The guide to nine utopias - VII - Cultural

The guide to nine utopias


VII -- Cultural

My virtuality is on the blink
again. Could you be a darling and pop round?
I was at the Mardi Gras with Ken, my drink
blipped off and then the whole scene crashed. I found
this gruesome room: a peeled-paint breeze-block wall,
bare concrete floor, a tiny, grimy window
and also I was naked, not as tall
as I prefer--and not to mention: old,

and Kenneth's dead. You'd love to help your Ma,
and bring your tools tomorrow? You're a star.
I'm sure it's just that same projector node.
Can you swap it, it tends to overload?
Great! Why I get this dump I'll never know--
well yes, I'm sure it's real, but even so...

---

The guide to nine utopias - VI - Technological

The guide to nine utopias


VI -- Technological

PROTOCOL HELLO from all of us
at central-server-slash-breakfast-dot-show:
it's T-equals-zero. PROTOCOL NEWS: fuss
in binary-heart upgrade fiasco
spreads to top organ-manufacturer
FolkTech whose spokesman Bernard Ninety-Three
said, in a prepared statement, that fracture
in love-compatible machinery

was common even in the olden-days.
For those of you with two, or three, or eight
true loves the message is: keep cool; don't call,
but reschedule your dates to keep them all
apart; and don't use 'auto' near a singles' bar.
PROTOCOL NEXT: upgrade secrets of the stars...

---

The guide to nine utopias - V - Emotional

The guide to nine utopias


V -- Emotional

My therapist's receptionist's name label
says: Hi, my other self is Kristin,
and I am Jane. She's cataleptic; unable
to show that she's at home--no analyst in
the place either. I scratch my appointment
from in her book and go to look for group
up on the seventh floor. It's poignant
how I now recognise each different troupe

of troubled patients from the varied wails
that leak out of their room. Such sordid tales
I've told and heard behind these doors. Touching
ones as well of course but, oddly, I clutch
the most disturbing ones--collect them. Sad
but I'm well adjusted to the slightly mad.

---

The guide to nine utopias - IV - Economic

The guide to nine utopias


IV -- Economic

A small minority of customers
have never taken up a special offer
of any sort. Not even when preferred
and given one-time ultimate no-bother
saving packs at seventy-five percent
off the normal commission-free list price.
I mean, is this nice? I try not to resent
their uncooperativity. We've spiced

the deals as far as we're allowed. I'm proud
of our talents, but we're under a cloud
here; quotas are at risk. It is my life:
the science and art of sales. My lovely wife
won't hear the word "failure". We are undone,
so... in your sample case you'll find a gun...

---

The guide to nine utopias - III - Secure

The guide to nine utopias


III -- Secure

Police Surveillance Bureau Info Desk--
it is a long queue, isn't it? No surprise.
Why are you here then?... Yes, I think it's best
to let them know. They will find out, it's wise
to fill the forms in first--it's the camera
I'm here about. The one in our bedroom.
It didn't fuss my first wife--that was Anna--
but Julie hates it, says that when it zooms

it whines. I think it must be getting old.
It puts her off. My love-life's growing cold, so
I wondered if the cops could be persuaded
to let me pay for it to be upgraded...
Ah! Not long now, we'll reach the desk quite soon,
now that old guy's been dragged off by the goons.

---

The guide to nine utopias - II - Fast

The guide to nine utopias


II -- Fast

The traffic for your area: I'm Dan
Trailer--and with values falling on the roads
the slump extends its bite. This minivan
on the M4, which two years back exploded
to upwards of a million pounds is priced,
today, at half that sum--and it's not selling.
For young professionals, my best advice
is stay right where you are: your car's a dwelling...

of course you'd like to be nearer the city
but cars don't move and negative equity
means neither do you. If you want a family
saloon, forget that dream, keep your money
for a better year.--Now, on the wackier side:
we've found more film from when folk used to drive.

---

The guide to nine utopias - I - Gastronomic

The guide to nine utopias


I -- Gastronomic

Stimpson's Authentic Fish-Flavoured Food Bricks
in FreshSeal packaging to keep the zing
for every mouthwatering bite. The pick
of every family meal, and just the thing
in your husband's government-issue lunchpack.
Or... for the under-prole whose budget's smaller,
try Stimpson's Value Algal Protein Stacks--
in Classic Crab-Effect, or New Trawlermen's

Choice. Perfect for soaking up dole-board gruel
or National Nutrient paste, and fuel
for long days on the work-farm shovelling
dung. These foodstuffs of the future lack nothing,
bring great economy, and we are proud
to provide the highest food content allowed!

