That exiguous light seeps
from held screens – sewn
threads [links] all drawing
us into withal distractions
by memes/ Impossibilities
stack higher ’til our hearts
give up [love is a short lie]
Tag: social media
We Will Get Old
We will then rue
how much time
we dead-stared
at gripping light
at bright scrolls
& herded bleats
on social media
[how much time
we gave blind to
urges of friends –
apes never met]
Our trivial troop
isn’t pukka fidus
Achates/ Delete
is not an option/
Dead friend lists
will haunt us all –
we will get old &
never know who
is truly breathing
Two hundred yards away
Two hundred yards away
a teenager tries to stand
upright on a rolling bale/
My right-hand dares on
your inner thigh – you are
loosened straw alongside
me – a fat man in running
attire walks past [sex pest
threats are laughed off] – I
want to [but we have only
just met]/ Tinder dates for
ill-coupled counsels haste
& only my imagination has
you naked & rolled tight – I
put my thoughts into you/
Tipping Points
Here is paralysim’s circus show –
of trotting saddle-stiff gits – let’s
sit & peer [but not forget our FB
friends] – here – whipping riders
above us – lofty rein-pullers/ No –
it matters [their tongues strip at-
&-lash as loose as far-right thugs]
Our Elizabeth R rides through her
grounds – us plebs place Her M on
Instagram [#Queen] – Please post
& share HM on your timeline – it is
a recall of an Empire’s crush of life
A pitiful man tips into dead water
but doesn’t drown – iron men will
dross [some ore will bleed to red]
Rubicund stains are inequal over
every cast tyrant/ Please – do not
erect a bronze of her racist Philip
Devices & Desires
.. we fail to realise how unnecessary
many things are
Seneca – Letters from a Stoic
I may forbear fingering magalogs
of wants-not-needs – buying hope
on our poking ‘phones of popping
offerings/ Mutterings are greedily
overheard by AI [I’m replacing our
barbecue – a B&Q ad appears – its
pop-up perturbs us whilst we view
Love Island’s insta-brigues]/ I can
navel-gaze all day/ I am a shoddy
commodity [mine not so desirable
unless re-figured by an airbrush in
Photoshop’s too-mendacious bag]
My weight drops off when I bezzle
less – mathematics of fact – Money
don’t grow on trees – Mum’s mantra
from 1982 – Use of public transport
a sign of failure – Margaret’s lie/ My
first kiss was so cheap [still – it sits
on my tongue – that sort a’ buss – it
was false] Cash was a way to sex –
porn – not free-to-use [shame rarely
fell away] & kisses ad-libbed – atop
bus #72 – impurity among us teens
[on snogged trips to better shops –
one after another] & invigorated by
a weekend of expectation – parties
& bars – fingerings & fumbles – fags
& drugs – waking up numbed & lost
in off-girl sweat in unknown rooms/
Street signs guided me back home
with my thirst – but not desiring my
night’s before/ Shops locked up for
one day of rest – unless you craved
tobacco or red top headlines – such
days – could we survive them now –
in this miniaturised world of want?
Parcels fall through front doors & a
momentary high of fresh unboxing –
an art for product-placed vloggers/
Hopes are unwrapped & set buzzin’
[a buy-it-now drug]/ China will fulfil
endless shite – ’til we gripe – sucked
off & broke/ Kick me back to ’86 – to
those top decks of tongues & tits – I
lived a simple life without Byzantine
choices to tug my eye/ My return to
nothing much to do would follow my
shutting off purchasing in my palm/
It draws on us – until we are drained/
Perfect knowledge? Let it discharge
Takeaway in Uckfield
There were lights & sounds
late last night in our funeral
home – busy on newly dead
[quick-quick] as subfusk inks
wet let awry on diary pages
& penned onto calendars &
thumbed into ‘phones – Tick
to remind me [alarms set for
his not-attended ceremony]
& has anyone told Uncle Jon
& other missives texted out
to those who knew our Jim/
Facebook reverberates with
grief – Jim had locked them
out – Try CFC1964? – Yes! Of
course – his words [in posts]
say nothing of worth – they’d
been liked fifty times before
& are left alone – revelations
have been read/ Timeline off
1984
In 1984 our enemies
were evident – easier
days to direct choler
with words – we spat
sneers & swilled gob
in our mouths [oiled
for French kissing &
tonguing]/ AIDS took
fun from a bare fuck
& for a living I lugged
monitors & F.X. racks
on & off worn stages
& up rippling ramps –
rubber castors wrote
truck-loading songs –
pre & post-show arias
of drugs not taken – I
waited for love’s rare
rush to suck me off –
I was born dreaming
in Technicolor’s hues
by weekend films on
T.V. – fewer options to
blight ourselves by –
pubs were our forum
& dating site – easier
times to get a fuck &
wake without staying
I see her so-blue eyes
but not her real name
& other such recall of
lost time & time lent –
we dealt in our now –
we had no time travel
via handheld devices
Also on Medium
Careless Talk
So how will this [sh!]
