The Pain In Spain

There are aliens among us.  I recall being taken,
Young, in an impossible flying object; walking
Down the rear ramp I was struck by strange-
ly-reeking foreign smells.  On the beach, a kraken
Emerged begoggled, apparently successful in stalking
Its prey: a squirming, glistening knot, derange-
d by suffering, a harpooned octopus.  Their brain
Lies mostly outside the head, and the arms – lace-
d with myriad neurons, working in parallel to the main
Mind – can each know, caress and embrace
The world, uniquely multitasking.  Yet Spain
Plans to farm them millionfold, in space-
s too small, and kill them slowly in ice and pain.
Are those monsters members of the human race? 

(28.3.26) v 1.01

So, What’s Next?

Once upon a time, I sang – yet
Again – of word processors, spreadsheets, data-
bases, comms (though not the Internet,
A concept that emerged many years later);
And alongside the boring Big Four some-
thing new: artificial intelligence,
The fifth digital horseman, still to come.
It’s now – what? – forty years thence,
And that hoary old tech is transformed, choosing
Like an ancient bard from the heroic word-hoard,
Or like trouvères and troubadours musing
On the mot juste to please promptly a lord.
Art and AI both try to answer the vexed
Eternal question: “so, what’s next?”

(22.3.26) v 1.0

“Lack Of Light” By Nino Haratischwili

In Tbilisi zoo, an astonished monkey sits

And watches naked apes in their world-wide

Cage kill.  Two passing girls see bits

Of brain, run off.  But one, Dina, decid-

es to return, to save a random, red-headed man.

She gives others’ money, promises amends.

An unrefusable miniskirted offer to her secret stan,

A drug boss, fixes it, and thereby sends

Her lover to gunplay, madness, and death.  A rope

Cut from Chekhov’s improbable gymnastic rings

Chokes this bravest of women, drained of hope,

Done in by the gross unfairness of things.

This masterpiece’s moral – “no good deed

Goes unpunished” – is just the one we need.

(18.3.26) v 1.3

The Final Touch

Heads down, they tap, squeeze and slide
Themselves through equally zombified crowds, thumb-
Typing away, doomscrolling; some
Just stop and stare, horror-happy-eyed
At the wonder of this, their talisman.  It’s
A wallet, camera, map, clock, translator,
TV, computer, torch, calculator,
Ebook, calendar, and boom box in one, which fits
In your pocket.  Twenty years ago, much
Effort was squandered on styluses, wheels and knobs
That failed to turn phone into platform.  It took Jobs
To add that “one more thing”: a god-like touch.
Today’s ubiquitous, magic, confab-
ulating wand is not a stick, but a delicate slab.

(14.3.26) v 1.0

Ludwig In Lisbon

Venice on a hill, azulejos-bejewelled, a bobb-
ing sea of red and orange roofs; smok-
y fado, a ‘44 port, half a poor lob-
ster with its special hammer: these superficially evoke
My spring in Lisbon.  Far deeper the impact of a night
Concert in the improbably huge, perishably wood-
en Coliseu.  Ringed by the firefly specks of light
From burning cigarettes, I waited.  Could
He really be there, the “Prince of Darkness” – Miles – 
Who rushed the astonished world through bebop, cool
Jazz, third stream and fusion styles,
Breaking and remaking each jaded musical rule?
Yes: stern and limping, a latter-day Beeth-
oven, uniquely original, supremely great.

(7.2.26) v 1.1

Wrong Time, Wrong Place

Shakespeare, born a thousand years too soon,
Lacks the later tongue’s mongrel boon.
Rembrandt, green apprentice at the Black Death’s start,
Finds a dearth of readies for vain, superfluous art.
Bach, arriving a sesquicentenary after,
Displeases Saxon delight in froth and laughter.
Shakespeare the Soviet needs Stalin’s nod
For every word – if not, it’s...firing squad.
Rembrandt, cowed by the Taliban in Kandahar,
Fears all save geometry goes lethally too far.
Bach, at the Mughal court – its culture most fine –

Struggles to fugue with the sitar’s single line.
Shakespeares, Rembrandts, and Bachs live among us today;
But genius, in the wrong place, just wastes away.

(2.3.26) v 1.4