---

The Guide to Nine Utopias - introduction

The Guide to Nine Utopias - introduction


I have decided to bite the bullet and put up my second most ambitious ever poem...

This is a sequence of ten sonnets entitled The guide to nine utopias.  Ten sonnets is far too many to dump on you all in one monstrous post, so I am going to serialise them: a sonnets every three days of so, right up to the eve of the UK general election.  After that it will be only too obvious what sort of Utopia we've ended up with...

The idea for this sprang into existence, fully formed, while I was camping with my 60 or 70 of my relatives in 2011.  My relatives have nothing to do with this poem as they are far more utopian than the topics covered here.

This is going to be, of course, dystopian — as you may be able to tell from my little logo at the top right.  Do not think I'm a pessimist or anti-progress person, however.  I am quite the reverse, fully believing in progress and technology and equality and liberation and all that goes with those things.  My message is more subtle and I'm going to build on a point I come back to over and over:

Many people are naive and overconfident.

For example...  it is very easy to take the exact Lego bricks needed for a utopia, and build a world-class dystopia from them.  The Universe is a complex and subtle place, and generally speaking our leaders are simple and unsubtle.  This wouldn't matter if they knew they needed smarter people to advise them, but usually they don't.  Our leaders really should be followed by a little man who, like for a Roman general, has the job of continually whispering "Remember the Dunning-Kruger effect" in their ears.

However we don't have that, so yes: our leaders really are idiots and no: it isn't an illusion caused by us not seeing all the difficulties they face.  I mean sure, that illusion exists, but additionally they are idiots.  The best thing you can do as a member of the electorate is work steadily and ingeniously to ram the facts of their incompetence into their faces as often and as thoroughly as possible...

Be that as it may, we had some poetry going on here earlier, or rather we're going to in a day or two...  Watch this space.  As I am having to future-schedule the episodes, I may not be sharing them as widely as I usually do.  So if you want in I recommend liking my @IanBadcoePoetry Facebook page where every one of them will be posted automatically, via the power of the internet.

Fugit

A poem from 2011.  I'd almost forgotten this one, which is ironic when you consider the subject matter.

This was inspired by an actual walk down to the beach at Ravenscar from Boggle Hole, both excellent places to stroll down to and good for hunting fossils — another rich metaphor about the nature of time, but one I didn't make use of here.

Artistic license alert: on the actual day there were no horses...  but there could have been.

---

---

Fugit

Above the beach are horses, or so we must believe,
having seen them lounge, tails swinging,
beneath the trees we strolled beneath
—the shade now only another belief—
when we kicked down through the evaporating dew
in the imaginary morning.

There is of course no time remaining
the moment any moment's done.
Footprints on the sand lie,
another preceding one,
like a man saying "and before that I..."
all the way back to his birth
over by the corner of the beach hut.

The sun westerns.
The tide erodes the beach.
We each stand at the end
of a line of our own feet,

pointing ahead to empty sand, a canvas,
page, or silence waiting dormant;
the prints we are to make implied.
We know we will walk.
We even choose where the next few fall,
but beyond that know nothing at all
of what rock pools we'll peer into,
which breaking waves we'll salt-spray through;
except that the day in time will end
and we will wend back past the horses
—briefly real again—
with the seashore fading behind us.

---

Wave and seagull sounds in background are attributed to "justkiddink" and "eelke", and available from: https://www.freesound.org/

NePoWriMo - 2017 - April 30th - You there!

This was inspired by the wonderfully abrupt way that a dodgy Facebook geezer approached a female acquaintance some years back...

I think he probably had romantic intentions.  So yes, "You there!" was the perfect opening line.



You there!

You! And thus I name you...
You are a "you" distinct from any "me"
you may encounter.  They say you stand apart
in a realm of your own devising
where he tells me that I would fear to tread.
She watches you.  Eyes haunt you.  I want you.
You are not beyond me.  You there!