viral infection expose
modern insecurities –
will roaming decline?
[They sit at metre spaces sipping slow coffees – quite
European – now forsaken until our anxieties rewind]
Our thin copper wires
were not designed to
grip our selfish loads –
ties bind us tighter to
[My client rings & we laugh off sicknesses & dire ends –
but our retirement policies have taken another thump]
extraction & supplies
from far places – ores
& cereals will stop as
ships halt & we watch
[She is over seventy & feels as if this was planned – as
if this was a useful plague to rid our NHS of zombies]
as emissions pale on
charts [Inversions of
doubling disease may
balance it all] We fail
[Careless talk costs lives – I see they have contingency
plans – they had social care sorted – this’ll do for it all]
again to incite [or thrill]
on pole-pulled cables
[imported a while ago
before talking ended]
He who arrives late
He who arrives late
has no bed – said to
me in jest but truer
now that our world
finds loathing easy
to spread / We will
contaminate all we
love with infectious
hate / Long unions
will succumb [to ire
their lessors] / As a
couple bore at love
[& its dried-up rub]
they’ll find in others
keen relief in sex &
overpriced drugs in
hour-rented rooms /
All our rules shifted
when re-connection
was offered for free
by cheap lying silos
[& wi-fi two-timings]
Disconnect & return
to our former arrival
Also on Medium
@John_Wilmot1647
‘Admired for his deathbed performance’
& ‘infamous in his time for his life’ – two
lines of internet biography ensnare his
four decades of crimes / A seventeenth
century existence – before our futilities
bled online [when we danced with men
& vanities & lines of sovereign-sourced
lies] Those immediately-crowned social
influencers – we click on & receive futile
lies / We will visit long enough to review
as subordinates bow & divide / Our poet
Rochester would have flourished – under
wit’s re-tweeted cries – as inferior artists
fell under Facebook’s clamorous denials
E210120
WWIII
[Me] It was easily missed – shared threats
of World War Three – Not being there – on
social media & spending one le week-end
bunkered – sat – before sport from Africa
& so few – too few – clicks of stately news
My hunkering against thought [to protect
& survive in our Brave New World of ego –
of tweets & news] Choose your consommé
& your plat principal – feed on your choice
but do also ask from whom it was sourced
I yearn for a retreat
I yearn for a retreat
from my devices &
my vice of red-eyed
hours – do not wake
me – space spills in
as funnelling sand &
bottles of spilt wine
knocked back in my
bowl-sized cut glass
Instead – pull emptied
tumblers & tall flutes
from breakable lips –
do not kiss thin rims
& try to get shut-eye –
Michael – try to sleep
Passing Off
[F.F.S. NOTE: In memory of a part played by J.K. This was written after an actress had passed away – but really in memory of the character she played in LOTSW – so an extension of that character into death – after the actress playing her had died: An exercise in stretching thoughts on a dull and lonely day made slower by reading of others’ misfortunes. The character I am ‘grieving’ for was a hen-pecking (Northern) wife chasing down her feckless husband – god only knows what effect it all had on her fictional family (never seen). No more misdirected anger if it gets misappropriated, again, please.]
