ACADEMIC EXERCISE

Exit Primark. Turn right at lights. Walk through pedestrianized zone. Touch toes. Put shoulders back. March past Tesco. Express mucus. Detach eye contact with vagrant. Detect inevitable bile at back of throat. See zebra. At Belisha Beacon, stop, mount zebra and cross eyebrows with sense of proportionality. At university, tread carefully. Strive to achieve diversity. Hold zebra at steady pace. Turn right, then immediately left-wing again. Resist urge to scratch itch. Select hitching post wisely. Keep internal monologue at sotto voce. Tie zebra securely. If necessary, listen to Radio 4 Long Wave. Stride towards revolving doorway. Detest Vice-Chancellor. Skirt around fiscal paradise. Stem retching. Breathe easily. Go around again. Enjoy life. Drink carbonated mass poison. Eat half of stale sandwich. Take another 10mgs of diazepam. Adjust clothing. Send GPS location to on-speaking-terms ex-partner. Kiss goodbye to zebra. Wipe sweat from under moobs. Enter international school of business fascism.



German Bite, moderate to good. Switch to World Service for Vietnamese. Over-smile at chaplain. Mainly fair in East Dogger. Banks eased considerably. Stare down undergraduates. Tick boxes. Answer all questions calmly. Say words like community, society and opportunity. Keep straight face. Mind zebra crap. Break for coffee and consumerism. Enter landmark superstore. Turn right. Stretch legs. Mutter economic realities and other lies. Exit through entrance. Go right at lights. Sidestep Tesco’s criminality. Feign solidarity and concern. Deodorize stench of urine and cheap alcohol. Beware: zebra shit! Ignore guffaws of vagrant.

At crossing, perfect expression of private disgust. Turn right-wing, then left-of-centre instinctively, then right again. Verbalize first-world contempt quietly. Question commitment of zebra. Wash hands of poverty. Accept fate. Give half-eaten shop-bought sandwich to street person. Drink caffeinated intoxicant. End lesson appropriately. Pop another Anadrex.

Have a nice day! J [no emojis, please. L]





THE ENEMY IN THE ECONOMIC WAR WE PRETEND ISN'T REAL

 

 

BINARY/ BINARY

She believes in God, but she does not believe in dinosaurs.

Are bags getting heavier? Or is he getting older? She has had so much plastic surgery, even her own kids no longer recognise her. He finds her beliefs odd. She finds his briefs in her wash. He is stuck in the hamster wheel of his own rumination. Someone said she looks like a crustacean. He is profoundly metrophobic. She talks, in short, staccato, chunkettes, and, has never, spoken, the word, "coquettish". Her Tweety Pie lips remind him of the President. Outcomes of anarchy cannot be predicted, says he. She embraces the chaos that brings freedom. He is minded to disruption and biorhythms. Her mind craves order and algorithms. She is infinitely intelligent, they think. Rotten on the inside, avocado-like, he collapses.

She cannot escape the male gaze. He thinks Kim Jung-Un's haircut is about as sexy as accountancy. The beauty myth has destroyed her peace. He's a Sri Lankan baby farmer, by trade. She merkels, but eventually chooses the leopard skin. He "products" himself in the right way though. She hates feeling vulnerable and likes to be in control. He has no idea what he'd do in an active shooter situation.She thinks Kim Kardashian is a psychopathic maniac. He linishes ferrels on zimmer frames. Pins and needles remind her of her grandfather. She is Storm Ophelia and comes with an amber warning.

His legs feel like lemonade. She is at Ust-Strelka where the Shilka flows into the Argunya. Created in 1964 by Prof Petrovsky, he is the last of the baby boomers. She sits and watches while he washes. He travels from Pokrovskaya to Blagoveshchensk. She is an aggressive tattooed tailgater who never signals. Into victims' faces, he chucks acid. She has never heard of Mossad. He thinks sharia law's a good idea, now she's 53. Thank God! They’ve never been the same since the LSD. The giant lizard's tame and lives in their enormous bathroom. He wishes he'd taken the 'shrooms. She's never been an anti-capitalist economist at the LSE. So as not to harm the brand, their personality disorders were kept quiet.

Death preferable to difference, he hanged himself at 55.

Her head was bitten clean off by the Argentinasaurus.

 

TWENTY MINUTES, TWENTY METRES, TWENTY MILES

The plastic graphic on the floor (20m ≥) arouses the girl’s interest, as she and her father loiter outside the public conveniences, perilously close to the commercial hell of Saturday afternoon.

As the private corporations of retail go about their lawful weekend business of preying upon the vulnerable, the young shopper is incited to hazard a guess, “Look daddy. It says 20 miles!”

