At the fallen angel karma collider electric diagnostician and experimental tea bar

At the fallen angel karma collider electric diagnostician and experimental tea bar

I usually eschew what I think of as "arbitrary weirdness" in poems, but sometimes the weirdness is a lot of the point...

Not posting the words this time, just a recording:

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Ian Badcoe · At the fallen angel karma collider electric diagnostician and experimental tea bar

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SFX where attribution is required:

Tabletop clock ticking, speed ramp down (followup) by ycbcr -- https://freesound.org/s/556991/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

Cash Register by kiddpark -- https://freesound.org/s/201159/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

Mystic Flute Flutter 2 by Soughtaftersounds -- https://freesound.org/s/145429/ -- License: Attribution 3.0

Mystic Flute Flutter 3 by Soughtaftersounds -- https://freesound.org/s/145430/ -- License: Attribution 3.0

Mystic Flutter 1 by Soughtaftersounds -- https://freesound.org/s/145428/ -- License: Attribution 3.0

Mystic Flutter 5 by Soughtaftersounds -- https://freesound.org/s/145432/ -- License: Attribution 3.0

record scratch.wav by luffy -- https://freesound.org/s/3536/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

Mystic Flutter 5 by Soughtaftersounds -- https://freesound.org/s/145432/ -- License: Attribution 3.0

Your life need not make sense

 

I recently had this one published in the newly reactivated Riggwelter many thanks to the incomparable Jon Kinsman.

Your life need not make sense

Origin story

We are foam on the surface
of the boil of evolution, and you are fitted,
crudely, in a survival-of-the-fittest-shaped hole
and although so many armchair Fascists suggest
this means your only valid role
is to beat, subdue and rape
this is not the case.
You need not be the wolf
(who are not like that anyway.)

Fittest never meant most buff
or supreme conqueror,
Darwin and consequent theorists
have always meant most suited to the day
and when the afternoon is spent
building box forts for grandchildren, then...

why Grandma, what strong genes you have...

Making a life

So you build a society
upon the froth and initially all you want
is edible roots and grains enough
for through the winter's bleak

but in a society people speak
or snub one another
and people start to own things
inherit
acquire that younger lover
on the side

and people hide
or worse take pride
in their tiny peccadillos
and before long
the heap is sorted
every person in their place
every foot
firmly in the face
of someone underneath
and you smile and say you are happy
with the boots
all pressing down.

Making a buck

I will trade these beaver pelts
for a new iPhone, I have I think
a ton of them
encrypted
with a blockchain and stored
in an envelope which I keep
beneath the mattress

and I earn them, of course,
on the gig economy
where nothing is forever
or even for the day
and why would you want a pension plan
why would you believe that you
or your nation
would ever last that long?

Coherence is not required

...as we stroll along the shore
salt sea-spray in our hair
and the five star hotel is still burning
over there
the currency we bought when we arrived
might now get us shot on sight
and who knows whether the street kitchen
we used for food tonight
will still exist tomorrow
or take my walking boots in payment

but this is a great holiday
axiom zero still holds:
we exist
and what more do you want?

 

NaPoWriMo 2023 - 13 - A Study of Political Developments in Europe from 1945 to the Present Day.

I think I will have to admit I have missed a few days of NaPoWriMo now. This is ignoring all prompts and just turning the surreality dial way up...

A Study of Political Developments in Europe from 1945 to the Present Day.

Performance note: to be recited in one breath without hesitation, deviation or passing out.

For those watching in black and white I was standing on the ceiling of the Arc de Triomphe eating my usual which is banana and eggplant pizza with a side order of irreconcilable longing and if you're in America you probably believe you know what eggplant is but in Europe eggplant refers to the sensation of driving a rented removals van rapidly through a long-abandoned mountain tunnel with one eye on the road and one eye nervous on the fuel gauge and anyway I was standing in the basement of Nelson's Column eating my usual which is banana and eggplant pizza with a side order of irreconcilable longing and you probably think that Nelson's Column is military but in fact it celebrates the decisive victory of the British Public over the checkout queue in Marks and Spencer and I was standing on the ceiling of my local post office eating my usual which is banana and eggplant pizza and you probably feel that by now you understand the role of the removals van but for those watching in black and white a removals van is like a pantechnicon and for those watching in black and white a removals van is quite like a panel truck and for those watching in black and white I was standing on the ceiling of my local meteorological office and eating my usual and it was raining and it had always been raining and I felt a sensation of irreconcilable eggplant and it was raining and it was pizza and it was cold.