Being a matriarch
was propounded as her
Greatest-ever-role
in their first draft
of an online obituary
Mourners hovered
and affixed false posts
marking up an ever-altering
wiki
Her kids had been suckled
under a tarnished scent
and they never lost their
fear of men
Erasers
We were not taught
how to erase –
how best to rub out –
how to remove errors –
instead – we were told to
Put a line through it
Those eye-ruled
mistakes –
our slight aberrations
in our cobbled
curriculum
They were honest flaws
Being seen to fail
won gold stars
against your name
on that constant chart
of
stuck rewards
Now we suffer
others’ comments –
sickly – green-ish –
spilt on social media
We are ink-stained
No dabs of blotting paper
Emetics
Those mob-mindful
leaders –
your haters –
your righteous orators
have raised
their volume to that
once of The Left
They mop up swathes
of disaffected souls
in insolent heartlands
by underhand sales
of hope on Amazon
Post to Facebook your prizes
And Left-Wing resentments
seem to threaten more
than resolve
as old moderations are now
spoken of as if weaknesses
in politics – else whipped
Extreme measures
are needed
Politics is now a
vomiting disease
Switch
I contemplate
setting it all to
Off
(even my
rum scuttle of thoughts
from toils)
By cutting connections
to swealing news
on my device
By undoing clicks
to remove agitation
and find a hermitage –
perhaps a bolted
space
with my tumbler locks
We cannot blunt their knives
We cannot nullify politicians
of any kind –
they who
make us into banshees
and howl monkeys
When that switch
is flicked
you will not hear me
Posted
We want to be heard –
us mutterers – we discontents
who can mussitate
I told you so –
because our righteousness
is so bloody close to Godliness
But we do not carry confidences
in such overbearing entities
and we would rather
leave prayers to those humbled
souls who kneel before altars
with their bare-faced soles
We malcontents will feed
in fast flowing streams
until they run with our blood –
torrents drip-drip-dripped
from our nail-hammered
word-wrung hands
Pinned up and posted –
just another Jesus Christ
expletive – re-fucking-tweeted
Labouring Under
There are no greater spurs to human indecency
than cheap shortcuts to wealth
be they lotteries or lies – they are muted calls
to hard work – to tilth
Plough blades rub to blunt – our ground is dry –
our blacksmith has gone
No more steady blows – that loss of his honest hammer
has left his anvil to ring with rust
Old fixed courses of love are smudged in your soft hands
on your quick-to-hold screen
where you advertise yourself to an online world of touches –
you’d resist them if in public
As if everything is circumvented by launches and innovations
as if every previous minute
of humanity is evenly compressed – every way is left to be forgotten
Everyone just wants to be rich
The Scent of People
Larner feared removal
of the scent of people
in crowded wiki articles
Dumb grazing animals
hardly move from hoof to hoof
with their heads down
At this bar
three men sit
before chemical beer
misdirected and under-lit
Tommy Robinson spits
as poor aims are raised
by squaddies at politicians
and three men take turns
to buy another Peroni
without exchanging words
We know everything
by what we read and watch
whilst bent to scent-free pastures
The Reading Room
We are looking about
at a screen-stuck-to
silvered generation
of eye-glued viewers
in trawl-warmed hands
Those old phone huggers
sit logged in to online’s
click-bait refuge
of tittle-tattle and gossip
and foreign muckiness
under scrolled fingering
for rolled eyes of delight
and instant connectedness
to others’ risen anger
Those mobile surfers ride
on a curl of upper lips
and toothless sneers –
set high by published lies
Thursday – Overground to Euston
We travel sober through London Bridge – below
brick arches – on roads cowered by glassy heights –
Our cabbie blasts bent-to-smartphone bodies
back from near-hits on red-man crossings –
it seems that Londoners have now forgotten
how to see the threats beyond their implements –
We now live hand-to-eye – no longer hand-to-mouth –
no shape-to-spoken words – now embedded emojis spout –
We briefly find speed over the river crossing
and then turn left through the gold standard of cheats –
of fund managers – of clerics – of bankers and white Gods –
where every seat and bench in the low sun is arse-taken –
Thursday lunchtime is the dress rehearsal for Friday excess
behind St Paul’s – and in the eateries of Clerkenwell –
in the stained and new cafes – at exotic roadside pop-ups