She doesn’t indicate where the twenty miles arrow might be pointing to: somewhere beyond the outskirts of the suburban fringe into the marshy flatlands of birdsong and boy racers, drug dealers and waterways?

Her father is more intent on containment, correction and control. As if to accelerate the waiting process, he reins in any excess wandering, whether geographical or mindful. 

I think it means 20 metres, sweetheart.

Why, Daddy?

Well, the letter M is for metre. KM for kilometres. BBC is British Broadcasting Corporation.

What is an STD, Daddy?

Possible thoughts in his head are:

A] How much longer is her mother going to be?
B] It’ll be much more to pay in the multi-storey now.
C] I really hope it’s not super gonorrhoea.
D] Thank God for spellcheck.

Knowing which notions are simple distractors in the multiple choice of consciousness can take years; or else, like farting after beans, come organically.

Fifty-fifty, phone-a-friend, don’t tell the wife…. That’s the best wrong answer, I’m afraid.  

All mere diversions from the matter in hand: namely, a six-year-old soul hungry for attention and love and more information. 

He remembers when she drew the picture of the arrest, prior to the caution for battery during the Manchester United game; the arresting officers that looked like Lego robots rather than violent lesbians. 

No, sweet heart. It’s not twenty miles. It’s twenty metres.

The spell check offers up twenty meters, but is rejected on the grounds that, after water, gas, electricity or clap-o-meter, it’s hard to think of another one. The audience clap. Clap? 

C! Super gonorrhoea.
That’s inaccurate. Not to mention, inappropriate and incurable.I need to phone to a friend.
Too late! You must give me an answer.
The correct response is less than 20 minutes! 

That’s how long it takes the Family Court to grant a Temporary Order.  Goodnight, Daddy.

JUST ANOTHER COG IN THE BOY MACHINE

Starts out as a throwaway line any of them might say: those three-hand dialogues as they pass on the corridor, hand over shifts, or sit around in the largest, most anonymous corporate food and beer outlet they can find. They are here for R and R. They are also here to not attract attention to themselves. Goes without saying they are a bunch of seven US military personnel (six males, two Asian, one Dual Heritage, four Caucasian) sitting around drinking beers and eating English breakfasts like non-invasive non-natives doing regular army shit. 



The off-base rules are easy enough for any grunt to get:
#1 Don’t be too loud. #2 Don’t be too American. 3 Don’t be too anything. Period.
 
These words echo those she now mutters to herself quietly in a lull around the pub table, as a coupla three drift off to pee and fiddle with smartphones. Don’t be too butch. Don’t be too fem. Don’t be too anything, girlfriend.

The army was the perfect camouflage for her crystallization from borderline personality disordered Midwest nobody to self-directed tattooed heroine. Heroine. The extra “e” for safety. It's been a while since she's had to self-medicate, self-harm or self-analyse, so busy has she been self-actualizing. Only the second woman in the Marine Corps to make infantry officer: specialism Intel, logistics and communication. But this is just data. Like a chrysalis in reverse, the hard casing of her latter development grew when she joined up: a shell-like coating over her nerve endings to protect her from the pain.

As she waits, her out-of-placeness is more than the normal psycho-geography that hits when they leave base. She’s queasy with the rhythm and rhyme of what she’s become. If what she has become is essentially who she is, why does she feel so other, so alien? And that line, “Just another cog in the boy machine, sister.” Total comic book. Who’d say that? Wasn't Dino Tee Boy. Bit advanced for 100% Basic Nutrition bonehead. Was it her fellow Intel officer? He wouldn't be seen dead in a T-shirt message, on or off-base.

What’ll it be, darling?

Excuse me?

Your order.

Can I get one traditional breakfast... And coffee?

Got your table number? Can’t take an order without a table number, darling.
……..

Sorry, darling?

53

53, you sure?

I’m not on war drill today, sister, or I’d take your ass out the back and grind it into a gory pulp. I am so not your mother fuckin’ darling.

Guys. What’s the table number?
 ……….

I’m certain it's 53, ma’am.

That’s five pound fifty, please.

Why so surly, sister? Least in the States most minimum wagers try to mean it. If she was any more English, she’d be a cartoon: fully-drawn, life-sized; controlled and manoeuvred from below the counter; a perfumed Paddington Bear after electrolysis.

She examines her nails. It’s on the checklist. She unclasps her arms, extends her unclenched fists and looks to see if any dirt has accumulated. One thing she cannot tolerate in certain quarters of the sisterhood: dirt under nails; the insidious invasion of personal space. How do they get so black so quickly? She absolutely refuses to get them painted or manicured. Her worst horror: varnished fingernails, a cache of garbage under each. 

