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
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
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
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
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
