The Terms

The Terms

Only one person in a hundred million,

A rare peg who, without his own hole, managed to hold on

to a larger than average slice (of his) or her (original) wits

singular and over-sensitive to the light, but might, plausibly,

one day save a couple of the other ninety nine million

of whom there are slim few souls like truffles in mud

Unpleasantness away!

Unease diluted into numbness

habitat a 'passive mauve' emulsion

Invisible cloud giant, deliver us unto thy pasteurised care

O Grand Kahuna Super Lotto

Empty significance and no superannuation left for teeth

and a big mottled grey rat in the skirting behind the TV

chewing on the power cord

To dispel the gospel hordes of suburban interior designers

And cooking endless noodle fusion on a budget

flat and lurid, dumb as their phones are smart

personal growth is a double garage don't over-reach

it was that punk chick from that movie about the serial-killer lawyer

who adopts a kid with cancer who channels the ghost of his dead wife

you know the one where at the end they all took off on a boat

and that English bloke who was in the wedding one invented a time machine I dunno, You must have seen it? You know the one. Won, like, 8 oscars or something.

Anyway I don't watch many movies anymore I sleep too much

what I was saying before about her band?

Oh yeah sounded like that punk chick hey

When the world is thick as iguana shit

can't process anything bigger than the precious pocket-sized touchscreen

hidden possibilities that tease on the fringes get chased with burning torches

Compassion, empathy, comprehension, nuance, meaning, context,

these things are now as extinct as the triceratops

or paying musicians for their music

gone long ago

like a culturally shared understanding of the sobering implications

That arise from the discovery of an exponentially cosmic number

of discrete parallel dimensions existing simultaneously both outside

and within the cheap hologram of 21st Century human existence

the contact-covered faux timber chipboard we call Reality

sum of which may or may not include any one point in time for anybody

but, weighed against the vastness of the cosmos

the right to claim personal ownership of any particular point on the timeline

depends upon a careful quantification of the breadth of biological, social, and philosophical (why not?) diversity of original expression

existing (or not) amongst the impatient swarm seven billion greedy narcissists

without such proof of individuality, billions upon billions

of talking apes stretching back across countless generations

(kudos to successful breeding of a hairless variety)

churn like a banana smoothie in the great Bamix of the universe,

a fleeting speck in the life of the solar system

the awkward shuffle of humanity amounts to a small sample of practically identical

and insignificant biochemical reactions, homogenised and atomically saturated

bipedal non-events

the whole sweaty SUV driving chain of human history is invisible

next to the infinite past and infinite future of the multiverse

in the face of this

the evening reading

of the TV guide

comforts us with a shitload (but finite)

number of home-reno car-repo D-list rehab Grade 3 level quiz shows

fhe familiar inhabitants of the planet

only slimmer, sexier or taller and wealthier

hopefully more bitter and angrier, possibly alternatively gendered

or aggressively sustainable or believing in 2000 year old Iron Age fairytales

all ignorance and fat indignation

Equally as annoying and treacherous as the pedantic protesters

unable to think sideways or up or down, rabid for a good brawl at face value

(anonymously, stabbing at the greasy phone with index finger)

proud to be violently inclusive, not that you'd guess from all that vitriol

pashing

buckets of popcorn chicken

grease, salt and bio-mass pseudo bird-flesh

in the kind of galactic proportion that used to gve

Carl Sagan the horn.

Google has a complete map of The Known Universe

fuck you Encyclopaedia BrittaniCAN'T

totality of humanity via campus committee

months of secretly public hearings held in the basements

of accredited but unlisted academies

grossly overfunded and incestuously seeded parade grounds

where vicious little neglected junior neo-cons bully each other

UN has deemed (whatever it is) to be safe for global consumption

direct uplink to the holographic quantum water-cooler

free for all the lucky sponges

Okay

Breathe

I am de-bugged I'm un-drugged and I am calm, I swear.

slick with pipes of pan and an Alaskan wilderness background loop

I have downloaded a nice, normal emotion package

scanned for spam and lovingly synthesised just outside of Shanghai

those of a nervous constitution, it fits like a post-modern glove

feel the fulfilment taste your sweet legacy

Without ability to learn and fail and then re-learn

Without one single care for another human, let alone love

Without respect for art, the lifeblood of a society, in all of its creative shapes

High or Low art, immune to cynicism or rationalism

(true art kicks all of the isms in the teeth and saves the day)

Without having developed the skill or disposition for intimacy

Without soul or strength of character,

Without aspirations to integrity, compassion, responsibility, humour or humility

What, then? The Second Coming? COVID 36? Famine? Flood?

