Satisfaction Factor

“Dawn of the replicants” was what it said on the leaflet title. Then it appeared in the headlines. The papers blamed the migrants. The people blamed the government and the government blamed the rest of the world. It was the migrant crisis that started it properly. The questioning. Why was it that politicians, in office, with all the powers they have couldn't decide how to act? Why did they freeze? They said a lot, they said they were doing “everything they could” and that “everything that could be done was being done” but in fact, out there amongst the people on whatever side or colour, who needed help, well, nothing was being done. Nothing. That's a powerful word to apply to a serious situation. We are doing nothing.

We all thought, nothing is being done because there is no right answer but we still thought there was a right answer. We thought; let the migrants in in some “controlled” way and alleviate the suffering, now. They are not (all) bad people so let them in. The politicians however could not be so clear. They had to think strategically, they had to think about the next few steps and they had to think about their policies and beliefs and about the opinions of their supporters and what might happen next. We were not so bother with any of that. We wanted a fix...and better weather.

So the system stalled, faltered you might say. Nothing was being done and the pressure increased. The public were unhappy and the press and the media, infiltrated by industry (we now suspect) began to say “what's the point in having politicians running things if they can't act or be decisive because they are worried about their popularity and their reputations and standings. That's not a good system, that's how dictatorships form, right there in a power vacuum.” I wondered what to make of it all and watched.

The migrants, well they rioted, some were shot, some learned to speak French, most made it over  and the tunnel was burned up, quite badly. So badly it was no longer used and the UK and French economies suffered. The prices of food and fuel went up in ways nobody could quite explain for reasons nobody understood. Some firms went out of business, others boomed and the banks groaned. The migrant people still came across and got jobs or claimed benefits. Truly there was no way of knowing what was going on and no way to be sure who was telling the truth. The government just liked to say that the crisis was “ongoing” and that people had to be “on their guard” and “vigilant”. This type of language was used exhaustively as if to promote fear but without explanation and thought migrant types were still criticized and vilified nothing really bad seemed to come from them being here, ever.

It all happened quite quickly really. It was about six months before the general election that the corporations explained that they were infiltrating the political parties with “synths” (robots); convincing, human like beings with a partial-consciousness feature who could and would govern us via logic and fairness in ways that humans could not.  There was fear and scepticism to begin with but the truth was it was hard to tell the synths from the humans, on TV anyway and really none of us ever met real or artificial politicians up close anyway so did it make a difference? They all seemed pretty reasonable and slowly the humans started to take a back seat, they said and did less and the synth campaigns turned out to be powerful and more articulate and sensible than those of the humans. It was an emotional night, the night when the polling results were released. The synths won in most areas by sizeable margins. Less well off and ethnically diverse areas seemed to like the synth's cross party ideals: Freedom, fairness, sharing and an end to corruption and as far as we could believe their programming they would deliver on these things. The human MPs were now in the minority, some with the synths and some against. Those who were against were a colourful bunch and the held a wide range of beliefs. The most extreme being religious based thinkers who felt that the synths were “against the will of God”. Occasionally acts of violence were perpetrated agains the synths – as yet it was not a crime to terminate the life of a synth that you owned however as synths cost over £250k each few ordinary people owned one. The synths fought back but were mostly defended by groups of the lower classes and ex-migrants who, despite being suspicious of the synth's makers believed in the “Ethos of Synth” as it was described. 

As for me, well like a few  others I saw the writing on the wall. We moved out from the urban sprawls and set up camps and communes as far as we could get from the drones and patrols. It was not to be an easy existence. I was never convinced of the synth's ability to govern according to the so called ethos. Deep inside their artificial intelligence there was a masked allegiance to the corporations that had made them and the simple of move of bringing in the synth administration had handed the power base over quickly and efficiently. The country was being run by a set of washing machine programmes fronted up by stem cell and latex based figures who cared not a jot for the outcome of their policies. Or did they? Six months later in the depths of Wales on a pub television I watched the figures come in for the country's budget, for industry and the economy and for the psf  “people's satisfaction factor”, a new measure that the synths had introduced. Everything was coming up roses or headed that way and in such a short time. Maybe the humans just needed a bit help.

And a

Soup and a sandwich

But just mind your language

You'll do irreparable damage 

To your reputation.

And as for spelling

Don't you try selling

Books and education

Think of your reputation.

Try to talk about sex

You say sex with your ex

You say send me a text

Text away your reputation.

If you have paranoia

Well I'm here to annoy ya

It's as real as you make it

Reputation? Just fake it.

So soup and a sarny?