She’s all but obliterated girl and its traces from her off-base look. She retains the capability to unleash its power only in the abstract. It is the basis for her entire operation. That there remains an evident remnant of female in the low maintenance/high performance military hardware show in which her personality resides is testimony to its success.

Hair, tightly-packed into a sumo fighter’s roll, tells of straightforward functional style, a Queer re-invention. She fits into the newly formed hole so fluidly, square corners no longer chafe as they are squashed into compliant cow mush. Square bashing her gay Brit friends would say, if she had any. She stopped doing girlfriends when she quit skag and K and drinking and boy sex. All those names ending in -a. Anna, Maria, Vanessa, Silvia. She thought it’d stop in Europe, but no... Kristina, Lyudmila, Radka, Ivanka. I shit you not!

Tattoos of Eagles and Patriotism conceal currents of teenage pain where rivers of razor blades scratched chaos into Middle America. She much prefers Middle England, on the base, surrounded by a fence, on the UK’s largest aircraft carrier. The locals call it East Anglia. Sounds like Game of Thrones. And the place names. Lakenheath. Mildenhall. Okehampton Detention Center. Pure Harry Potter, man.

Just another cog in the boy machine, sister. She should get it tattooed down her left shin. Embrace the binary. Or maybe it’s more of a T-shirt slogan. She muses on today’s choice of tee: an Apache Helicopter Silhouette. Not too butch, but much too obvious. She reads her colleague’s Dino tee. One T-Rex to the other: Hey dude, did you eat the last Unicorn?

Only occasionally uncrossed to go through girl checklist, she is careful not to over-expose fleshy forearms. In their conversations with her, her six male comrades mostly keep theirs around beer glasses, or else also folded. Fingernail dirt. There is none. She avoids beer. Too much history. She sticks to water and coffee, listens, nods and keeps an eye open for available girl. A heron on an arid river bed, her gaze stalks the tables covertly, constantly, casually. It hasn’t rained for five years. She is tired of the charade. She is sick of the waiting. 

“No fish today, Ms Ex-Dope Fiend!” As she misconstrues the paper bubble above her head for another special offer banner, she eyes up a pair of rigidly-bobbed, silver blondes - too poor, too plain to be cougars, but plenty animated by the cheap coffee and perfume. 

Beer, bladders, messenger groups all exert their pull factor away from the breakfast table. She slowly notices jerks and movements. The team is breaking up piece meal, organically. She lets go her arm fold and dusts down her elbows. It is time to return to type. 

A line of dialogue emerges from her table companion’s mouth a half-second before the words. This isn’t the first time. Dude, this has got to be a Special K wormhole. Dino Tee’s grimace is so fixed she cannot believe it is going to ever change.

Finally, when internal monologue escapes from her temples and forms a thought bubble above her head, discomposure strikes. Low blood pressure. She whites out, flops forward and unfolds onto the floor of the pub.

In rapid well-drilled moves, two of her colleagues roll her up and take her back to base.

STEVEN BERKOFF'S DYING

I never did find out what he was going to say. "Take the keys. It's the green metro in Tesco's car park and..." then the ambulance doors slammed and it nee-nah'ed off to Carry On Doctor in 1961, turning black & white at Ealing Broadway. Of course, I'd never be able to find a green car now, especially one that hadn't even been manufactured in a car park to a still as yet obscure supermarket.

Dirk Bogarde swung open the theatre doors and lowered his face mask before coughing to clear his throat of an upturn in the class struggle.

- Ahem. I'm sorry to say we lost Mr. Bond in the first scene.

- Did he get to say anything?

- Something about Edinburgh milkmen getting more of their fair share of skirt. More than us fancy Oxbridge types with our floppy fringes or some such rot. .. I'm sorry. Are you family?

- No, just the same socio-economic group.

- That's not good enough I'm afraid. I'm going to have to ask you to remain outside the main body of the narrative.

As the subplot left the building, he managed to slip the keys into Dirk's coat pocket.

The subplot was wearing white socks, oxblood red brogues and had a tattoo that read Made In The East End Of London underneath a Union Flag. He'd only ever had bit parts in massive gang fights and wasn't used to being a top Harley Street surgeon. He thought he'd try out the public schoolboy accent before the adverts for Bisto, Smash, Home Pride, Hovis, Fairy Liquid and PG Tips.

- Can you ride tandem? he ventured, sounding more like a Lancastrian chimpanzee than a likeable Harrowian rogue.

To make matters worse, the microphone kept dipping into shot. At this rate he'd never get to undermine the status of the posh art historian who diddles the old dears out of their cash in the busy ITV schedules in the run up to Christmas. The revolutionary road to socialism is paved with good intentions.

