Pan - all
Demos - people

Everyone touched and fiddled with
tricked, cut, broken and hauled
across coals that hurt directly
or by degrees

More pernicious than a novel virus,
exposed to the utter selfishness
of folk who won’t even cover their mouths to cough
or at best will wear a cloth across their mouths
but leave their noses to bleed casual indifference

I want to love my fellow man and see them as allies
so I struggle to suppress my surprise
that too many would claw and fling
sad corpses of different colours or origins
to the rising tide
just to stay unhappily dry, never mind alive

Disposable gloved hands stretched out with open hearts,
basic ***** hygiene and an even playing field
are a tiny ask for all

Take a deep (covered) breath,
be deaf to the filthy fear peddlers
who try to cling to power
by screaming vitriol and division
one tweet and cable TV show at a time
and reach instead for the sublime and silly brilliance
of being human

The edges of summer’s
soak and throb routine
begin their curled leaf fraying
with the last fat spoons of clotted dreams
lashed haphazard

All those weights we foisted forward
to when wet autumn
would just **** us off anyway
rattle-threat at their fastenings
in the fractious post-tropical gales

Inertia makes it clear
why our transatlantic cousins call it fall,
but pre-echoes of crisp, clear frosts
do their best to placate anxieties
that appear to be calendared

Rest as a remedy,
forced to stay put,
instead of filling my head and feet with
a million next steps
and very necessary jobs and concerns,
I have to sit

the normal distractions
I covet in the pell-mell of things,
box sets, deep cuts, long reads, levelling up,
lose lustre fast
I glaze-stare at the fictional tree line
ticks trickling to tocks

From deep below I hear the slow plod
thudded footfalls of ‘those’ thoughts,
sensing a weakness in the barricades,
heaving down the drawbridge
usually bound firm by chains of daily grind,
LED light show and the world’s digital caterwaul

My busted foot has robbed my nimbleness,
unable to glance, sidestep or dance aside,
our eyes catch and fix,
like the titans of the twilight
their inexorable, gargantuan tread reaches me

I put up a pathetic wrestle
before I am pinned by the weight
long past the three count
frantically tapping on the mat
my morse SOS growing weak

Please Doc,
just give me a dose of elixir so they’ll retreat
and my broken *** will ride
a frivolous winged horse
back to safe and anxious ground

I can stay and die
or I can try to go where angry folk don’t want me

Death, or raging pink faces
is a choice of sorts,
but still no place, no home

So, beheading, or maybe hanging,
lynched by dragging,
or if lucky, shot alone,

versus locking up in a green walled facility,
****** as it may be,
until someone takes a moment to judge me safe,
is luxury

Or maybe I’ll be deported,
doomed,
I struggle to see your view against me

As a young brown man I know I’m done,
I might have a degree in medicine
or years of fixing cars or houses, horses,
understand trade or charity

It won’t matter
when my photofit
reminds you of another brown man
who blew himself up or lashed out with a knife,
for a misread life and afterlife

A few white lives will always tip the scale
where hundreds,
thousands,
millions of ours,
despite your fears
will not prevail

I play video games on easy.

Yeah,
I know how some folk will see me,
but now, here’s the thing:

I don’t thrive on challenge.
I grow from knowing
what I’m capable of knowing
and showing all of that
polished up

I get that people see mountains
and climb because they’re there
but me knowing there’s a cafe at the top
with flapjack, tea and Kendal mint cake
seems to make it fair

Better still if a tarmac track
or funicular railway
can get me halfway or more,
I’m all over that,
you just watch me summit

To return to the original sort of analogy:
if I can beat the enigmatic end of level boss
who tosses a second or third energy bar
in the mix
by spamming the same overpowered move over and over,
I’m doing it,
end of

When I stand in the ashes of the beast
whatever it might be
and take loot or XP
that might be not quite as good as on normal or hard
I’m good
I still feel the buzz of winning

If I have to grind repeatedly
and learn intricate enemy routines to evade or parry
and die
and die
and die

It’s not for me.

It could be because I cut my gaming teeth in eighties arcades
where I judged how good a game was
by how far 10p could take me
at a time when 10ps were limited

A forgiving difficulty level was a boon
(Yeah, I’m looking at you Mad Dog McCree
50 flipping *** a go and dead in 30 seconds!)

Anyway...

A little friction in life is fine,
no drama without conflict and all that,
but given the option
to up up, down down
left right, left right
B A Start
my heart will always take it

I’m in my forties now
and if I knock my knee it aches for days
even if I can’t say
precisely when and how I did it

Vexed I am left to neck ibuprofen
and recall what I took for granted
in the fat rosiness of my twenties

But I have my own front door
and a car
and keys for both
and when things go wrong I can fix them
or at least pay a guy called Steve
to pop round and do that for me
while I watch the news and tut

I have my own front door
behind which I can hide safe
with only the news to scare me,
I put a tire iron under my bed
to feel better

Late at night I look out the window
from time to time
to see the reassuring flash
of my car’s alarm indicator
and I wonder in the dark who else can see it

The news and my social media
say things are bad and getting worse
so I’m glad of my front door
I don’t go out too much anymore
anyway

not like the past
when knocks and bumps were shrugged off
and my guts could take a hit
and I was one of the people
making drunken noises in the night
but it was just a laugh, right?

Not like now.
These folk have no respect.
I lock the door as soon as I am in,
car or house
and check the news again.
I might call Steve and see if he can set me up
some CCTV.

Iron in the stone bleeds a colour
against grey enamel,
bone bedrock

See ticks and tocks writ on lined faces,
craning to read flickered futures
where rock-solid certainties
and metal connectivities clash
in janky dissonance

Grasping the surety of a copper coin
in a clenched fist,
the shape as sure as love and rage,
when opened, shows
the sleight of hand and thought
sold to us all