The world has gone barmy

There's a surrealist army

Stealing your reputation.

Evolution

A certain strange nastiness that prevails in hearts of people. You recognise it and turn away but it grips. Some explain it and excuse it as sin, original, inevitable and ultimately divine. That makes sense only if you want it to, if you want to shift the blame. It's not animal it's god. Not my fault. I see it more simply. It's man, desperate and frustrated  and ignorant allowing the lower part of a poorly evolved nature to rise and dictate. It's a blinding, ignorant light, a lazy angel drifting into a pool of poison. It can be avoided. It does not have to prevail.

This has nothing to do with the above, it's just a good illustration.

I arrived here in the rain,

there was a flood,

then it all began again,

rising from mud.

Are you surprised to be?

Are you in shock?

Here in the midst of chaos,

Taking a walk.

J & the macaroni pie

He said, "It's really up to me

Who I do, what I eat, whom I love, how I see,

Breakfast, dinner, snacks and supper are mine,

My dreams, my deficiencies, my nature divine.

When the pie first arrived I couldn't really know,

Like some existential experience or fire down below,

I doubt my loose thoughts and my reckless intonation,

My life, my death and any predestination.

But the pie answered questions I'd just never asked,

Laid bare secrets and stories, revelations that flashed,

I held it for minutes, maybe hours, even days,

The scripts and algorithms, preprogrammed, preplayed.

Sense will someday prevail, humankind will reveal,

All dark struggles and plots, grievous injuries heal,

For I am what I am and I am also I,

When all fails, I'll remain with my macaroni pie."

Love Hotel

Love Hotel

Something to sell?

Scatter the magazines

Run like Hell

Just ask the manager

Taxi driver's yell

We're trapped in secret

Love Hotel

You press a button 

You can take a bath

Make an expression

The madcap laugh

Here is the climax

And the epitaph

Everyone relax

One thing for certain

Time will pass

Love Hotel

She spilled her drink

And lost herself

You like the decor

Sweet souls who dwell

Within this microscope

Our Love Hotel

Love Hotel

December

Its December, that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. In the freezing of the night and in the cowering of the grey day I could have settled for less. I could have explored less; I could have expressed myself less colourfully. I was not perfect and in this case and in my case less was much less than more. So much less than more so as to be almost insignificant. I thought of how the pantomime season always brought with it bad weather, horrible atrocious days that forced us to wrap up and move slowly in some winterly discontent and discomfort. In this land great crowds would gather in lukewarm theatres where they paid good money to be entertained. I just thought that there was something wrong with them all. They were like a plague and not a good plague either just in case my meaning is unclear. I summed it all up in long paragraphs that droned on; cheap tricks and diversions. 

The government were no help either; mostly bone idle well educated types who were short on real life experience. They tried to compensate by staring into screens were short films and skits gave representative performances of how life could or should be. Often they would scratch their heads in disbelief or on account of some infection or hideous skin disease. You could never tell. It was about this time that I began to fall in and out of tense, some past, some present, some indistinct to the point of being disturbing. When I say disturbing I mean not only for my self but for others in the vicinity. I tried to bottle it up but where does that ever get you? Being true to yourself, whilst remaining self indulgent and aloof does at least have the hallmark of honesty somewhere in it but your head still is like a kind of museum tableau displaying distorted and confused scenes from  your life. Unvisited.

Eventually all those things, the artefacts, will come to life, will populate, will talk back. At that point a little lapse of reason and a good dose of forgetfulness might prove useful. A strategy to escape the drivel. The people who talk in riddles are doing exactly that, that’s why you can’t trust them unless you happy to be good at solving riddles or role playing. I stand some distance from that type of behaviour for the sake of safety. I’d often say to myself, “this is no place for the likes of you” and be quite right. I just had an uneasy feeling inside that grew into something unintended like a bad lyric. I faced the fact that I wasn’t very good at things and that problem was compounded by the fact that I wasn’t sure what it was that I wasn’t sure I was good at. I began to compile a list.

My appetites turned, this way and that, fingers could never be successfully placed on feelings. I might have to get some supplies. Outside trumpets blared and seasonal songs were playing on some kind of perpetual loop and the excessive consumption of dairy produce and guinea fowl was promoted. We were at a loss of what to do next. Sometimes, sick of heart I’d just take all the text and convert it into Windings. Then using a magnifying glass and a set of tweezers I’d look at the patterns forming in the spaces. I’d look for repeats and clues, for messages and instructions. Occasionally I’d come across some useful string that would lead me on, tantalising and interesting for a few moments. Then it would all stop as suddenly as a bus full of wood shavings had collided with a wall built from feathers. When it became too much I retreated back into the familiar territory of my shell and my spelling mistakes. It was as if it wrote itself but I still had to use force just to cover the great white wilderness of paper and light that assaulted my field of vision. I tried to make lists, tried to fathom it. What was it that made life so dreadful, so complex and hard to avoid? The truth and that truth is out there someplace but nobody is looking.

