Marina Bay Sands
An enormous surfboard structure sits atop three white skyscrapers, towering above the bay. An azure blue sweep of water, speckled with tourists and selfie sticks, stretches the length of the gigantic shelf with no edge apparent, seemingly nothing to separate the laughing and tanned from falling fifty seven floors into the tarmac heart of the resort
the great and the good
suspended, floating in clouds
forgetting to swim
Murder. Intrigue. Anthropomorphic construction vehicles and bloodthirsty elevators; The Internet of Things, a real British blockbuster of a book has it all. They said that curiosity killed the cat, but they left out the part about the blender…
In a world where everything is connected to the internet and even your toaster is smarter than you, things begin to go wrong and Bruce von Toose, private detective, is caught square in the middle. Will he be able to solve the case of the disappearing rapper before Bristol, or all of Great Britain is razed to the ground by rampant, rioting machines? Will anybody be left alive to care or, more importantly, to pay his fee?
The Fast and the Furious
Some people go fast
in Hot Wheels cars.
Vin Diesel sports
a grappling hook.
Legally Blonde
A blonde woman
isn’t stupid;
she is instead
an attorney.
Moonwalker
Michael Jackson fights
drug gangs and Joe Pesci
to save kids; he turns
into a freaking robot.
Lethal Weapon
Riggs!
He’s crazy!
I am too old
for this shit.
Titanic
Leonardo Di Caprio
fucks Kate Winslet;
I think we all know
how this one ends.
Image from: www.msbnana.blogspot.com
Tradition,
religion,
our flight plan repetition
dead people’s luggage clogs the runways of the mind.
Terrorism,
fundamentalism
exploitation of the blind
grounded forever in the baggage of your kind,
Tradition,
religion,
tied up together in tales of better times
with snapped straps that we have chosen to rebind.
Ignorance,
delusion,
travelling through life, imaginary friends at your side
tell us all exactly what it is that you expect to find?
Illumination?
Inner peace?
Enlightment?
An afterlife?
My friends, the truth is that we are all just flying blind,
whirling on a rock, staring at a star with streaming eyes
and we are all alone, together, hoping it will rise,
and that we are just a moment, blinking through the sky.
Image is “Earthrise” from Wikipedia taken by William Anders on the Apollo 8 moon mission: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthrise
Smashed in riotous circumstances,
he wobbled at every function
fanatically followed by “the sheep”
he called them; and they followed
bleating their two-bit ambitions
in the wake of his rising star.
He really didn’t care;
they liked the money,
he liked the company,
it was lonely at the top.
He popped another
and dove right in.
The flock grew infamous behind him,
braying loudly, squabbling furiously,
eager to sup from the hand that fed
too busy clutching at bottles instead,
fighting dirty, spreading muck and filth,
he was theirs, at least in their heads.
They really didn’t care,
his cash stopped flowing,
he was empty inside,
they’d drunk him dry.
They waved goodbye
The shepherd cried out
but nobody listened;
it was all just an act,
the boy who cried wolf,
nominated by the Academy
consumed by the herd.
St. Michaels Tower sits watching
the black and white cows grazing
upon the bright green fields leading
us on through the gates of Avalon
sat lonely atop the mighty Tor,
rising high above rows of pylons
that thread the emerald pastures
between busy roads and hedgerows.
The midday sun casts a long shadow,
the charcoal outline of the old yew tree
draped delicately across dotted nettles,
providing shelter for the aged weary
trudging through the land of faeries,
tracing King Arthur’s deep footsteps
through the ageless fields of Avalon,
through many seasons born and gone,
the famed sword lives on,
set into stone
buried beneath the roundabout.
“This is dumb” grumbled the celebrity chef
as he attempted a clumsy bald-headed plié,
and, mugging shamelessly for the cameras,
he announced he had never danced before.
“It’s mad, I’ve never danced before” he revealed,
rubbing his head proudly to a waxen sheen
with his sweaty, torn cuff; he liked it rough,
as his publicist had briefed him he should.
“My wife thinks I must be gay!” silence,
cut to a sequence of trialled pink sequinned shirts,
a nonsensical statement left to hang in the edit
like a homophobic fart in the prime-time lift.
Then cheers as he and his partner hit the dance floor,
hands on bums, pumping their hips with fixed grins,
stiff, like over-sexualised animatronic mannequins
lurching along painfully to Tom Jones’ “Sex Bomb.”
One judge liked it, he always does, flirting in his verdict,
one judge hated it, he always does, flinging verbal excrement,
one judge wasn’t sure, she never is, she liked his swinging hips
the last judge was too busy flogging frozen food (like he always is).
Buddhist technique #1 – Palm descending from Heaven
My stomach sinks. I am falling; incredible speed smashes against my ears. I spot a far-off spark and spy a single star. A comets trail catches at me and, suddenly, enveloped, I am still. I push and punch at my prison; the walls respond and retract. Looking up now, I feel weightless as a chink of light appears, opening. I crawl out, on to a great golden palm that quivers beneath me. Gigantic glinting fingers crease, and fold back, to form a clawed cockpit. I step forwards, reborn, the pilot of the hand of God.
Buddhist technique #2 – Void and diffusion
Sailing into night, all is silent as it stretches away forever, the vast black frozen sea. Time seems spurious as all is speed and void, all is silent as it stretches away forever, the vast black frozen sea like sleep with lucid dreaming, and all is silent. A vast sea, black frozen time silence, all is spurious and void. All is silent, and still, and then, suddenly, from eternal darkness, springs forth a light. A coloured pinprick, blinking, beckons me in, the great whim; a simple request for investment of consciousness that must be answered.
Buddhist technique #3 – The hand that feeds
The hand agreed, wordlessly. Vibrations quicken, ear drums quiver. I crouch low as colours grow and blossom: great pink and yellow space-orchids spinning red and blue. We approach as petals part; an interwoven helix of paint box strands unravels. Psychedelic spaghetti twisting past a dislocated prism and we are speed now as we fly through the heart of the matter. A camel squeezed at terminal velocity through the eye of a syringe.
I was born of a conveyor belt
in a factory line, in to a box,
a blueprint baby you brought home
and set in a cradle before the fire.
Happily we grew old together as I threw
my flickering campfire light so bright
that the cold hearth lay forgotten.
You swept my brow of gathering dust
as the porcelain ballerina grew greyer
and we laughed at my portraits,
laughed dust clouds for entire years
as the skeleton clock wound down
on the mantel – its rotation slowed
as time itself grew old and seized.
The credits rolled on.
We were golden together.
For our anniversary;
you dumped me in a black plastic bag,
moved a skinny bitch in to replace me
but I knew she was coming as
I once knew the red button
of your tender caress, my controller,
before you left me out on the kerb
to the mercy of furry cocked legs,
smashed and unloved in the bin,
cursed by the un-gloved rubbish men.
The wicked paper window,
flaps down a tarmac stream,
wraps colourfully a lamppost
displays, vibrant and obscene
tantalising, tales flicker fleeting,
a thousand blinking stories
winking white at passers-by,
hinting at once-golden glories,
with a murderous, glinting eye,
cantankerous and caterwauling,
pulling Gods down from the sky
hawking squawking pulpy lies,
and though it lies now broken
the living window never dies.
Picture by Roberta Justin, available to buy at: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/55802482856281813/
Human Writes... 