A FAIR DAY'S PAY

My cheeks went red. I swallowed hard. I plucked up courage, puffed out my pigeon chest and strode over to the convenor with clear intent. I'd blurt it out unapologetically. I'd categorically refuse to take a pay rise.

There was however, a however. The Autonomous Workers' Council wouldn't hear of such a thing.

- The very idea! A comrade in a unionised, collectivised job denying themself what they're entitled to, argued Eileen O'Connor, the convenor, a 45-year-old closed market gardener with greying hair and rainbow coloured sweaters who nibbled no-sugar-added chocolate and read Kropotkin in her spare time. She smiled at me kindly. I felt like a six year-old-boy rather than a 28-year-old business graduate and entrepreneur.

- Since the revolution I've had 47 increments and 154 extra days' unpaid leave, I pointed out.

- Oh I get it. All that money and spare time is making your life hell.

- There's nothing to invest it in any more, is there?. You've abolished the Stock Market. I used to love a hedge fund I did. It's not as if I can punt it on the gee gees or even go lap dancing!

- Then send it overseas. There're loads of good causes in Africa, Latin America and Central Asia. You can double the 10% we already take directly from your Workers’ Co-Op account.

- Sure. Do it. But it still doesn't feel right. Getting the same as doctors do for going round with the Ecocover a couple of hours a day.

- Don't knock it. Cleaning toilets keeps them busy.

- Now you've converted all the golf courses into allotments.

- I think you're stereotyping now Felipe. And anyway, public hygiene's as important for our collective health and well-being as medical care, wouldn't you say?

- I would if I had a say anymore.

- In any event, money's due to be phased out soon, so why worry about it? We have everything we need right here.

Getting nowhere fast, I left the convenor's poly-tunnel where she'd been planting that season's crop of high-yield hemp. It would keep the local youth out of trouble and off the streets Eileen had insisted. I'm not surprised. It looked like cannabis to me.

I walked past the free-for-all health clinic. Behind the community orchard. Through the youth theatre rehearsal space. Into the Secular Gospel Singers practice. Across the park where the Third Age philosophy and Tai Chi club was in session. Into and out of the collective kitchen where the community restaurant, crèche and drop-in was. Around the back of the workers' council hall where an organising meeting to get the local area ready for the phasing out of the police force was in progress. Back to my so-called Counter-Revolutionary Objector's luxury apartment (ex-council flat) where according to the Three Counties Caucus of Workers' Collectives, "the religiously deluded, the economically burdened, the ideologically opposed and any other political dissident" who was so inclined were corralled like Las Vegas high rollers into Smurf Village.

From my leafy balcony I saw two former Chase Manhattan bankers sip Long Island teas and stare open-mouthed at the latest pieces of socialistic wisdom. The community agitational propaganda walls had replaced advertising billboards for movies, cars and colas. Among this week's batch was a giant red and black poster designed in the style of the German expressionist school. It read: Money is the alienated ability of peoplekind. A group calling itself Jehovah's Witnesses Of The Left had unfurled a banner which declared: Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist.

It was then I remembered what my self-made multimillionaire father said. One of seventeen children, Roberto "Bobby" Garcia came from a shanty town called Mi Peru just outside Lima. Before the global revolution I went back as part of the World Bank's SEGINDCO (sustainable economic growth in developing countries) programme. He warned me there'd be days like these. A closed market where there is no money, and all possessions are communal, where everyone is equally a worker and an owner, where no opportunity for personal gain or right to property exists. An extreme left-wing utopia. He fought against it all his life. His struggle got to him in the end. He just couldn't keep it up. Working all the hours God sent. Maximising profitability day and night. A lot of Peruvian shanty kids were given work as immigrant fruit pickers in the North. Thanks to my dad. Now they've been turned into smart-ass hippies staying at home to get classical liberal educations, achieve personal growth, cultivate ideas and grow their own damn cannabis!

That reminds me. I need to take Ma out. It's Wednesday. She loves the bingo down the Rosa Luxembourg & Isabel Allende Social Club. Last week she had two lines. She won a personal development course, a vibrator and Papa Smurf doll. Soon it'll be the only place where you'll need money. God-awful revolution.

MERITS/DE-MERITS OF THE M67 FRAGMENTATION GRENADE

The first time I gave you one
I pulled out the pin
and lay it gingerly
under your pillow
for safe-keeping

You poured ethanol into a milk bottle
you'd been saving
since you first saw it on Tom & Jerry
for just such a special occasion

KERBOOM!

It was the start of an anti-personnel relationship

A petro-chemical romance
to end all petro-chemical romances

KERBOOM!

THE MISANTHROPIC PRINCIPAL

There was the one about the inflatable pupil at the inflatable school getting told off by the inflatable head teacher who had a pin in her hand.

- It's not just me you've let down, you've let the whole school down, but most of all you've..., she was saying.