I’d been away far too long, the place was no longer my home anymore. I was a stranger but the liquid familiarity that seeped from every image was comforting. Slowly the light grew, pale at first, indistinct across the woodland. A slow glow that was emerging from behind the grey shapes, touching them and changing them. The shapes and patterns emerged as the light, like some floating, shining treacle twisted and formed around them. Hard lines were drawn by invisible fingers, distinction has spread across the world like deep charcoal and white chalk, blurred and smeared in places and the sharp and crackling like spiky toffee and incredible spirograph and spiders web pieces of detail. The light drew across the dark and made sense and gave meaning as we looked on, jaws dropping and eyes widening. This was the place to be, here on the threshold to a new world only minutes old and still growing as we stared into it’s emerging and vital new complexity.

Nobody here is nice

You can call me a lick spittle but that will never stick

Mention anything you want but you better do it quick

There's a hundred ways I'm dead and a thousand ways I live

There's a recipe for hell and that's something that I could give

She said "you're the one I want "I said "I'm the one you need"

My feet never left the ground but I was travelling at speed

I wiped the insects from my face and we met up in a kiss

She said "you're still the one I want but I didn't think of this"

I saw the sun burn down just behind the refinery

The smoky tails and restless whales and that industrial scenery

There was moment when I flinched like footsteps across my grave

While  fossil fuel's fire up the sky artificial intelligence is safe

We cracked devices and then cracked walnuts with our arms

The depravity knew no bounds but they said they meant no harm

Some set alight to books  so we didn't ask for trouble

The barman whispered "drinks on the house" then please make mine a double

You can take the things you like and carry them outside

They won't amount to much and you'll be punished for your pride

Here's some humble evidence here's some terrible advice

Real men only growl and howl they don't use words like "nice"

Nobody here is nice.

in the blue and warm

i'd make you meatballs

and Mediterranean food

we'd sing like we were in an opera

and ride horseback in the nude

i'd make you famous

like a word or a restaurant

on film or stage in some poem

wrecked with mixed up words and meanings

our love would be beautifully deceiving

painted and made up like art and plaster

happy ever after

a pot at infinity

you know that feeling you get

when you're not quite depressed

somewhere not fully stressed

before the black crows and before the rainbows

appetite's shot and the coffee's too hot

nothing seems to be a prefect fit

and the mirror distorts every day with it's 

habitual lies and moaning

stomach groaning 

from sugar rush and digested mush

those who have and have not

push you

you just might take a pot

at infinity.

You know that hunger that comes

when you hang by your thumbs

all cymbals and drums

all sticks and bones

everybody else face down in their phones

face full of fruit and fly by the seat

of your pants like some bitch on heat

you consider your options

you toy with concoctions

and memory plays tricks

like a slowed down eater

who is and who is not

open to taking a pot

at infinity.

Facepunk

A story I once wrote

A story I wrote about the ghost of Thelonious Monk (who the spell checker calls him felonious, it may stick) was built around a picture now reproduced on the skin of a drum. A tight drum skin for hammering or thumping, tapping or just running the brushes over. Soft and low. A painted drum skin showing a dead jazz man. A story about a ghost. New York and the pale forgetfulness of black and white images, drained away with tired music and rapturous journalism, drugs and scandal. Spinning dark disks that create a sound scape fashioned and released new to a waiting world via the latest hi-fi speakers of the day. Deals and contracts, cigarettes and taxis, they wear us down brother. People who talk piffle, pseudo and false, sincere and loving. You can never tell, all the eyes are dark now. Gone back to shadow. All stammered out, broken eloquence and waiting for the latest new wave. It's a tough life being a ghost.

Inspired by Herzog

The small matter of what you should do with the rest of your life assuming that you in a real rather than hypothetical position and one which warrants some study and a little reflection. 

a) Looking out of the window may help.
b) Drink sugary beverages to stimulate the lazy brain.
c) Try on a hat.
d) Google profound words on the Internet and see where their meaning lead you.
e) Hold your breath.
f) Engage a fellow soul in some like minded conversation.
g) Study insects, are they busy?
h) Prepare a dossier containing what you consider to be solid facts.
i) Share some cinematic experience, comment on the highs and lows.
j) You can assume that there is no number 10.