You!  And thus I summon you.  Approach
and be known, friend.  Carnally or Biblically
I covet your neighbourly ass, come warm my guest chair
drink thin soup and wait for dark.  You there!

For "you" are "there".  I place you.  I locate
your self in the world of selves.  Unique and one,
individually rapt and indivisible,
inseparable from identity, your own sense of "yourself."  You there!

You!  I fathom your nature for you are there
by definition.  You're present but tiny
a seed at the heart of everything.  Embedded,
grit in oyster or gene in cell,
or minute caterpillar, asleep in the rose of the World.

You there, you!  I am talking to you.

NaPoWriMo - 2017 - April 29th - Bridge on the River Quand

There was no prompt, I dug out on old idea (the title) and ran with it...


Bridge on the River Quand


Every poet has touched on time as river,
for all that it's a wrong-headed idea,
the metaphor is inescapable.

The symbolism is inescapable:
I've ordered girders, concrete and steel wire
all dumped beside the water in a pile.

All piled beside the water in a dump
the people of the land that time forgot
yet they can do a proper job on this.

A proper job, let's try to make a fist
a firm foundation's how our works begin
physical strength, specifications met.

Metaphysical, the specs are hard indeed
I'll park my trailer here beside the stream
and work on cross-hatching and bracing beams.

The workers are all gone across the stream
but I'll wait here at the still point I have made
out of the river, a poet time can't touch.

NaPoWriMo - 2017 - April 28th - Signs and portents

You have to imagine that the bits like this
etc are informational signs with peeling paint on the walls in a disused hospital.


Signs and portents

stairs to all floors ↗He believes in progress,
has worked on it through many years staff calendar.
Sometimes things change, his room caught fire one time, accident and
emergency
but other days he sweats ← gym to shift one item
from where it is basement storage to where it ought to be administration block.
This is the way things are these days preventative medicine, but he waves
the thought aside and shunts his occupational therapy handcart
through disused hallways.  He isn't really looking ophthalmology
at the walls or unsafe floor.  He doesn't really plan
the future any more; lacks accommodation staff apartments
for such mortuary errors as occur.  He had lunch
with Kate in the Kings Arms.  Her daughter paediatrics came too;
good grief that kid can put sausage and chips away canteen.
It felt like belonging family planning, and God knows he's better
than her ex psychiatric services--but all the while he was waiting
to be found out authorised personnel only.

NaPoWriMo - 2017 - April 27th - The day science fiction was obliged to save the world

Marrie Lightman suggested an irrational robot prompt, well this is irrational, and it has a robot in there somewhere...



The day science fiction is obliged to save the world

The day science fiction is obliged to save the world
the alien fleet decloaks, apologises; says—
it isn't us, it's them—
and takes their vinyl collection back into hyperspace.

The day science fiction is obliged to save the world
a mutant traffic cop applies penalty notices
directly to the psyche of every boy-racer
from Kathmandu to Watford gap.

The day science fiction is obliged to save the world
the powers that be discover a new minority
but disagree on how to disenfranchise
the unbearable little freaks.

The day science fiction etcetera etcetera
a giant robot strides through the panicking city
with notebook and a magnifying glass;
placing each foot with exquisite care.

Because science fiction has stopped faking it:
no more hints and portents
no more signs for shops that don't exist
selling products you don't know how to use
and no more shapes for things that are not yet yet to come.
It's a day to mark in history
although possibly not ours.

The day science fiction comes into its full powers
the day the sky opens
for casual visitation,
and a day without
the city walls where we spread our picnic rug
on the grass of a hill that is being destroyed
at precisely the same rate it is being created,

is the day science fiction stops taking prisoners
my ex takes the biggest step of her life
from the top of a tall building
up, onto the top of the next.

On this day of which we have already spoken
a brain in a tank imagines a real planet
where minds on experimental drugs dream
the feedback loop completely closed
and change the bag on its nutrient feed.

The day science fiction is obliged to save the world
is the day that my pencil breaks
in Applied Philosophy 101
and the patterns of interference
between the answers I can't now give
and questions they didn't dare ask
tell me everything I need to know.

The day science fiction was obliged to save the world
was a day like any other day:
it rained in the morning;
cleared up later;
I bought myself a cake.