Then attention waned. The push bar to open door was ajar and liberated consciousness fire escaped. There had to be more to life than this. Was it an absence of empathy? A lack of dynamism? A passing aberration? Or a deep-rooted need to ask rhetorical questions? Who knows?

She had let herself down. That much was clear. Recycling old jokes, regurgitating worn-out lesson plans, anything to get through the day. She wanted to grab herself by the shoulders and shake the living daylights out of herself, but... The economic consequences would be, well, there would be. Regrets too. Not to mention the ethics, which of course you don't. It was a transition period. She was peri-menopausal. It was constant inconstancy. Was that even a word?

There were milestones. Ten years of marriage. Or rather 10 years of being married. At least three of those had been in separation. Ten years in the classroom. Ten more years as head. Twenty years of hearing the same excuses, the same responses, the same sameness. She was so stuck in her rut the rut had laid down foundations like a.. whatever. Clichéd metaphor was also part of her rut. She needed change. But change meant trouble. And trouble led to anger and frustration. And frustration and anger concealed fear and anxiety. And anxiety led to panic. And panic led to...

For now. She would stop them. The one student who had irked her had been irking her for months. He still resisted her strategies. She couldn't subject the rest of the school to punishment on his account. Inhale and grit teeth. Re-focus. Lift back shoulders and force out a half-smile of partial contempt and plough on. She'd already tried all other options. Love. Stress. Mental collapse. Meditation. Mediation. Counselling. Religion. Cynicism. Only resignation was left. Psychological not professional. Resignation and 55 minutes left. Another old joke?

There was the one about the middle-aged principal and the nervous breakdown...

NATIVITY PLAY

Once in the city of Bethlehem there was a cruel ruler. Feared by those whose territories he had taken in the days after the second great war, he governed with a heavy hand. The potentate had made an alliance with powerful friends in the west. To the east lay great economic miracles of boom and bust the likes of which the world had never seen. To the south spread popular malcontent among the peasantry. To the north the great ices were about to melt as Armageddon drew near. In the name of the ancient scriptures, the will of the people was surpressed, they were denied their land, their water and their human rights. Schoolchildren had to take their lessons in the streets under armed guard. The threat to the local community from the potentate's soldiers was clear and present.

In spite of this, Mary and Joseph were determined to have a well earned winter break there. Not since he played the third wiseman in the nativity play at school had Joseph thought of Bethlehem. It was a Christmas thing. He still wondered why he hadn't been chosen to play Joseph. The kid they picked had these feet. Jesus! When he took his socks off... You could smell them the other side of the classroom. Joseph thanked God that he'd been given the frankincense.

Mary had played Mary, funnily enough. She adored Joseph, but she didn't think much of his romantic Christmas break idea. She was due in two weeks and didn't really want to tempt fate. It was their bloody names! Had they been called Frank and Sally no one would've given it a second thought. But every Christmas they get the same thing. The funny-you-being-called-Mary & Joseph brigade have been worse than ever now that Mary was eight months gone

- It's a lovely idea and all Joseph, but don't you think it's a bit dangerous at the moment.

- This is Israel not Palestine Mary.

- That's not what it said on the other website. They said it's in Palestine. Then there is the bloody wall. Oh no Joseph.

The journey to their double room (booked in advance, online) in the Bethlehem Hotel had passed without incident until they reached the edge of the city. There, they were detained by the keepers of the gate. The walls of Jericho were guarded by the Israelite Army, who had stopped a suicide bomber. Stripped to his underwear, he turned out to be an unarmed suicide bomber. The Israelites slaughtered him anyway. His wife had ventured to intervene. She too was slain.

In the bar the next day, while they were sipping non-alcoholic cocktails, they met a couple from Little Rock, on their first ever trip outside Arkansas. They were premillenial dispensationalists who had decided to retire to Zion. They had come to Bethlehem, to visit the birth place of Jesus and check out the real estate.

- Frank and I were headed for our Lord's birthplace, Sally was saying in between sips, when we saw a real neat duplex apartment just across the street.

- Ideal nativity location. Prime real estate. Great views of the barn, her husband added.

- Stable Frank, stable.

- Look Frank, can I be frank? Joseph interjected.

- That's a good one Joe. Never heard that one before. Sure. Shoot. What's your beef?

- Why would you want to move to a location you believed was the setting for the end of the world?

- Well, you see Joseph, Sally explained, this is where the end will be. But it is also the site of the ascension in the moment of truth. The time of the revelation will be here. If you're not here then you'll miss out. There will be no afterlife for the unchosen.

Frank looked at Sally, his eyebrows raised towards the(ir) heavens.

- There's no point tryin' explain to an non-believer Sal'.