NaPoWriMo 2023 - 9 - Taking it under advisement

(I have not skipped a couple, I kept them private because they fell out kinda personal...)

Taking it under advisement

the first rule of dealing-with-the-particular-thing-
the-thing-that's-secret-to-myself-and-that-
I-do-not-like-to-talk-about-
club, is we talk about it
that is the advice

at any rate,
that one sex blogger gives, documenting
how she's lived her life
radically reimagined
and somewhat exposed
these last five years

and been happier for it
who talks
about the dirty underside of her mind
the very not-talking being
what enabled
the "dirty" judgement to persist
and possibly it works for her

in some degree
because exhibitionism
which I so don't have

so I take the limited supply
of advice
as well intentioned but with a big
pinch of salt

and the advice I give is:

avoid magical thinking
--such as believing that the aforementioned
talking-about-the-unspeakable
can fix everything--
because it always seems like
if we could only address WXYZ
then everything would be lovely
in the garden

but this
is a failure
of imagination
and the post-WXYZ world is still a world

(or garden)

still messy and dirty and filled
with human beings, complex,
and not all well intentioned
and there was no way
that merely sorting out the WXYZ
was going to fix that

no, my advice is:

walk on the grass
whether the sign says otherwise or no
our pleasures are limited
and none of us know
when we'll go

bare feet on damp grass
your father running the sprinkler
but that was then and now you are the father
with no sprinkler
because ecology

and in this newer world in theory
sometimes you want but think you should not have

a Bakewell tart for example

of the more industrial kind
with solid sugar icing to at least
a quarter of an inch
but you can

because,
ultimately,
apart for those we choose ourselves
there are no rules.

NaPrWriMo 2023 - 6 - The Post-Industrial Research Assistant's Tale

This has been half-written in my pile for *ages*...

It came from consideration of how a university department is, like most small communities, pseudo-independent of the larger world in which is embedded.  Concerns of the dept. are not necessarily concerns of the wider world, but every inhabitant of the dept. is also an inhabitant of the world in general, and brings all that baggage with them.

In this poem, society has (semi) fallen apart but the department keeps on keeping on in a slightly revised way, ignoring to some extent the turmoil in the street...


The Post-Industrial Research Assistant's Tale

I wake and follow my routine

every window in the department has it's crop
tomatoes, cucumbers, French beans
and I go round with my basket
and watering can. It's a trade
I like to think I plants aren't enslaved
but rather there's a meaningful exchanging
of water fertilizer and well-lit, sheltered positions
for produce: veg and fruit --
and we may as well admit to weed
since there are no University authorities anymore.

I've found I can grow
almost anything as I have learned
to be slow and patient so I don't tire
of watering, or picking out the weeds
I have no problem germinating seeds
as I can set their perfect temperature
on the incubator salvaged from biophysics
and later move them round, between window ledges
the break room table
and half a dozen other sunny spots
as suits their thirst for light. But today
is shopping day,

so I take my basket and go
into the town to do the deals
that spin the wheels of life.
I exit the quad
via the turnstile at the rear
because there's fewer people forcing leaflets
in your hand
although I still get ones
for transcendental cyber-feminism
and The Church of Happy Nihilism
which apparently is off Brewer Street
and I make a note to avoid that route on
-- check the leaflet -- Thursday evenings
useful.

The High Street is, from the sound of it,
in its usual disorder--
two Parties of National Unity
(don't ask me which)
are trading insults and half bricks
which means I cannot get to Tesco's
which all-in-all is good
because although I do keep flogging
that particular horse corpse,
the repeated mental pain
of going round the empty shelves again
and occasionally giving the checkout assistant
a tomato
so hungry does she look,
is not a happy morning in my book.

