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

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.

---

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") %>

NaPoWriMo - 2021 - V - Environmental factors

 Environmental factors

Terroir (French pronunciation: ​[tɛʁwaʁ] from terre, "land") is the set of all

environmental factors that affect a crop's epigenetic qualities, when the crop

is grown in a specific habitat. Collectively, these environmental characteristics

are said to have a character; terroir also refers to this character.

-- Wikipedia

The metal mesh waste bin on Creely Street

has overflowed, some years ago
and the spill of fast food cartons, papers, napkins,
bones, expectorated gristle, apple cores, newspapers, cigarette butts,
small plastic bags from shops around the corner,
drinks cans; weird plastic/paper coffee cups
and pointless wooden stirrers for the same
has formed a mound, here in the angle
between the bench and the raised
civic flower planter

of contaminated earth

--and time has gone to work:
bleached then mulched the paper down,
drifted dust and grit and tiny specks of earth
around and into all the hollow places
in the pile, deposited spores and other replicators
--bacteria, fungi, moss and lichens moving in--

to do their thing
with the fundamental building blocks of life,
until now
this morning for the first time
a shoot, a tiny leaf.

NaPoWriMo - 2021 - IV - Fifty

Fifty

Fifty shades of electric diamanté
Forty-nine velleities, in Thursday yellow cloud windowscape
Forty-eight multiples of zero, of naught, of nothing to see here, beyond the naked woman
Forty-seven scares of depleted Uranium nerve-agent contrail bliss
Forty-six postcards from Europa, come in, the methane's lovely
Forty-five unique ideas you've somehow heard before
Forty-four of this
Forty-three pages of advanced technological lifestyle enhancement
Forty-two answers, we need more answers
Forty-one disease vector asymptomatic typhoid Mary Christmas
Forty nights in the some other wilderness than this
Thirty-nine degrees of freedom
Thirty-eight degrees of Canadian bacon
Thirty-seven openly prime numbers
Thirty-six sets of thirty-six six-sided dice
Thirty-five brand new ways to stay post-apocalyptically alive
Thirty-four seconds, and counting
Thirty-three revolutions
Thirty-two nice round powers of two, for that one computer in your life
Thirty-one genders, plus or minus one
Thirty something comedy drama
Twenty-nine pots of kalamata olives, with garlic and sage
Twenty-eight years in a state of mind that's not Tibet
Twenty-seven games for one to three players
Twenty-six player pianos, fighting in a basement
Twenty-five gold rings
Twenty-four paths from your door to certain or uncertain doom
Twenty-three shades of tortured innocence
Twenty-two shades of Berger Eggshell Silk
Twenty-one resistance organisations, that don't add up to one opposing force
Twenty days of rain, low cloud obsessive
Nineteen again, if youth isn't pointless now
Eighteen and never been beaten with rubber truncheons, but there's time
Seventeen percent, of people who expressed a preference, said...
Sixteen seconds and counting
Fifteen young men playing a game with oddly shaped balls
Fourteen memories of things that never were and mother's madeleines
Thirteen crows, black cats, ladders and horseshoes
Twelve disciples, one of each and three of some
Eleven ways to be yourself, in simple lessons
Ten voices arguing on the mission control Tannoy
Nine to form a fellowship and ring round everyone they know
Eight exquisite fetishes we cannot quite admit to yet
Seven percent solution and Holmes understanding far too well, when it's
Six seconds and counting
Five for the symbols on your control interface
Four Kelvin and stable for a while
Three musketeers, all for one and one four seven point six oh nine
Two seconds and counting
One and only one and that's not you
Zero... where we've been going all along.

NaPoWriMo - 2021 - III - A brief future history of dooms ironically unforetold

A brief future history of dooms ironically unforetold

"I was from my mother's womb / Untimely ripped"

-- Macduff to Macbeth,
immediately before killing him.

"I am no man!"

-- Eowin to the Witch King of Angmar,
immediately before killing him.

And this is why we have not faith
in prophesy or prophets, mystic devices,
special pools of water lost in buried caves.
We do not stare into the waves
of quantum bollocks yet-to-be.
I don't listen to you.  You should not listen to me

because it isn't that prophecy lies
although the powers know it's false it's true
and ambiguous beyond all that, no
the problem is that prophecy has to go
into the future of a whole world
and that's so unwieldy and complex

not to mention rich with things undreamed
in any philosophy you understand
or care to name but beyond all that,
I shall win this game and soon:
I am an gender-swappable, polymorphic, weapons delivery framework,
and this is a banana;

prepare to die!

