2022-01-24

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.






2021-11-19

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.






2021-04-29

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*.