But High Street is out today
so I make my rather more cheerful way
to the Anarchist's Market
where the great thing is
to a mind like mine
that the sellers cannot legitimately say
the trade I offer
is less than fair in any way
and so they just obliquely opine
that for their part they feel
I ought to offer more
and I never tire
of this semi-comic back and forth
as we circle round the deal.

As usual I can get corned beef
and not for the first time wonder
does their supply chain extend all the way
via cliques and communes
and counterculture shipping lines
to South America?
Who knows, but corned beef comes
and fresh veg goes
and life goes on and so...

I return,
via the caretaker's garden
to leave a cucumber in the honesty box
and take a handful of new potatoes
which you cannot grow on windowsills.

All of which leads me to conclude
that it's corned beef hash again
and thus I keep the department fed and they, in turn,
add me to their published papers
but now I brew tea in the break room
where Maria and George are frowning at output
from the quark telescope array
Oh no! I joke,
don't tell me that far out in space
the Wolf's Star Faction have turned this way?

There is a slightly embarrassed pause...

NaPoWriMo 2023 - 2 - Fresh orange

Fresh orange

I - Orange is an emergency services
colour, and here in the soft drinks aisle
of twenty-four hour Tescos

and three a.m., that 'incident' feeling
is happening again,
the faint subliminal questions:

Was that a flicker
of strobing blue?  Do
I hear distant

walky talky distorty voices
saying "Lima tango"--because
they're always going dancing

in South America, I don't know why--
"Lima Tango <crackle>
the <squelch> <squeal> respondingover"?

II - And orange
is an electric Kool-Aid thing
distorting our perceptions

with not-so-subtle misdirections
here, where we're still in Tescos
and the really early morning,

and nothing is true
beneath these too fluorescent lights,
beyond the windows night

fills the car park and light
of a different quality floods from
overhead and neither of these lighting regimes

is wholly real.  Neither illuminates.
Reach out one finger and touch
a bottle of Robinsons no apostrophe double concentrate--

it has no temperature
it has no shadow
you clearly can't believe

reports from the outlying regions

III - and legions of people
have striven, without the intent
of building this precise experience.

They've designed the unreal light
for an unreal store, the murmur of the air-con,
the muted swish of automatic doors,

the weirdly dampened non-echoing
of staff restocking, bleeping and stacking,
their footsteps directionless

on synthetic floor and you...
you are still staring at seven thousand
near-identical brands of orange squash, have

IV -  no saffron-clad Tibetan monks at hand
to guide you with Zen aphorisms and show
how in fact you'll never ever know

the real from the unreal
the being from the imagining
and how

there's always a observer effect,
the viewer is not separate
from the film and the only way

to know the world is to live it
as part of the motley cavalcade,
who--like the most primitive sea creatures--

allow the ocean of experience
to wash right through their bodies
not separate from minds.

Just let your hand find any old bottle,
brave the bleep-synthetic-voice-how-many-bags,
and leave.  There is still time, outside,

V - you should be out in it.

NaPoWriMo 2023 - 1 - once we're cyborgs

once we're cyborgs

once we're cyborgs

I am standing outside my house, 

unable to release the door handle!

Just put me through to tech support...

once we're cyborgs

twenty thousand Japanese girls

wearing the same left arm

as their idol

once we're cyborgs

the preface to fucking requiring

some tech-savvy, negotiation:

if I configure myself like this...?

once we're cyborgs

as many forms for people

as there are ideas of people

the whale, the tree, the somebody-new-four-times-a-day

once we're cyborgs

beeping

something's always quietly beeping 

and you never know if it's you

once we're cyborgs

I don't know...

flexes arm at fitting room mirror

...is it a bit too "Bond villain"?

once we're cyborgs

virus scanners

and ad-blockers:

life and death

once we're cyborgs

Darling, 

your father crashed at the supermarket again

can you go in your truck and pick him up? 

Do you have the ticket / we all are always never going home

I have two poems We all are always never going home and Girl with degenerate matter earring in Corporeal, and another in their sibling publication En*gendered, so I recorded this performance of one from each...