Reflections in the kitchen sink

Reflections in the kitchen sink

I fail to grip the knife
with any sort of skill
so it is left stuck out,
awkward, from the fist
of ill-assorted cutlery.
Have you ever kept shrimp?

Swiss-army invertebrates,
with a limb for every purpose --
one for sewing sails and another
that could pull used fuel rods
from a nuclear reactor.
Ready for anything

and reminiscent
of my hand with the knives
and forks projecting,
including that one
at the awkward angle.
But I twist my wrist and manage

to scrape the waste potato
from plate to bin, proving
I have a motor cortex.
Which, on a smaller scale,
is also true for shrimps
although more driven

by instinct, less by learning,
and maybe not at all by thought
of the sentient type.
They never do the washing up
and if they did, would never
think of me.

NaPoWriMo - 17/04/2020 - Things Christina Knows

A bit of a cheat here, this was originally the first song that I wrote for my collaboration with Hallam London but he didn't feel comfortable identifying with a teenage girl so I put this aside and wrote Dance Crime instead.



Things Christina knows

Anne is in a coma, everybody says;
Christina hears but can't speak--too soon--

to Beth through Friday's endless afternoon
of double chemistry she tried and failed.
What can you say when someone's nearly dead
and all you want is never dying dance,
too loud, too bright, too fast; a crowded chance
to step out of control.  Perhaps enough is said?

And now tonight Christina knows that Beth,
locked-in upon a mission of her own,
took something hard and white.  She's in a zone,
unblinking, where nothing like a friend's near death
can interrupt her all consuming hunt
to find the perfect boy-stroke-girl and dance
enmeshed in rhythm, sweat and sideways glances--
she never takes them home, but surely wants...


...and so Christina knows
that everything is possible;
but also she knows
nobody's words are true;
and now she sees
the rising Sun eclipsed by tower blocks,
and this is life :
the trick is not to fuck it up.


Today through morning's shopping/washing turn-around
Christina struggles, wanting not to think
of how a body hovering on some brink,
might turn either direction.  Might be found

tomorrow morning asking after bacon
or might...  the nights are so long this week
and after she'd not slept she had to freak
Bethany by dragging her to visit Anne...


...and so Christina realises
that anything is bearable;
although she must admit
that everybody fails;
and she has seen
that stolen cars still smoulder by the underpass,
but she still knows that there is hope :
the trick is not to fuck it up.


Christina stands up now to dance, the World
is subtly rearranged, and she needs more
than strobing light against the dark.  She's sure
she never felt this way before.  No walls
seem relevant.  She walks through rain barefooted,
towards the hill of trees, towards the high place
towards infinity, and the clearing sky,
where she will dance as if everything is looking.


Christina knows
that anything is possible;
and thus she knows
the stars are in her reach;
and though she's longed
that simple friendships might endure,
she'll take each one for however long it lasts :
the trick is, as ever, not to fuck it up.

NaPoWriMo - 15/04/2020 - The Engine Subcommittee

The Engine Subcommittee...


...meets, occasionally quorate,
and every Thursday evening
in the longtime beer spill backroom
of the Dog and Gun.

They consider the case for turbine rotors
the glasses of beer, the ceramic or titanium alloys
the questions of low, high and optimum temperatures
and whether the peanuts should be salted

or dryly roast.  They consider the boast
of Nigel of the Flat Cap, that he can route
all the required pipes and wires
around the belfries and spires

without making a single decorated Gothic
flinch.  Watch the Master of Combustion pinch
out his cigarette and say
for the thirty-seven thousandth time

that he is certain all engine components
should be situated in roofs and crypts,
and not disturb the bats, or visitor collection box flow patterns,
in any significant way.

The subcommittee has been meeting for fifteen years;
the cathedral hasn't moved an inch.

The Arc of Modern Political Thought

The Arc of Modern Political Thought



I – Do not confuse me with a fellow traveller...