In that apocalyptic hour when every empire falls and all dreams die

When the sound of laughter only makes you cry and purse your cracked lips,

In that hour History will recognise its failure to be impartial

Giving up with an apathetic shrug

newborn infants emerge with wrinkly expressions, already weary

and wary and calculating, or worse

the happy ending

to which dedicated meanness of the mob works tirelessly

red-cheeked, sweat beading above eyebrows

snorting Quik Eze

here she comes the big twisted climax

writ large like the final scene in Star Wars

The London Philharmonic rogers itself stupid

while Big Bank and Big Food and Big Pharma

collect yet again on the whole fucking lot

data & DNA & copyrights & trademarks & nest eggs & the middle class

facial reconstruction and lymph replacement shorn of pubic hair

And bereft of family photos

ruined colleagues in past lives and failed stock futures

Royal alien lizard changelings do the Macarena with repentant rapists

dancing in the streets with dark hooded angels

in a collective spasm the whole world joins in a chorus of “All You Need is Love”

panic on their faces at their loss of motor control, jerking like sick puppets

CIA informants wave at Nigerian spam princes

an amateur Danish UFO society winks at a husky troupe of Kurdish gymnasts

above, in the spitting, heaving and crackling reddish sky

millions and millions of fireflies explode like microscopic fireworks

up there now is only satellites and space junk

spinning in their inevitable arcs

above a silent globe

you can't fight an army but you can deceive a crowd

If the lie is big enough and repeated over and over and over and over

by seriously famous faces on every screen

every page every Spotify playlist

a baseless rage begins to crawl across your face

you peels yourself from this contagious and unholy growth

weeping from all these fucking gadgets

heating up your genitals through your pockets

cradled in an RSI claw

in rented bedrooms late at night a living greedy lie

is absorbed by the brainhole

tinny brash shit fucking itself out of the radio

and you've taken Bran to soccer practice and Koko to Claremont Village

driven the bland thirty miles to your braindead job at 5am

avoided the uncomfortable silence with your wife

as the juicer whirs

liar

soon wallowing in your tracky daks

your ridiculously young bit-on-the-side is long gone

and studying to be a marine biologist in Queensland

say cheese

It's not borrowed time we live on

nope, nothing so harmless as that

join hands around the table and repeat the spell

close your heavy-lidded eyes and suspend your disbelief

just shut up and enjoy the bloody show for once

ignore the ugly wrinkled thugs bowing low to a dark, ancient relic

if they had souls at all they'd be like an abscess in a rotten tooth

gibbering perverts, inbred and chosen by The Almighty Himself

divine birthright, trust-funded genetically

and polished by uncaring parents to a dull shine

a natural aptitude for lying and schemes

wasteful and idle and easily capable of casual violence

as devoutly merciless as a toddler with a hammer

how the bug bit into the artery and tore raw flesh off in hunks

like a great white shark

the Mob surges forward with bared teeth

knuckle shuffling to whatever the fuck national anthem

written in blood in the liberated, now liquidated flesh of Africa

the hypnotist chuckles

author of this MK Ultra barbarism

behind the curtain Oz lies in blood, face caved in

the wicked witch cranks the handles and pulls the levers furiously

her demeanour suggests an aesthetic and refined sadism

that one only finds in a certain class, dear boy

Time was our first possession

stolen easily it had to be kept safe

kept fresh

once it flowed through us freely and without any terms

well, other than the inevitable right turn it takes

beyond the shortish term called Life

full stop

natural state of imperfection

receding reflection in the kitchen window

in your four year old furrowed brow

the ginger curl, pudgy fingers smudging the pane

watching Dad get into the car again

and the radio noise with the same song as yesterday morning

wish and quick joy

emotional Jenga played on a deckchair in the rain

while waits the promise of a quiet garden

and a lazy nap in the giggling summer grass

of days and lazy days and blissfully stoned days

spent on laughter and sex with a sweet and solid love

time skipped with the rope of gravity

and space sat inside itself playing with marbles made of suns

oblivious to conscious thought back when we still had gills

larceny with consent

gun vendors cocaine dealing priests, JFK and Sinatra

looking around at the rest of the plane

engines start to whine.

we're all on the same plane Lord Muck-Amok.

ascending and diving, always diving