---

Ian Badcoe · Do you have the ticket / We all are always never going home

---

Nonbinary bus image from:
libragender on tumblr

Featuring bus and bus station sound clips from:
Julien Matthey, abrahemp, and Ubehag on Freesound

TINAG Sound Recording

To celebrate the appearance of my poem TINAG in Selcouth Station here is a recording of me reading it, with a few virtual co-conspirators keeping tabs on me from a safe distance...

If you are wondering where this poem comes from, I was thinking about the difference between "gaming the system" and living life.  People who treat everything as a game are often difficult or even dangerous people.  Military/security organisations will sometimes treat the whole world in an overly game-theoretic way, sometimes just for strategic insight, sometimes embracing horrific outcomes for minor tactical advantage.

On the other hand, however, you've got to have some theory of the world...  some framework within which to pick a move...  It's just important not to see the whole thing as a zero-sum game: where the only possible victory is somebody else's loss.  The universe is not like that, and if you are a little person, without a lot of brilliant solo moves available, then non-zero-sum cooperation is the only way to go.

---

Ian Badcoe · TINAG

---

Time core initiation in...

I won't post this poem's text, because it has fancy formatting, and also is available here: Streetcake Magazine, Issue 51 - part 1 

However to celebrate publishing that, I recorded a performance of the poem with some simple sound effects, and that came out pretty well.

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Ian Badcoe · Time core initiation in...

---

NaPoWriMo - 2021 - XVIII - And as she...

 And as she...

...starts to sprint she pulls her self,
one foot sticking
slightly, out of time -- the external world slowing
between one footfall and the next --
as Einstein takes his cut.  She annotates

her future path with tense thought and big, square
[brackets] to show where she will go,
years of relativistic combat practice mapping
how she'll pass, barely noticing, through plate glass
and continue
via the eighteen-inch gap between two trucks
which would be crashing
if time dilation left them time to move.

The world ahead is going blue
as she -a-c-c-e-l-e-r-a-t-e-s- and she can see
the gun, rising.  She's going to be too late but again she
--a--c--c--e--l--e--r--a--t--e--s--
faster now than ever before, and she cannot see
in ultraviolet
but she already knows where everything is and how she is
-- in front of the motorbike and behind the limousine --
leaving a tunnel in the air which collapses behind her
with the voice of a titan.
Through the other window --

and now she is in the bank, among the gang,
balaclavas, weapons, bad minds;
normally she'd be flooring goons
at this point
or flicking biros from the desks towards heads
which would snap back
when hit by cheap office supplies
doing multiples of speed of sound
but she has only one target now

so close
a gun, horribly wrongly, pointing
at the only thing in the world which matters;
she might make it
-- might tear that hand off at the wrist,

or maybe swat the bullet in its flight--
or she might not
and if she is too late,
she simply will not brake, but run

into the side of the armoured vault
like a comet with a grudge --
scour everything back down to the bedrock
give the ants their chance -- and choose
not to live on in such a haunted world

of which there is nothing left now
except a man, a gun, a girl
and the need
to *a*c*c*e*l*e*r*a*t*e*.

NaPoWriMo - 2021 - XVI - Unmake

 Unmake

Undo; undo; undo;
unspin the planet; undawn the day; unturn
the season; unproduce the play; unsing all songs,
we're out of time and key; unknow those few
close friends, whether platonic or carnally;
undo; undo; undo;
regress your life and lives; things
you must unsay; undo; undo;
this is all wrong; unbind the electrons; deorbit the moon;
unburn the stars; decolonise the new world; disinhabit Mars;
unsummon the demon;  undo; undo; undo;
I can't be having with this.

NaPoWriMo - 2021 - XIV - Maybe I should stop taking the pills

Maybe I should stop taking the pills

as I was discussing a moment ago
with the lady beneath
the grating in the floor
they cannot see her by the door
where the nurses station lies
and I do not let the nurses
or the penguins
know I'm talking to her
because she's covered in dust bunnies
and a very private woman.  Maybe
I should stop playing this game

it's eating so much of my time
but strangely compelling
and I've made progress,
manoeuvring my avatar from the spawn point:
straightjacketed in the padded room,
through consultations, medications,

