
Every time someone downloads a torrent
I've got the hots for a patent
And it gets steamy in our room
When we think about the lawsuit
Samsung will file against Apple soon
We'll get excited when we sing-a-long to Hip-Hop
Not because we remember Grandmaster Flash's words
Instead, I'll be rapping Bridgeport Music's case notes
Throughout the second verse
We can stock our house full of examples
Of common words that were originally a trademark
And I whisper the sweet nothings into her ear
Of Hoover, Granary and Stetson
Together we create our own copyright franchise
Hoarding intangible goods for commerce
Our talent is using the ambiguity of law
To ensure the copyright thieves are restricted
The critics make IP sound like a thought crime
Even though it's about the protection of ideas
And our thoughts are worth more these days
Than the ones that whistle past your ears
And in case you think you can use these words
For personal amusement or commercial protection
They'll be tattooed on my wife's back
And I won't hesitate to use her as evidence
I want to marry an Intellectual Property Lawyer
And show her my favourite infringements
We can make love to the sound of Pirate Bay
Every time someone downloads a torrent
I've got the hots for a patent
And it gets steamy in our room
When we think about the lawsuit
Samsung will file against Apple soon
We'll get excited when we sing-a-long to Hip-Hop
Not because we remember Grandmaster Flash's words
Instead, I'll be rapping Bridgeport Music's case notes
Throughout the second verse
We can stock our house full of examples
Of common words that were originally a trademark
And I whisper the sweet nothings into her ear
Of Hoover, Granary and Stetson
Together we create our own copyright franchise
Hoarding intangible goods for commerce
Our talent is using the ambiguity of law
To ensure the copyright thieves are restricted
The critics make IP sound like a thought crime
Even though it's about the protection of ideas
And our thoughts are worth more these days
Than the ones that whistle past your ears
And in case you think you can use these words
For personal amusement or commercial protection
They'll be tattooed on my wife's back
And I won't hesitate to use her as evidence
Anger Management
A new day, a breaking news story
Some minor controversy to heed
The paparazzi stalk some poor fool's house
Rubbing the wound until it bleeds
Two sides begin point scoring
In a simple game of misdirection
Sure enough, the anger spills over
Into the comment section
It's no longer acceptable to have a view
That contradicts the received wisdom
A heretic, called every other name
For voicing their democratic opinion
The digital recorder is always rolling
The hidden camera always in operation
Streaming an infinite number of films
With an infinite number of admissions
It's where passion becomes opportunistic
Slaying the hapless victim in broad daylight
Making the case through hyperbole
To encourage the mild mannered to fight
Each sensation attaches its fangs
Tightening as its pulled like a leech
Bleeding the unscrupulous perpetrator
Into an apologetic speech
Whether or not they're guilty
Or their apologies are heartfelt
It shapes party policy
Weeding controversy out
In an instant, a headline can be polarised
No need for further reading
Send intellectual bile in e-mails
To help the trolls get their feeding
Every soundbite and photograph
Is a snapshot of a mere second
Of the wider conversation
For which no-one appears to be beckoned
Instead they invite angered bystanders
Who are groomed into repeating words
Manufacturing each stereotype
To sell newspapers to the world
Yet, I'm shamed by those on my side
Who claim to be more tolerant and calm
But swear just the same when words are exchanged
From Passion to a secular psalm
Quoting fallible sources held in esteem
To mask their incredulity
Veiled threats of violence erupt from the crowd
Against those who protect the community
The arrogance assimilates
Through the self-conscious beings
Who exclude the context or the history
Because now is where it's happening
Living, breathing, angry machines
Coerced to write opinions
Onto every media page
That sells their personal feelings
And every click, a willing inhabitant
Commits their rage to paper
Making impossible connections
Between ideology and the data
Until satire numbs the issue
With a caricature of a figure
Dumbing down the argument further
Into consumable popular culture
Then we laugh out loud at the broken promise
Snorting into our drinks
Then the cycle is completed
We've no further need to think
Till tomorrow, when a pungent Minister
Spreads his odour onto public service
The vitriol will descend once more
Singing from many contradictory verses
A new day, a breaking news story
Some minor controversy to heed
The paparazzi stalk some poor fool's house
Rubbing the wound until it bleeds
Two sides begin point scoring
In a simple game of misdirection
Sure enough, the anger spills over
Into the comment section
It's no longer acceptable to have a view
That contradicts the received wisdom
A heretic, called every other name
For voicing their democratic opinion
The digital recorder is always rolling
The hidden camera always in operation
Streaming an infinite number of films
With an infinite number of admissions
It's where passion becomes opportunistic
Slaying the hapless victim in broad daylight
Making the case through hyperbole
To encourage the mild mannered to fight
Each sensation attaches its fangs
Tightening as its pulled like a leech
Bleeding the unscrupulous perpetrator
Into an apologetic speech
Whether or not they're guilty
Or their apologies are heartfelt
It shapes party policy
Weeding controversy out
In an instant, a headline can be polarised
No need for further reading
Send intellectual bile in e-mails
To help the trolls get their feeding
Every soundbite and photograph
Is a snapshot of a mere second
Of the wider conversation
For which no-one appears to be beckoned
Instead they invite angered bystanders
Who are groomed into repeating words
Manufacturing each stereotype
To sell newspapers to the world
Yet, I'm shamed by those on my side
Who claim to be more tolerant and calm
But swear just the same when words are exchanged
From Passion to a secular psalm
Quoting fallible sources held in esteem
To mask their incredulity
Veiled threats of violence erupt from the crowd
Against those who protect the community
The arrogance assimilates
Through the self-conscious beings
Who exclude the context or the history
Because now is where it's happening
Living, breathing, angry machines
Coerced to write opinions
Onto every media page
That sells their personal feelings
And every click, a willing inhabitant
Commits their rage to paper
Making impossible connections
Between ideology and the data
Until satire numbs the issue
With a caricature of a figure
Dumbing down the argument further
Into consumable popular culture
Then we laugh out loud at the broken promise
Snorting into our drinks
Then the cycle is completed
We've no further need to think
Till tomorrow, when a pungent Minister
Spreads his odour onto public service
The vitriol will descend once more
Singing from many contradictory verses