The civil servants

are angry with their colleagues:


so bureaucratic!

One Summers’ evening I gazed out
In wonder at the sky.
I saw one star was moving
as the ISS flew by.

A Shining Beacon always there
it’s man’s forget-me-not.
A thousand years of progress made
this small white flashing dot.

But “Houston there’s a problem”
Calls out Major Tom one day
“Unauthorized transmissions
Beamed at us from the UK.”

“Hello” the astronauts they called
“What is it that you need?”
The terse reply – “You crossed our village
carrying excess speed.”

“Oh yes! We clocked you as you passed
Across our Kingsmead Tower.
We clocked your speed at ten thousand
four Hundred miles per hour.

Please keep your speed to 20
As you traverse through our stars,
And watch out crossing Monarch Drive
For dangerously parked cars.

So as you cross the stars in search
Of Scientific Treasures
Be aware we’re contemplating
Traffic calming measures.”

The waves are dredged along. Under the constant gaze
of the shimmering top floor moon.
Down to each second to each hour.
But, you are the angel fish, floating
free
beneath the cover of these tides.
Your shoals guide, the humble anglers
home
a silver blonde amongst the bigwigs,
The local red army, clothed in Cex shirts,
not needing an October symphony,
but now I sing your praises.
The bag you gave, though I had no 5 pence to spare,
lightened my load as much as any camel
along the silk road.
My journey is eased,
by your projected hope that my railcard,
will be renewed in future,
for your faith gives promises the
weight
of Gold.
You allow me to watch the guided heroes in explosive flames,
despite my smuggling
of Jelly babies under a hoodie.
For the shimmer in
Your
eyes, I will leave no litter,
for those with the blonde glittered scales,
From cold night, let the sun rule,
And the sea shall shimmer too.

Are you down on your luck?
short on change?
no place to go?
caught in the rain?
Just **** it up & don't complain.
you're on your own - that's capitalism!

if you're poor you
deserve what you are
cause they're rich for a reason
the things they believe in
social darwinism its
survival of the fittest its
living for yourself dont
mess with no one else
and if you don't make it
then you just couldn't take it
and you don't deserve to live anyway...

do you need an out ?
is there no way in?
are you just waiting
for your life to begin?
Well clearly you don't deserve to win.
They won't help - that's capitalism!

The people who make it
clearly won't break it
cause they  have the smarts
to succeed in the art of money.
So give'm all the funds
watch it trickle down and run.
It's a free market, so
let it loose, watch it go.
If there's monopoly
they want you to let it be
its only a kids game to them. . .

no pain no gain.
but if it's not their pain
their result's the same.
but what have we gained?

Is life a dead end
in the land of the free?
ruled by the rich-
a bureaucracy.
No end in sight that we can see.
Our legacy- is capitalism.

[A child of indeterminate ***--either a delicate-featured boy or a tomboy-ish girl--, 9 or 10 years old, enters the chamber where the United States Council of Artists is meeting.]

"Is this the United States Council of Artists?"

[The Chairman of the Council responds:] "Yes. Who are you?"

"That doesn't matter. Are all the high arts present? Poetry, Music, the Visual Arts?"

"Yes. . . . There are people from all the various arts here. . . ."

"The Hour of your Doom is upon you."

"What do you mean?"

"You've failed to create with feeling.
Nuclear angst no longer excuses you.
Moral uncertainty, the dissolution of society,
no longer excuses you.
The 'Death of God' no longer excuses you.
Human beings have not changed.
We are not the hollow men.
Great art
comes from the heart;
your superfluities will now depart.

"Painter! Isn't it true that the same day you started work on this [holding up a reproduction of the painting "Incongruities: White Lines, Pink Lines"] you visited a hardware store with a middle-aged clerk whose face was wonderfully sad and quizzical? That as you walked home the pattern of the sun shining through the trees onto the sidewalk was marvelously variegated?


"Composer! Tell me honestly [playing a cassette recording of "Duet in F-Minor for Flute and Woodblock"] that these rhythmless sounds move you. . . . It's made with the head, completely with the head.

"Poet! Isn't it true that you've never written any poems expressing your deepest feelings: your love of your older sister; the painful growing-apart of you and your wife leading up to your divorce; your hatred of the stuffy academics who denied you tenure; the passion you felt for that Australian ******* Corfu last summer. . . . Instead you've written these [holding up a book entitled Root Crops, No Metaphors and reading from it:]

     translucent, magenta-veined root-tips
     push, cell by cell, into humid grit;
     dark green, dark-red-veined crowns
     expand profligately sunward. . . .

"Great art
speaks to the heart;
your superfluities will now depart."

[Another Council member:] "Mr. Chairman, with all due respect to this --surprisingly eloquent-- young person, I suggest that we return to the business at hand which is" [consulting his agenda] "the allocation this fiscal year for haiku in South Dakota."

here’s what i’ll do
a good british thing
i’ll queue
get to the front, lean on the counter
(chipped and worn and scratched formica)
‘One memory preservation order please’
(it always pays to be polite)
‘That’s not how it works, here’s the form’
(form i can)
thankyouthankyouthanksverymuch
many boxes to tick
many scratches to itch
complete finally, submitted with its
appropriate fee
in a few weeks, two or three
i’ll receive
an unbreakable, unviolatable
memory

We all go around the day,
We are all on our way,
Some are to work,
Some are to school,
We are all part of a bigger picture;

I’m just a fragment,
And you are so too,
Our lives are together,
A part of the matter;

We have been taught,
Alone we are worthless,
We have been moulded,
To fit into the system,
But this is no way,
To reach our full potential;

This is a prison,
Guarded by bureaucracy,
And funded by those in power,
We gave up our freedom,
For a little bit of money;