group and art therapies,
to here, where it's clear beyond the institution
there lies an outside
even if some grills, code-locks,
and surprisingly muscular psychiatric nurses
away; and maybe now is a day to reconsider assumptions
because it's surprisingly hard to tell what's real;
what's not; and what, although illusionary, conceals
some aspect of a truth.  Like the penguins.
Who would have thought
there were do-gooder nuns
behind the feathers and fish obsession.  And that they
would be the solution, to the sedatives problem.
Maybe I should stop
reading the magazines?  But look, see
here's an article by someone like me,

only fitter and more sexy, saying that he
solved this very problem with one simple trick.
That's slick.  I most try it with Dr Andrews.
I'll let you know how it goes... except...
maybe I will stop writing this blog:
You should stop taking the medication - says one comment, and
Ignore that, he's a liar!  Says the next...
and having contradictions laid out in text
is strangely unhelpful.  Has the first guy spoken to any penguins?
Does the second know the woman beneath the grate?
Or Dr Andrews?  Is either closer to a date
when an orderly will key a code
and open that final grate
to the brightness of the lobby,
the heady freedom of the carpark, beyond.
Has either of them stopped taking the pills?




--

Disclaimer - I've never been in a psychiatric institution, but I have watched Season 6 of House MD.

And seriously this isn't about mental health, but more about our general impressions of reality and truth, and where we find them, the choices we make, what sources of "truth" we subscribe to...

NaPoWriMo - 2021 - XIII - h3reǵ

 

 

h3reǵ

It is true that he should not be called
the king's wife,
but he should register a register shelf
- to obtain or adjust a shelf
[see this, please edit]

when he flows
(or shelves on shelves (rules))
in magazines
where the area is the usual register property,
so royal to rule in this way

- he is called Ryan Rex, a state.



--

Explanation, I tried to make a little story using the English and non-English words in the diagram, then I passed it through Google translate a dozen times...

NaPoWriMo - 2021 - XII - New, improved model army

 New, improved model army

Infantry Drill Regulations

This manual covers a wide range of basic standards for the infantry. Topics covered include: Orders, commands, and signals. Combat leadership. Combat reconnaissance. Fire superiority. Deployment for attack. Advancing the attack. The fire attack. The charge. Pursuit. Attack of fortifications. Holding attack. Defensive positions and entrenchments. Deployment for defense. Defensive counterattack. Delaying action. Machine guns. Ammunition supply. Mounted scouts. Night operations. Infantry against Cavalry. Artillery supports. Entrenchments. Patrols. Marches. Training and discipline. Protection of the march. Camp sanitation. Protection of camp or bivouac. Ceremonies and inspections. Honors and salutes. Bugle calls. Bugle call music notations. Bayonet usage.

never been in a trench under bombardment,
never fought a land war in Asia (tm), but have
encountered
manuals

Over 1000 manuals were produced during the 14-18 war.

the moment
out in the forward trenches
when the instruction book arrives
and the Captain thinks he'll find out
what he's doing

Finally!  The updated manual,
could have done with this last week,
when Anderson's squad got caught out on the wire,
but now I've got the actual pages
here in my dugout and I'll read
it if the artillery barrage eases up
a little
Sergeant! Stop blubbering man! Try to keep quiet while I read...
Now let's see, is there anything about
drowning in mud
or when all the medical staff have dysentery?
No... Well what is in here?
What's this: "Threat from Machine Guns", let's see?
Fuck. What--

the authority figure Captain
so the other authorities like to think
secretly missing his Mum
and publicly sinks as far into the quag
stinks as badly in the latrines

No nothing sergeant, just thinking out loud.
I am sure it won't apply to us...
I wonder if they have a chapter
on maintaining the will to live?
On remembering what was the point?

NaPoWriMo - 2021 - XI - An ontology of everything (excerpt)

 An ontology of everything (excerpt)

the wind; the wind in rushes; the wind in rushes

at low to moderate speed;

the wind; the wind in corn; the wind in corn in fields

where rabbits were born;

the wind in burrows; the wind in earth-dug tunnels in general;
the wind past irregular entryways, heard from within;
similar, but felt; similar, but seen (c.f. leaves; litter);
the wind; the wind when breezy;
the breeze in willow trees; willow trees in spring;

willow trees in autumn;

the breeze across water; the breeze through trees

onto the water; ditto but in reverse;

places beside water; docks, boathouses and jetties;
the wind on water when it is more than a breeze;

the wind making ripples on water;

large bodies of fresh water,

where the wind leaves a long still wavy stripe 

along the whole length;

similar at sunset; similar under moonlight;

or when any sort of light source aligns with the stripe;

subset of this when alone; when in a crowd;

with one person; 

with a particular person; 

with you.

