Planet go boom
ceo make speech
give award
accept award
ceo owe everything to family
ceo save whale
donate to charity
cry when queeny die
ceo believe in military industrial complex
ceo crank handle
leverage synergy
eat low hanging fruit
think ceo thoughts under blue ceo sky
ceo like haute cuisine
know maître 'd by first name
go to special club
for spanky-spanky
ceo polo star in youth
but now play golf
quaff champagne at regatta
send both children to public school
ceo hate tax
boo regulation, red tape
& say union very bad
ceo happy
staff come in early
& leave late
ceo comms team
post authenticity
on social media
go back in time
ceo build shiny satanic mill
walk plantation
prospect for gold
ceo sad to lay off staff
tough call to make
but machine better than human
ceo still want max pay
& bonus ratchets
at record high
ceo profit from your loss
my loss
all loss
peel away ceo skin
spoon out ceo eyes
& find vulture head
on lizard body
ceo slither through sewer
reaching city of night
& slide into your bed, whispering
dreamy-dream of post-industrial revolution
ceo get what ceo want
ceo deep undercover
spy
double agent
judge. jury. executioner
ceo evil multiply
in poverty, war
& madness
ceo grow strong
feasting off lies
that never end
ceo don’t stop
until planet go boom
& we all deady-dead
Assassins
Buying scotch eggs and a pint of milk in my village supermarket I notice the boy on checkout has Lee Harvey Oswald eyes and Gavrilo Princip lips. I look around for JFK, checking to see if he’s buying hair product and suntan lotion. I’m reliably informed that the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife shop here regularly for Battenberg cake. I’m convinced that blood is going to be spilled when the cashier asks if I have a loyalty card. The real question in the queue is this: does he kill me, or do I kill him? I’ve come to realise that the Parish News posted through my letterbox each month is really an anarchist pamphlet signalling a call to arms. The old lady behind me in the queue knows all about the breakdown of society – back in her youth, she was a mentor for Andy Warhol’s shooter, Valerie Solanas. Out in the fields, the farmers are stockpiling (many round here think it’s just the harvest). A revolution is coming, where the proles will seize the means of production and sports will be free to air again. I sit in my car, watching the entrance to the supermarket eating a scotch egg, a copy of the Parish News on my lap feeling like a cop on a stakeout as I wait for the arrival of the Kennedys and the Ferdinands. One day, I’ll be stopped in the street and people will jostle to ask me: “What was it like to be served by the boy with Oswald eyes and Princip lips?” And I will tell them the whole story.
More Chilli Sauce, Mate
You remember the estate – kids putting dogshit through letter boxes teenagers smashing the windows of a hearse the guy who threw a copper off a first-floor balcony. Going to camberwell to play snooker staggering back arseholed in the early hours taking the no-no of a cut-thru down the back garages (why’d you do that, you silly sausage?) they put a knife to your throat shoving you hard against the graffiti-covered wall pulling off the ring you got for your birthday playing pat-a-cake with your pockets. Spending dole money in pubs afternoons of losing at pool & darts watching old men grin, each paying a young stripper an extra quid to watch her take a piss in a bucket. Listening to the stories told of stabbings, robberies & the things that happened to brummie lee when he got locked up in feltham. Out on the lash. blokes cheering girls fighting in the street hair yanked. knickers flashing & then you’re in the kebab shop queuing for a tasty doner “Yeah, go on, more chilli sauce, mate.” You don’t recall any sense of community or working-class solidarity on the estate people vanished into thin air, will-o-the-wisps turning into rumours & jokes, gossip & legend in prison. mad. homeless. dead a few moved out, heading to the mystical realms of sutton & sunny thanet. You found mystical realms, alright wanking into a sock. There were secret places to wander you used to bunk off school & go to the tate trying to make sense of blake’s gods & demons rothko’s walls of blood. bacon’s alien scream. Other days, you’d stand on the roof of a block of flats & you’d stare at the skyline wondering what it all meant smoking a joint & drinking a can of Super T dreaming of france & india, proper mystical places where people were not fucked in the head by fear & anger & fuck all expectations (so you thought). Never your home & yet there really was no place like it difficult to put into words – the estate is always with you.
Flight of the dragonfly 