Kitten

 

Fugue

 Fugue

Don’t get us wrong.
We do pound for what has passed,
But more so all that we passed by—
Unthanking, unknowing,
When what we had was ours.

There was another gap that choked us:
The simple gift of farewell.
Goodbye, by which we say to another—
Thanks for offering your life into mine.
By Goodbye, we truly mean:
Let us be able to say hello again.

This is edgeless doubt:
Every cough seemed catastrophe,
Every proximate person a potential peril.
We mapped each sneeze & sniffle,
Certain the virus we had run away from
Was now running through us.

We slept the days down.
We wept the year away,
Frayed & afraid.

Perhaps that is what it means
To breathe & die in this flesh.
Forgive us,
For we have walked
This before.

History flickered in
& out of our vision,
A movie our eyelids
Staggered through.

We added a thousand false steps
To our walk tracker today
Because every step we’ve taken
Has required more than we had to give.

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In such eternal nature,
We spent days as the walking dead,
Dreading disease & disaster.
We cowered, bone-shriveled
As a laurel in drought, our throats
Made of frantic workings,
Feet falling over themselves
Like famished fawns.
We awaited horrors,
Building up leviathans before they arose.
We could not pull our heads
From the raucous deep.
Anxiety is a living body,
Poised beside us like a shadow.

It is the last creature standing,
The only beast who loves us
Enough to stay.

We were already thousands
Of deaths into the year.
Every time we fell heart-first into the news,
Head-first, dread-first,
Our bodies tight & tensed with what now?
Yet who has the courage to inquire what if?

What hope shall we shelter
Within us like a secret,
Second smile,
Private & pure.

Sorry if we’re way less friendly —*
We had COVID tryna end things.
Even now handshakes & hugs are like gifts,
Something we are shocked to grant, be granted.
& so, we forage for anything
That feels like this:
The click in our lung that ties us to strangers,
How when among those we care for most
We shift with instinct,
Like the flash of a school of fish.
Our regard for one another
Not tumored,
Just transformed.

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By Hello, we mean:
Let us not say goodbye again.
There is someone we would die for.
Feel that fierce, unshifting truth,
That braced & ready sacrifice.
That’s what love does:
It makes a fact faced beyond fear.
We have lost too much to lose.
We lean against each other again,
The way water bleeds into itself.
This glassed hour, paused,
Bursts like a loaded star,
Belonging always to us.
What more must we believe in.

Amanda Gorman

Evening Sky, Tonight

 Beautiful clear evening sky, tonight: Jupiter, Saturn and Venus in a line, alongside the crescent Moon.

Picket Line Poem

 Goldsmiths Picket Line Poem

(read on Goldsmiths Picket Line and at yesterday's UCU rally in Tavistock Square)

In the boring bad old days

universities were run by

people who had taught

people who had researched

people who had lectured.

We trusted them

that they would run universities

in the interests of students

in the interests of staff

in the interests of education.

That was in the boring bad old days.

Now in the exciting modern days

universities can be run by bankers

people who screwed up the world

economic system in 2008

people who invented the idea that

you could borrow money in order to buy debt

people who gambled with the livelihoods

of millions

And our university has done it.

Our university has rolled over

like a puppy waiting for a tickle

and invited the bankers in

to run our university.

And what a surprise:

the first thing they’ve come up with

is to get rid of staff.

The first thing they’ve come up with

is get rid of the very thing

that universities are here for:

get rid of the people who make education.

This tells us

that they’re trying to make Goldsmiths

a place where education

is not first and foremost

a place designed

to educate

to train

to enlighten

It’s place designed

to make a profit.

We are now the means

by which bankers can extract

interest payments from education.

The work of staff

and the fees of students

are there to produce profits:

profits for the bankers

profits for the shareholders of the banks

profits for the people who screwed up the world

economic system in 2008

profits for the people who invented the idea that

you could borrow money in order to buy debt

profits for the people who gambled with the livelihoods

of millions.

That’s what this fight is all about.

What do we want

Education for bankers?

Or education for all?

Michael Rosen

Rich Plums

From Twitter   

I have eaten

the rich

who were in

their mansions

and who

you were probably

being

fucked o'er by

Forgive me

they were delicious

so plump

and so scared

Hal Duncan 

Wham. Plum. Johnson.

 

Another Contemporary Poem. Based on the Plums

 

This is Baroque, Grisly Fun...

 

Space Shuttle

Following on from the Lunar Module and the Saturn V, my birthday present this year was another joyful Lego representation of Nasa engineering.  Although a slightly more recent craft.  The Space Shuttle and Hubble Telescope.  More pieces than either of the other two, and a very pleasant build....