Rapid Response

The perfect symmetry of bragging, one rattle and  a responsive thrust it's not really known as a solution as such we'll send a rocket over there we'll send a bomber over here look at my rocket look at my bomber meanwhile, in less heady news there remains a shivering populace far beneath these displays, there have been weddings, affairs, arguments new love, betrayal all the usual stuff (also, shopping, putting up shelves you get the drift) carrying on, it's not the big picture though just a lot of little ones but still look at my rocket look at my bomber

a million quid's worth of concrete snuffing out possibilities as slowly the winding down of the right to occupy space set against some sets of realities, slightly recognisable if we guiltily tell ourselves but nevertheless the human urge to costcut and so we'll build the scaffolds from limbs laid end to end a hand grasps a kneejoint "the structure's designed to be flexible" as the towers and tunnels of privately funded England erupt from the page and break free from the balance sheet

a constant flux of mobile travesties the seamless grace-states the unspoken answer to the deepest desires one reality moving amongst others and this removal this ripping out of the touchstone of the individual right to constant consumptive solipsism cup-holders as civil liberties will leave the air clearer and millions lost

This poem has been washed in chlorine for your safety It's been produced to what I believe to be an acceptable standard, more quickly perhaps, but less expensive you may be less convinced may not think it's your sort of poem but frankly, since I agreed to read your somewhat formulaic short story you've no choice but to sit back and take it

Those who talk loudest about England do the most to destroy it it's not news on these sites another note pot herbs and sinkholes anxious scanning fresh creosote, maybe two inches hard won harder lost worse or as bad in the living memories of pit villages just something else "consultation" you can do anything if you've consulted a map is worth a thousand begonias snapdragons, sweet cicely buckling under the wieght of someone else's infrastructure

Use common sense  they say but never say whose Follow the letter  they say not the spirit, they said that on day one just after the hi-vis and clipboards It's tough out here for a TSEO you see a lemonade stand a clear breach a smiling five year old clearly in breach if you let it go what next? the eight year old selling apple juice the twelve year old offering coffee before you know it dad's opened an offie so you've got the script you read it as you were told to and tears, mayhem, tabloid ridicule, use common sense stick to the script just blink them back try again tomorrow

Of course it's unfortunate the stack of paper and the scant notebook we like to tell ourselves how we can read the pictures the clarity of the narrative of expression, brows furrowed or otherwise a glance gives you beginning, middle end and of course the wrong side of the story hotly dispute the image we weren't ready our eyes were shut we were thinking of England a dog ate our image rights there's a pile here somewhere, so much paper all the paper the moment though becomes the story the narrative loop closed the comment pieces penned the paperwork

Like circling seabirds signifying land, or the first migrating geese of the turning season you can take it as read it says someone somewhere has committed an act of sanity

One hears only whistling the other only ticking positions remain unclear expertise is subjective issues have varying terms ask what the poem can make of it as an engine for negotiation we can assume a degree of cautious optimism from these few lines scraps of paper wrongfoot the negotiating team who were expecting another, like them calmly suited with straight glasses and instead face down wild fantasy so you may as well send this or another set of lines to sit in the chamber and tick

the moments of perhaps the hazards of continuum the inconstancy of ideology the beguiling of the instant the old voices not yet stopping still dripping oiling the years the tyranny of constancy the harrowing of certainty the sureties of histories the rewriting of the same the old voices certain of themselves where no-one else  is

silent guards, drawn up sketched in the past figures in a space a dull clang as the symbolism hits the tiles A rich and powerful man wishes to impress a rich and powerful man so takes him to the tomb of a rich and powerful man because rich and powerful men only understand other rich and powerful men when their riches and power are contextualised by dead rich and powerful men it seems the third guardsman from the left is thinking longingly of pot au feu Trump's nodding a dull sky, does it matter?

I'm not entirely sure why more people aren't freaking out about this

I circled the story for swathes of hours stacking the responses just out of reach you can't look you must the lost loop of a thin sliver of human in amongst the narrative noise and ideology the instant opinion so much opinion all the terrible weight of opinion all the floods of sentiment somewhere in there still, growing stiller

So, you've used force now now, calm down I'm sure it was necessary but just for the record we need to ask a few questions for example when you got out of bed this morning was it willingly? it was a nice morning after all, best to be out or did you need another couple of hours? how would you descirbe your state of mind I know things have been difficult lately silence over takeaway the usual airless tightness when her key turns and the subject of your force was he familiar? I know you've had your suspicions about her colleague, Dean is it? how would you describe the degree used? A friendly cuff? a shove and stumble? did you kick his fucking head in? you said you would last week at the Frankie and Benny's next to the cinema you took her to see a film how was it?

The only explanation is he thinks it's a game coke'll do that to you at some point people became counters (maybe they always were) or icons, flickering along the routes snaking from the cities the roads then the railways the advances quantifiable a way of keeping score he's enraptured by accumulation somone dropped the beta test on the wrong hard drive and now a man is mouthing "Western Civilisation is at stake" A man who has done so much to ensure that this is the case

A cry raised in the shires and the sons of the soil are roused to praise him who is come another Rees-Mogg Sixtus, brother of Anselm and as the chiefs gather from Upper Vobster to Midsomer Norton to give obeisance the infant's howls are as the very stuff of the air, enough to stir the sleeping knights enough to drain the Levels turn back the storm surges crack the stones  at Glastonbury Tor render Cheddar Gorge yet further asunder and still the trouble over Bridgwater for he is come oh yes he is come another Rees-Mogg  Sixtus, brother of Anselm

Not enough fear already landscape stalked by various real and imagined it's getting hard to move of a morning eye the horizon we know the meta-threats of course the inchoate dangers and you can rationalise terror, some of us remember the eighties, phoned warnings you can get your head round AI and the destruction of work the dissolution of age-old contracts between state and person all the rights fought for and ablating in early-day motions a regression to nativist medieval ideals but that your shed might explode? a terror too far

We can have our cake and eat it -  Boris Johnson We ordered it in a pleasant cafe a Brussels side street zinc tables, striped umbrellas a large thick slice and it seemed a simple premise: have cake eat cake and what a cake dense with promise a teasing ganache giddily we fumbled for our forks but slowly held up by the sun perhaps at first but then thickly, like the mayonnaise on the frites doubts. maybe perhaps premonitions oozing over our elevenses sliding onto the table as ineluctable as legislation what happens when we eat the cake? Thesis: no more cake and with no more cake there'd be nothing, just an absence of cake a cakeless future the clouds slid in jazzily, urgently like Brassens and suddenly the thought of eating it grew ludicrous, who were we to eat this cake? the density of the crumb alone spoke volumes we'll leave the icing out of this you can have the cake or you can eat the cake or you can still arguing ...