Sept 12th - Communications strategy

Communications strategy


Did you hear them talking about it
when they thought we were not there?
About some evil star, some chance,
some future that's to come? Did you hear them

drag some expert from his paper-cluttered desk
to make a sage pronouncement on what we need to do?
And did you listen
or turn back to the carrots,

and think such things were not for you?
Well they are, but the road is winding, long
and narrow; and the voice
from out the speaker grill

will never ever mention
a thing you want to hear.
Did you chance to see that note they left
screwed up small beneath the chair,

forgetting, perhaps that we can read?
It is quite their style
to mither in the evening press
about some nonsense nothing

and leave us all to guess
such facts as these were in the case.
But if you sit back down again,
I shall write upon this blackboard

all seven things they ought to know,
and certainly we'll wipe it clean before we go.

Sept 11th - Fifty shades of lime

Fifty shades of lime

How can one lime-green balloon
hang so still,
in an otherwise empty sky?

How does Antonia still work
in the vegetarian cafeteria
with Lucy and George
when the only one working is Antonia
and George is with Lucy?

How can one lime
-- halved and squeezed --
make so much difference
to vodka and tonic?

Sept 10th - One final question

One final question


But there was no information
and so we continued...
the mirror ball at the dance palace spun down,
the band with fewer members than it had.

But there was no information
and so we continued...

the hot food van beside the pier

grown sinister, although still drawing a queue.

But there was no information
and so we continued...

tracking in the chill predawn

along some farmyard track,

cows mourning fitfully on either side.

But there was no information
and so we continued...

footsore, into some market town

a slow milkman waving

his long forgotten cheer.

But there was no information
and so we continued...

trains coming, going --
a lottery of timetables.

But there was no information
and so we continued...

pulling in at noon to a city grown still

and filled with dust;

a single taxi blinks its "for hire" lamp.

But there was no information
and so we continued...

up onto the cold dry mountain roads, where,

the taxi, failing, is shoved

ungrieved into the scrub.

But there was no information
and so we continued...

the taxi man with convert's fervour,

trading for food

at broken airstream trailers.

But there was no information
and so we continued...

onto the high plateau,

the metal dishes peering at the sky.

There is no information
and so I continue...

growing bleached and weather battered,

time taking me forward,
eating lizards, herding llamas,
salvaging parts and fuel

from empty villages.

A cold time I've had of it,

servant of one last machine,

searching with inhuman patience

day and day about, listening and calling out;

Hello, is anybody there?

Hello, hello -- we're lonely...