To steer by

(OK, so the northern star isn't a quasar, call it artistic license...)

What's to say here?

Maybe nothing.  Let the poem speak for itself.

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To steer by


If I should go to seek the northern star
I'll shoe my stick in adamant
and take whichever road winds farthest
through wider and more disjunct lands --
a drunkard's life journey, endless in retelling
while the eyes fuzz at 3 a.m.

—although I'll leave before the end of this
or any other tale. Many miles expect
unhurried feet and gaze which notes
the climate cooling as I walk, sees
how a plant displaces softer weeds,
and feels it satisfies some need:
translating feet to miles.

But is there any effort of the patient stride
to bring one to the place of total ease,
to stand upon the landscape where it's clean,
unstirred beneath the empty air,
and the sky a passacaglia
for unaccompanied star?

If I should come beside you as I walk—
in dust, or mud, or chill with sprinkled rain—
maybe I will ask about the road ahead
and while you'll think me friendly in my way,
you will not drag my eyes from the horizon.

Three sheets to the wind

Another oldish poem from 2010, and another poem with my favourite layout: the sectional poem with subtitles between the sections.  Free verse this time, although I also incline toward gluing sequences of sonnets together in the same manner...

My preferred typography is for the overall title underlined, and the subsection titles to be bold.  To my mind this makes the mid-flow entitlements less of an interruption and more of a aside that doesn't halt the flow.

I have heard somebody (forget who) say that bold is the usual formatting for titles in general, but surely that is wrong?  Surely titles have always been underlined with two strokes of the Biro and a standard 30cm school ruler?

Be that as it may, I underline them; and I also hold no truck with unnecessary mid-title capitalisation...  Sure, if you've spent the morning engraving it, then by all means add capitals, cherubs, bunches of fruit, but I'm just poking keys on a laptop—no special ceremony is required*.

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Three sheets to the wind



I

A sheet to be swaddled in. The wind blew through
and you could not know any different, from
sixty-odd seconds. But you knew
that life so far was hard, cold, bright.

Even when the warm eyes gathered you,
slathered you with smiles, filled you with milk;
your innocence retained that slight dent.


II

Storming with the rebel youth
through a city grown older, slower, more inviting,
with each and every pint. You've raised
a fair few prodigal brews while the night
phased late into early and the ghost of a pay packet.

You might recall probable dancing
with definite girls
of the unimpressed variety
but now today is another tomorrow.


III

One path winding
through sheets of fractured rain
towards some sort of gate.

The cup you recall drinking,
so sweet and heady you used to gulp
each fresh experience, is hollowed now
to sparser and more-bitter dregs
but you can't stop until it's dry.

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*Or to put it another way, if Emily Dickinson can invent her own rules of punctuation, why can't I?

A slightly drunken message from the geeks

Geek sensibilities, earlier today

Geeks are, of course, the sub-set of nerds who can realistically be hired and set to work with  normal people.

Also, apparently, the geeks are going to inherit the Earth—I'm expecting to receive the paperwork any day now.

In the meantime, it would be wrong to say that geek sensibilities were 'special' and that people "just don't get us"—or rather it would be true, but no more than it is for everybody else.  Everybody has their own desires, wishes, aesthetics; and everybody thinks they're not appreciated, and everyone thinks nobody understands.

Obviously some industries run almost entirely on geek power, and sometimes non-geeks take the credit.  This happens when 'leaders' do not realise their role in the process.  They imagine they have 'vision', 'drive' and 'clarity'; when what they really provide is 'naivety', 'stubbornness' and 'blind luck'.

Be all that as it may, one day the geeks may decide they've had enough, and then...

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A slightly drunken message from the geeks


Be not afraid, for though we are much cleverer than you,
although rogues are a proper subset of thieves
and liars a superset of leaders
I have enumerated them all
(appendix A). Good day

if you are reading this message then we are missing
presumed... well this is the question
to be, have been, be being
and yet to not be present at the desks,
terminals and laboratory benches
where previously we lived.

Yes, we were paid.
No, that was never the point
and basically the point,
the point is that you never understood
the beauty of a well-crafted subroutine,
gear train, enzymatic inhibition feedback loop
which was all we ever wanted. So...

if you turn your questioning eye
to somewhere on a cloudless night
in Autumn and the direction
of the galaxy's core you will find
a tiny point of light red-shifted
almost into nothing. And that's us. Cleverer.