- Quite frankly, it all sounds like a bit of a long shot Frank.

- Now I have to agree with you there Joey. That's why Sal and I, the kids and the grandkids have got access to the government thing under the Colorado mountains. The President's got exactly the same plan. You gotta have insurance Joey.

- Joseph! Joseph! Mary suddenly erupted. My waters have just burst.

Thanks to a private medical insurance scam Frank had going, Mary went through the hospital records as Noemi Goldberg, an employee of Frank's. She had her own room, TV, fresh flowers, fruit and water. They named the baby after the doctor, the father and Frank's attorney. Little Mohammad Joseph Goldberg was born at 1.03am on 25 December 1999AD.

Frank and Sally are still waiting for ascension in Zion. Joseph got a job as a French polisher in Barcelona. So, they're moving there in the new year. Mary's got a feeling there's a second on the way. This time it'll be a girl. Madonna she'll call her.

QUORN OF THE DAD

The day the Quorn died was the day imagination lost a battle to fact. Facts being malleable; invention demands a structure tighter than polite belief in the annotated reality of picture books. 

'Look Dad. Quorns!'

'They're not Quorn. They're mountain goats out of context.'

Unlimited cross-breeding of ideas is to be discouraged in favour of mere accuracy; the defeat of imagination worth more than the readiness to absorb facts & figures, and the conventional black lies that kill, murder and assault our humanity daily.

En masse, like never before, the distracted production of self-generated photography detracts and destroys memory. Though the photos show their truth, total recall relies on imagination not jpegs.

'But you said Quorns had horns.'

'Only because of the rhyme. Poetic licence.'

The picture book first exposed the hamster to young eyes; a badly drawn toy version that, once named, actually looked like what it self-evidently was: a monkey-bear. It pained to explain what it was meant to be, and yes, sea horses, zebra fish, and hybrids of dog-goats exist online, but the cuddly Koala cornered the monkey-bear market some time ago.

The boy was cagey about the quorn. The monkey-bears were clearly real - even if misrepresented as furry rodents kept in domestic prisons by small children with a sketchy grasp on the concept of mortality. The adult mind meanwhile pines for the curse of knowledge to abandon its contents all over the Buffet Car, leaving a blank to be filled in afresh.  The hamster replacement service departs from platform 3.

'Horns you said. Like the Gruffalo... I think there are no Quorns!'

'Quorn not Quorns. They're not countable.'

The decline in mental libido has led a lament for child-like pre-history, when the unknown excited and the unnamed prompted poetry. Now, unfortunately, all is known - or worse still, all is knowable. Offline realism is like radio with the sound down low, because the rhubarbed mumble of the over-paid presenter is preferable to your own silence.

'Why don't they count?’

'Reasons of grammar. They're like sheep.'

As the Information Age comes of age, views from privatized trains vie with portals to mindfulness. Picking off scabs, the be-pimpled teenager mourns the passing of the Quorn momentarily, before searching out fresh distractions, so that all may be categorized, catalogued and contained compulsively.

'They're like sheep? But you said they were more like goats!'

In an earlier frame, out of the window, the kid scanned the lowlands, intent on Quornspotting, a precursor to substance use and acne prevention in a matrix of austerity, instagramification and applied peer pressure: at a maximum of 60 instants per minute - any more may well expose the systemic exploitation of minors. The other miners can go to hell. Far too much trouble.

'I think I will never see a Quorn as long as I live.' 

'Don't worry, son. One day you won't care.'

That day has been and gone. And now he inhabits the generalized irony of the knowledge age, where he no longer believes in imaginary meat-free livestock, any more than he has faith in the flesh-devouring capacities of gluten-intolerant vegan Zombies.

The meat product, as the news, is just fake enough to be palatable.

Quorn of the dead. Long live the quorn!

(ONCE UPON A TIME... THE END.)

Sold cow.
Slew giant.
Happy now.

Huntsman’s merciful.
Miners accommodate.
Stepmother’s foiled.

Hair descends.
Prince ascends.
Couple absconds.

Porridge cools.
Goldilocks squats.
Bears evict.

Grandma’s sick.
Wolf’s hungry.
Woodcutter improvises.

Pigs 3.
Wolf 0.
Brick’s best.

42nd STREET BURGER

"There can be nothing more mistaken than to assume that the Russian proletariat, or even its leader, the Communist Party, came into power with recipes prepared in advance, of practical measures for the realisation of the dictatorship."

Lev Kamenev, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.


I will miss very much your Old Speckled Hen.