...do not make that mistake
I won't be manning any barricade
or spray-painting your slogans
on unattended walls. I am not breathless

for the state to fall. Evolution
trumps revolution, ninety-nine
point nine percent of the time
and for the other fractional percent: well...

we're so screwed anyway. Rebellion serves
only rebels, who—great though they are
at stealing jeeps, and wiring parcels
to explode—are not so hot in power

distribution, at bringing people light;
or heady freedom for the sewage
to flow in drains... no, theirs are not the brains
for that, for careful use of power

and fuse—how can they be? They need believe
such silly things along their way
such as all men are equal,
only our stance is doctrinally robust,

or even...
that they must prefer the electrodes
inserted here and here
to any tea-and-biscuit chat today.


II – Media rhymes with "eediot"

You do not understand the world
and let me make it clear
that this is you, you with the "Press" card in your hat,
who understands so very well

the breaking of a story like
a wave of noxious fluid
through everybody's living room,
it's you who just doesn't get it.

The world is not the news,
the dead are dead without your stare,
the bereaved still sad; and when
El Presidente bravely takes the town

from behind and rebels are all rounded up
I will admit you stop atrocities
for just so long as you look that way
and don't run off to the human interest piece

about the dog that saved the boy.
And I'm sure you say: we give the people
exactly what they want, to which I say
oh yes, you spin a world for those whose minds

don't let them find their own, and every word
implies what you narrate is what matters,
and what you don't ain't real. You'll claim
you don't conceal but every day

your untidy desk selects what's best for "news",
for folk to know: it's in the public interest,
you insist, while typing quote marks around
what the TV said the radio said about the other paper's views.


III – A plague on both your second houses

The problem is belief. Belief is stupid.
Belief it is that makes you make mistakes
and then it takes your errors,
brands them heroic victories

and makes you make them all over again.
If there is one thing that I know,
it's the stupidity of me.
I know, my brain is wired with

its tiny neural liars and systems
which conspire to enact a holy fool.
Cognitive bias, it does what it says
right there upon the tin, and which

you did not read,
because the idea was uncomfortable
but all you with the one coloured shirts
are committed to your ideals, which makes shits

of them there in the other coloured shirts
and all of you line up to grasp
opposite ends of one long rope
and grunt and pull and hope

to shift it just one inch
in your preferred direction
and you monopolise attention
for you, and your rope, and how

the other bloke is pulling the wrong way
while all around the horizon—boundless
and magnificent and essentially free—
stretches toward infinity,

but we're not allowed to look,
or speak, on that.

---

---

This was sitting on a back burner for a long time, not going anywhere.  Every now and then I would take it out and work on it a bit, but it didn't arrive anywhere and I had to put it away again.

Then I saw a call for contributions to The Commons by Waterhare Press and this was obviously exactly what they were looking for, so I picked up the poem, dusted it off and was delighted when it was accepted.

Poems like this are difficult.  This, if anything, is what I am about: that, in bulk, we look at the world in damaging, stupid and shortsighted ways—but it can tread harshly on other people's beliefs.

However the degree of stomping need not be as violent as might first appear.  Belief, I say in this poem, is stupid and I really think that, but this doesn't mean the sorts of thoughts which feature in beliefs aren't just as laudable viewed with cold hard reason.  Should we be progressive?  Obviously!  Should we be kind?  Definitely!  Should we eat the rich?  Let me get back to you on that one...

The problem is not what we believe.  The problem is belief itself.  The world is deeper, gnarlier, and more complex than we comprehend.  Layering beliefs on top helps us get by in the short term, but it doesn't help us confront the difficult questions, and it doesn't help when we encounter people who believe differently.  Belief allows no position there except that they are wrong; and when they won't change their beliefs, it usually decides they are evil.

Belief is bad.  Believe nothing, neither political nor religious.

You'll be  better person for it.

Fowler English usage

Fowler English usage

The elliptical hyperhyphen:
used in punctuation
to show no relation
between adjoining clauses;
in speech indicates voiced,
or imaginary pauses;
and, in lists, is for items
that do not exist
or which should have been written
somewhere else.

Two or more can be combined
to indicate a state of mind
which cannot be properly punctuated.

As a general guide,
use this when you can't decide
between an m-dash,
and taking a razor to slash
the document into confetti.

Your keyboard does not have this key --
a pity, since it is much use
but you can add them afterwards
with ink and quill
or for stronger emphasis you will
attach the whole goose.