NaPoWriMo - 2021 - X - Dierdre Frank, writing as Bernard Mane...

Dierdre Frank, writing as Bernard Mane

reviewed by

Edmund Drake, writing as Elizabeth Loften



A book-like book of wordy lines I read
it on the train in Leicester signalling
my great cerebral worthiness to all
newspaper readers in my view.  I will review

this for the TLS because I know
it's a pseudonym of the Prof who supervised
my Ph.D. and he will broadly blow
his gasket the moment that he reads
the words I'll write.

I have already listed certain phrases
not damning in themselves but from which
certain words -- "commonplace", "quotidian" -- will jam
right in his unswallowable craw, or more like
caltrops beneath his -- there's another
"pedestrian"...

...but really this is wasted effort here
spending my time to damn a new-wrought book
which before I pick it up already spends
longer on

"About the typeface"

than on
the author's
bio. 

NoPoWriMo - 2021 - IX - Reasons not to kill everything...

Reasons not to kill everything...

There have been mass extinctions before. They're not even that rare: moments in the fossil record where everything disappears, one Friday afternoon, and mostly never comes back. And yet here we are. Living. So life may not be that easy to kill. It may not even lie within our power, not a thing we can actually do: to crash the world so hard not even bacteria in the bedrock survive. Which is not to say we can't lose everything we care about: elephants and parrots and squid; not to say it cannot only be in one billion years, when the bedrock bacteria finally invent palaeontology, that they look at our particular stratum and say "Bloody hell! That was a harsh one..."

NaPoWriMo - 2021 - VII - The fog being what it is...

The fog being what it is...

...the bellman comes and tolls his bell.
His creaks tread up the outside stairs.
The last few drunks lurch up from chairs
and stumble off to bunks and lashings
of blustery words from bosun's lips
on ships which may not sail in the morning
the fog being what it is.

Between the chimes the sailors' feet
are fading flatly down the street
as the bellman tolls his mournful bell
but whether to summon or to dispel
some troubled spirit of mists and seas
is quite beyond my power to tell
the fog being what it is.

I too had better rise and leave.
My tiny garret coldly waits
and I have tangled threads to weave
into tattered nets by the whale-oil's flicker
which only I shall light in my window --
but first I'll walk the bellman to the dock
the fog being what it is.

We walk in silent whitewashed haze.
Familiar streets are strangely mazed
and the fog-horn shudders the vapour
wound around the cast-iron lamppost
and if neither of us tells a ghost story
it is only because we are living one
the fog being what it is.

And see we've come down to the dock.
A fresher onshore breeze here blowing
vessels that rock and creak on dark water,
the bellman turns towards his light
and I ought to turn for home, except for
my empty window where the white sheets curl
the fog being what it is.

Fog vapours and the mists compete
to drive me from the sodden town
drag me along the strip of salt-wet concrete,
bollards, mouldering rope, and ships
where a man can put his name down for the tropics
—tell the bellman he can have my nets—
the fog being what it is.

NaPoWriMo - 2021 - VI - Artifice

 Artifice

"According to our view,
the creation of a genuine evolutionary artificial artist
requires the development
of an Artificial Art Critic" --

Adaptive Critics for Evolutionary Artists --
Penousal Machado, Juan Romero, María Luisa Santos,
Amílcar Cardoso, Bill Manaris

This piece is quite, quite exquisite
in its notion of being without a being
a sense of moments recorded
from a life or otherwise but recording
all the same with its implication of recorder
and medium and the conscious or unconscious
(peri-conscious, if you will) selection
from a greater whole and even the sly suggestion
of an audience, while at the same time
those elements explicitly omitted
from the framing and presentation.  Delightful
and I would certainly <%= adjective_clause(choose_recommend, "gush") %>