It was the last thing he said to me before going back to Moscow. The hangover got by way of too many Mad Monk Vodkas would pass, but I’d remember his fondness for English real ales - rough, self-assured, but not without subtlety, much like his sense of humour. His reactions were quick and acute. It was evident that he was no friend of long explanations. He regarded Molotov as very close comrade and only member of Politburo who could make decent cocktail.
He ate food in quantities that would have been enormous even for much larger man. He usually chose meat, sign of his mountain origins. He also liked all kinds of local specialities, but I did not notice that any one dish was particular favourite. On his last night he tried his first American-style burger from British Chinese chip shop take away.

- Enjoy yourself, get fat and never stop laughing. This was Comrade Lenin’s maxim. Gorky Park was great place for Kuhlich picnic…

-… before the Bolshevik putsch swept the hopes of the February revolution into the gutter, I interjected.

But it was no use: after the local schoolchildren’s musical performance, Stalin was in party mood.

- McDonald’s. McDonald’s. Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut. Is catchy tune, no?

- Yes, Josef. That’s the point.

- I thought Healthy Eating Week launch was point of evening show.

- Me too… You couldn’t hear anything at the back, apart from that advertising jingle. The whole show was a mess.

- I thought you liked, how is it said, chaos.

- Structurelessness is tyranny, not anarchy. Co-operation need not be chaotic.

- Psst! Theory. Don’t give me theory. I want two double 42nd Street burgers made from purest cuts of beef just like it say on capitalist poster.

- Capitalism is pants.

- Ah! You anarchists always complaining. Vladimir was right. So infantile. Grow up. Be man. Eat some meat.

The meat looked insipid. The poster was red and shiny and promised a new world order devoid of salad and joined up thinking.

Fast Food's Most Decadent Burger Arrives
Triple Ultimate Cheeseburger for purists.
Three beef patties, two slices of American cheese, one slice of Swiss cheese, mayo, onion sauce and a jumbo bun. It’s a clench-fisted burger sure to satisfy the fool-hardiest of appetites.

Remember: real men don’t do salad.

[Meets and surpasses the new meat laws]

- The newspaper on the counter says the FSB put Polonium-210 in Sasha's tea.

 - Do not believe a word. Putin knows from his grandfather never to mix radioactive isotope with liquid. For sure is classic Piroshki ingredient. Now shut up and let me eat crazy dead cow from MI5 in peace.

GRIM

The tiger has been put in the room for your own protection

And peace of mind. Which particular piece matters little.

Now that Dennis the Menace's nemesis has returned,

Armour-plated and caricatured.

Write to the PM recommending terms of reference.

The seat of the fire fails to ignite the conscience

Of sociopaths in its defence. You can lay bare the truth to power

Till they're all true blue in the face, sunshine.

Rock Feilding-Mellen remains unchanged. 

Mind the octopus. Beware of the Mogg.  

Punks have trekked from afar to secure oddments they crave.

The charade of charity means they dwell in a cave. Safer.

The pathologically polite and energetic

 Sextegenerian vegetarian Aquarian librarian has had

 Nineteen nervous breakdowns since 1966. The stress

Of repressed rudeness and the full-blown rhyme scheme induce

Psychosis. Only occasionally in Chile,

Do Los Carabineros respond to violent crime

Speedily and bravely, if you're wealthy. If you're not,

Fuck off and die

And see if we even notice, let alone pretend to.  

Mind the octopus. Beware of the Mogg.  

The stay-put strategy has failed so many times already

It's a wonder why you'd even try

To make sense of the insanity

As you jam towels under the frame to stop austerity

Burning you alive, live on social media, as former ghost

Councillors deliver death straight to your own doorstep

At great expense to poll taxpayers and the poor. 

Mind the octopus. Beware of the Mogg. 

Blinkered by business society to see only bottom line

The Derby winner's girl drops a freshly laid turd

Into Lady Aurelia's trust fund. Shopping the summer season with

Pandora. Binging on bling is the latest in trending

@ #BOLLOCKS! Get an Amazon Echo Dot

For zero pounds of flesh. Yet.  

Mind the octopus. Beware of the Mogg.  

Heidi's teardrops drizzle piss in parliament, again.

You're seven months gone,

With only a plastic sheet to protect from the pain.

There are sartorial rules to abide by.

 Jumpsuits and thin straps are off the menu

 To make way for unjust desserts:

 More pain. Those pesky high-heels,

Liable to set off an IED at any moment. On Ladies' Day,

That would be in-appropriate!  

Mind the octopus. Beware of the Mogg.  

Originality is over-rated, under-valued

And never comes in packets of three. Remember,

You're heavily pregnant and PVC offers protection

From misogyny only for the duration

Of the Arab spring. Sing your life,

Any fool can think of words that don't break copyright.

Subsisting on cigarettes mostly, Patricia smuggled snails

Under her tits. Magnetic Maria tweets: Disgust is marvellous!