and in smoke-free pubs until ten o’clock that night –
Our ride is time travel and a belching reminder that
we are in a handcart to hell – instead of the Underground
Being Eighteen
Being eighteen in 1982
was easier than in 2018 –
we had less stuff to plug in –
sniping critics were blocked
by the turn of a front door key
and loud parents muted by
the stereo being set to ten
Our whole past was aligned
spine out – but not in public –
on the overhead shelves –
bound in worn LP sleeves
to which we returned on those
solemn dead-end Sundays –
before it was switched on
Social-ism
“It’s .. trying to construct a society around production
for need .. not .. for profit .. meeting people’s needs”
I half-quote Tony Benn
Once I was in his audience whilst back home
my father rebuffed Wedgie-bloody-Benn with
his gruff-spoken shun about the Leftie-in-a-suit –
Benn spoke without limits at the Co-operative Hall
way back in the slush-grey twentieth century
of do-not-touch candles and knitted gloves
in an endless civil war of fists and banners
across slag battlefields far removed from us
Face-to-face politic was the free-to-use fuel
against factory shut-downs and mounting job losses
“(Thatcher) did make war on a lot of people in Britain,
and I don’t think it helped our society”
Now we trade insults over sofa-space distances –
such hate we would not dare to excrete out there in public –
no loud enough complaints about neighbours’
ached-stomachs with day-end hunger –
not of zero-hour contracts worth near to nothing –
or the basic provisions of dignity and stability
Instead – we lament the kiss of a celebrity –
caught on camera – going viral like herpes
This land is cut open under smartphone blades –
those knives blunt voices which once were our aides
Envious
My envy device knows me too well
just from the lightest of my touches –
She is engineered to conduct risings
inside my mind from sparked jealousy –
ramping up to shrill shocks of hate –
which will then swill around my unfit gut
and tease those last good microbes
into a lurching frenzy of brain cramps –
then I want to steal their smug smiles
which beam from their side of the world –
and she will be working so very well
at keeping me in her malicious circle –
and I will add fuel to her high pyre
by posting my oh-so-perfect life atop it all
*Inspired by@guardian and Moyra Sarner – thanks for the ‘envy device’
New England
They will soon take command
of the scattered pill boxes –
those red brick squatters
sat above river crossings –
built for strategic purposes –
and to fool the nescient
of a Maginot Line in England –
to withstand our invasion
There will be working parties
to restore the squat outposts –
drinking tea and sipping gin
as the last of Locarno evaporates
The new guard will take to parades
under friendly church hall beams –
taught to guide the landing parties
into concentration camps in Kent –
and you will shift the weight of anger
by reposting others’ indignant shouts
from your padded cell of social media –
which is how all of this begins
Deleted Facebook
This phone feels lighter
after I deleted the app –
today I’ve restarted
with a single act
No pushes from Facebook –
that microscope
into others’ lived lies
and hashtag tropes
My thoughts were narrowed
by the blinkered view –
No yearns for ‘Likes’ –
No fear of peer reviews
Postings
You share too much
on Facebook –
that communicable disease –
With whom and where
you lay your bed
so everyone can see
They’ll envy
your immunity
from their own genetic shame –
you exude a happiness
as they nurse
their low disdain
Your Place
How are you living your life
on a daily basis?
Is there space in your thoughts
where the over-quick reactions
usually ferment so that –
for a short time – you are only you
not that Bummer newsfeed junkie
Do you ever find yourself alone
and immersed in rich solitude?
Reunited
This is Twitter,
it doesn’t do love,
140 characters
is not enough:
I’m going back
to Friends Reunited –
to hear more from folk
I’ve always hated.
St. Catherine’s Sniff
I do not need to
Travel to California
To be struck by the low reek
From skunks,
Those striped creatures
Condemned by Jesuits as:
‘Not worthy to be the dogs of Pluto.’*
Here that crepuscular
Scavenger of the dusk
Lifts its too-proud tail
To squeeze
A malodorous attack
Upon us both:
‘The sin smelled by Saint Catherine
Must have had the same vile odor’**.
‘Hold your nose,’
I suggest to my wife,
But the foulness
Is already there,
Inside.
* **Thwaites, Reuben Gold, ed. (1633–1634). The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France 1610—1791. VI. Quebec.
