Saturday 26 July 2014

Touch Screen

Little migraine auras litter you,
Rainbow, smudges, glitter you,
As, in the evening light, you catch some ray
Of golden brightness gone astray.
And then the words beneath your rigid glass,
Are secondary to patterns, pink, green, blue,
Which, greasy finger tips have slid
And tapped and swiped, in childish dances.
You don't catch coal dust in between your keys,
And grime, but only little specks and motes.
You shine yourself from underneath,
Pale, butter yellow, when I'm making notes.
But it's in the unexpected brilliance
Which glances on your surface suddenly
That shows the popularity of places.
The zed and ex bear barely any grease,
The smiley face and exclamation mark,
Show hardly a trace of poking, but the space
Bar is quicksilvered in the dark,
A veritable oil slick; so the chances
Of mistyping, adding unexpected gaps, increase.

Monday 21 July 2014

Mostly inspired by Alexis de Tocqueville writing in 1835

Dear Sir,
I wish to be a child of the state;
I know my place and yearn for Neverland,
My infancy is a perpetual joy,
So please provide for my security.
Please help, don't leave me to my fate,
I only wish to stay a happy boy.
Foresee my needs and then supply them, stand
Up for me, facilitate my pleasure,
Manage all my principal concerns,
And please direct my industry and leisure.
And though I'm but a child,
Should I procreate,
Make sure that you control the descent
Of all my property; please regulate.
Inheritances you must subdivide.
And then, because I'm good and love the law,
Provide a network o'er the surface
Of my life, of tiny, petty, bossy, pointless rules,
Complicated, uniform, unique,
And I shall learn them like a child at school,
Recite them and become a mindless bore.
My mind shan't know originality,
And lacking energy, my character
Shall not attempt to penetrate their meaning,
Nor yet to rise above:  please enervate,
I need a nanny's love.

Sunday 20 July 2014

On Maternal Love

Maternal love grows stronger as it hides.
The love for helpless infants we expose
to all the the world because it's general, glows
in shining eyes. It's recognised. Those tides,
that kept us joyful, happy, were besides
the means of gaining sympathy. But those
first feelings were merely the start. We chose
to let the world rejoice with us. The strides
the infant made, becoming an adult
we named and shared, but it was in between,
in ordinary hours that the swell
grew high. The peaks and troughs did not result
in longing for an end. And yet the scene
must shift: love sets its object free and bids farewell.

Thursday 10 July 2014

Bucko Ball (for Kingsley). Written 2014, when Kings was still doing his physics degree



All that you have been 
In becoming yourself
Is summed up here,
In this almost sphere,
From messy, papier-mâché castles,
The amazing, War Hammer, armoured mammoth,
The tiny working trebouché,
To the Lego walking machine.
Summed up: 20 hexagons to make a Fullerene.
A three dimensional representation,
Of what you already know,
Providing information
So that you can show
And thus command
That part of your mind;
That has yet to find
A mathematical, theoretical solution,
Which must spell out 
In algorithms, codes,
Something real;
A concrete construction,
Which makes inroads
Into absence
And helps you understand.