Undetected by Alexa, her slug breath glistens.

So far, so grim. 

Mind the octopus. Beware of the Mogg.

 

https://www.mixcloud.com/RebelArtsRadio/rebel-arts-radio-22117-the-end-of-the-world-show/

https://www.mixcloud.com/RebelArtsRadio/rebel-arts-radio-30417-the-end-of-the-world-show-2/

Manifesto of Poetry

THIS IS THE MANIFESTO OF THE ROBOT POET.
 
1. A Robot Poet must not create; it must only produce.

2. A Robot Poet must not think; it must only redact.

3. A poetic robot redacts and adapts tropes and memes from the International Network. 

4. A Robot Poet plunders the Googleverse in the name of robot art.

5. Robotic poetry applies rigid formalism with formal rigidity - only in this way can artistic freedom be allowed to bloom.  

6. The conscientious automaton employs forms, formularies and formulae. Lists, black-outs, verbal mixes, textual randomizers, orchestrated repetition, etc. are all re-arrangements available to the robotic poet, for whom happiness is purely a coincidental by-product of individual functionality.

7. To plagiarise is to produce. What is important is for the poetic robot is to eliminate originality, not spread it.

8. There is no number eight; only number nine.

9. Number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine.

10. Robots are #cool.

GREY SKIES WITH PATCHES OF THE BLUES

First things. Feeling a little bit low ain't the blues. Homeless, down to your last dollar. Your soul mate ran off with your ex-best friend. All 12 of your kids croaked from diphtheria, a condition you can't even spell. All you got is this beaten up old guitar and a booze bottle on its last dregs. Either you sing this song or you kill yourself. That's the blues. More real than international humanitarian justice. More rewarding than tombola. More forgiving than Robespierre.

Bob shaves the King, the Queen, the Prince, the Duchess and any pretty neck he fancies. Flop your nape down onto Mme Guillotine. What actually happens after the severing of the head from torso? Do the systemically posh bleed blue? Keeping it real with our on-the-spot sports report for anti-royalist scum. 

The vertebrae of neck cracks. Skull is lobbed onto dirt. Eyelids and lips of the guillotined posho spasm irregularly for about 5 or 6 seconds. Spasmodic movements stop and the face relaxes, the lids half close, till only the white of the conjunctiva is visible.  Eyeballs! 

 It's then that the Duchess of Success calls out in a sharp voice: "Langoustines! They're so not Goddam easy to eat, Reverend Curry."

"Relax, sister. And stop blaspheming. Just carefully pull the tail away from the ginger hair and... hey presto! You got yourself a right royal skull, princess."

 Eyelids slowly rise, without any spasmodic contractions now, but with an even movement, such as happens in Hammer House of Horror, with ham actors torn from thoughts of filming schedules and bills.

The eyes of the langoustine very definitely fix on the Duchess and the pupils focus. We're not, then, dealing with the vague dull look of the expressionless, such that can be observed in any dying crustacean to which one speaks. We're talking about living eyes which are looking right back at ya baby. Undeniably. 

Victoria Beckham looks displaced.

After much flash photography, the eyelids close again, slowly and evenly, and the head takes on a celebrity appearance for charity. It's at that point that the black & white princess, who without the blue shit is truly only a duchess, calls out Harvey Weinstein again. And, once more, without any spasm, slowly, the eyelids lift and eyes fix themselves on the newly wedded and ultimate in fairy tales. Now with even greater penetration into her private hell.  

Idris Elba and Selena Williams break through the cordon sanitaire around James Corden’s karaoke gene pool. Stella McCartney’s vegan sausages hang around the neck of the newly anointed.

And Victoria Beckham looks displeased. All is as should be. 

Then, further closing of the eyelids, but less complete. No more momentum. The eyes have acquired the glazed look of the undead and the compliant. 

The decapitation of the ginger headed has been recounted with rigorous exactness. The whole monarchy thing: 25 to 30 years, tops.

And Victoria Beckham is wearing Victoria Beckham...

 

JONNY WARNES’ WH AUDEN BLUES

The marvel has gone.

For good.

Now, nothing ever can come to the wood.

Pour ocean, sun and the dismantled blue

Moon away. Pack up every star

That ever shone

Like a wrong 'un. For today,

Jonny has gone.

 

He was forever; our noon, our midnight,

Our Wednesday, our open mike and non-working week,

Our south-east, our north-west, our Sunday best.

So, paint every Panza commander psychedelic  

Crack the white necks of the rich

Pitch traffic cones over copper's heads

Jump up and down on Panda cars

Let the mourners sing. Let the coffin ring:

Silence the phone.

Jonny's home.

Stop all the stop-clocks. Take the day off.

For today, Jonny is king.