The Wedding Reception
Today, the re-climbed height
of another British summer,
when buffed-up cars are steered
on a weeded gravel drive,
slow on that unmade road,
to park at a once-grand house,
where wedding guests gather,
those love-hungry witnesses
at the dressed-up ceremony:
Ribbons, flowers and cloth
hide all manner of hires,
including those who serve
the seated, the laughing
and the old, and still so unsure:
The band’s equipment, that wire-fest,
has been readied for later,
for phone-captured errors,
which will be viewed across Facebook,
but not included in the bound album:
The newly-married, etiquette-dressed,
are set on display, arrayed for viewing,
itching under garter and wing collar.
Twitter for Dummies
Forget them kids,
your latest results,
your failures are
the teachers’ fault.
Then finger the poor,
those necessitous –
the lazy grazers,
who benefit off us:
Shoot from the hip
your spiteful aims,
we are all makers
in this self-made game.
Bring your fury
upon others’ beliefs,
that hateful tweet
is your true motif.
Cuts
We re-loaded
the dishwashers,
as they re-loaded
the bombs,
outside
our smart homes
a covert snipping
began:
at first the truth
was subtly distorted,
and then the news
was misreported.
Coding was clipped,
hyper-links snapped,
Facebook re-liked
the on-line crap.
Let them use bombs,
sub-nuclear,
to help shift the focus
to a new fear:
Hear the bray of pigs,
this West’s old cry,
under the dropping
of lies from our sky,
then cut dictators
from negotiations,
severe all talks,
open the heavens,
let the sky weep,
flatten the earth,
another fresh harvest
of slash and burn.
Alan Bennett, Sheep & Me
“The electrical things have their lives too, paltry as those lives are”.
Deckard. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
I am buff on the sofa,
with Alan Bennett (a weight),
I have turned him over –
he bears a wretched face.
I must make it clear
I’m not holding that man,
no, I grip his fat tome,
held tight in my hands.
By ‘tome’ I mean book,
no, not anything rude –
Mr B’s not my type,
he is a bit of a prude.
Yes, a real book,
no Amazon e-kind,
but the weighty covers
with printed lines.
Now my eyes are aching,
as are my bits,
and Mr B’s recall
are a dull diarist’s.
Once more to my bed,
to count ‘leccy sheep,
because late night reading
makes my eyes weep.
She Gives Away
That girl gives away far too much,
Stripped her secrets to mens’ wiped touch;
Cropped, pulled naked, her clicked-on skin,
She’s devoured by those to whom she gives in.
Subjected but free, no lens-locked soul,
Instead she is instant, no Kodak unrolled.
Her surrender of self, in her shared gallery,
Is the nearest they get to adultery.
Her angelic frame, slight but potent,
Holds down her men – mostly aberrant.
Subjected but free, no lens-locked soul,
Instead she is instant, no Kodak unrolled.
All men will take what they can for free,
As wed men delete their watched history.
They wake to dreams, and a cheated wife,
As the girl sleeps late to avoid real life.
Subjected but free, no lens-locked soul,
Instead she is instant, no Kodak unrolled.
The Echo Chamber
No single flat surface,
polished, inconstants,
chromed undulations,
unmathematical béziers
in every direction,
here enough space,
briefly leaving a void,
always re-filled by you
never a long vacuum,
a place for your small voice
and sharp intakes of breath
of equalised complaints
to be set free, to bounce,
then back on to yourself,
to make more sense
as they return, many times.
Turn Off
Turn off the news,
shut down the feeds,
silence the radio,
unplug your TV,
look beyond bylines,
avoid the shouts,
blank out the posts,
turn from the crowd,
reduce all exposure,
pull down the blinds,
this day is yours,
remain safe in your mind.
Everyone News Gathers
Everyone’s making the day’s news,
the shooting of blacks and blues,
filmed in high res –
streaming on Facebook,
the mess, shot by voyeurs,
the fake film crews:
Addicted to a screen held in a palm,
kids swipe quickly through the harm,
as we, their makers,
‘Like’ killings,
to watch back later,
whilst the grieving
flick through psalms.
Social media is here,
the fifth column,
set now at too high a volume,
a channel,
without a controller,
now, turned louder,
always filling the news vacuums.
MIKE BELL | 10,000 Poems 