Is it bins day yet

by AL Franklin

Hallo again today.
Alone Again Or
I started there, stayed here;
I left them all behind.  Except
the drumbeat of incessant thoughts
against my windowpane…

Is it time for coffee yet? 
Hot frothed stimulus, swallowed whole;
…it is the drug and I need to score…
The grown-up stimulus shield is useless
against an other rusty tang, like radiation –
relentless, hanging springing in the air –

under which life must mutate;
Life will distort, life eats itself,
more life becomes a static inflammation…
Which should best be thrown away: 
that accustomed outer shield, or life?
That is the question.  Today.

Is it bins day yet?

Because lubricants congeal:
fit to salve or to inflame?
We are glued, at random intervals
in an unaccustomed patience,
waiting muffled for some sharps to let us go
Dancing across the water / with galleons and guns

Waiting…
~ while strength leaches from our conflicted fabric
~ hope seeps into the saturated ground
~ moss thickens, rust gathers, in damp corners,
crystallising like despair in old arthritic joints;
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is…

Is it bins day yet?

Twenty, twenty one

by AL Franklin

Who cried those tears?
Who are you, with your first world problems?
There’s a pandemic on you know
and they have to make us more secure
than we have ever been before…

It’s a nasty little virus, from la Chine profonde,
sprung from venal filthy exploitation,
unsuccessfully suppressed by lies
they’d prefer we didn’t blame them for,
compounded by our populist complacency

Who cried those tears?

This is just the dress rehearsal.
Did you really want to live forever?

  • There are too many people, gorging
    ourselves on the riches of epochs:
    burning through 1.6 sustainable planets
    when we have just one to live on –
    and that’s before the poor grow rich…

Can we afford some empathy?
(Though it’s no kind of life with none)
Why did you want to have it all?

Mercury’s Mirror

by AL Franklin

I admired
her slender build, her haughty eyes,
her cheekbones hinting at Olympian descent;
electrified by subtle words and open phrases
that spoke frankly of alternative attractions

I traced
through thoughts of boundaries and sharing
a path to what she wants and what she offers 
from those shadows, side-lit by illuminations
stretched out along her inky, silky limbs

I touched 
beneath her bushes, dense and bold:
fire altars, honeyed lures or viscous wells,
redolent oases or quick-sands;
her deeper secrets brazenly concealed…

I inhaled
a fetish ~ icon of our visceral conception ~ 
changing nature, changing tone, as it engages;
which in engagement changes the engager,
mirroring our flickered, sublimated lusts 

And wondered
what tribute you would bring,
humble explorer,
what mysteries you may evoke –
should you be allowed??

Resistance: how close we came, how close

by AL Franklin

Resistance is a part of being human (although others may not agree): 
– The refusal to accept or comply with something; the attempt to prevent something by argument, action or force; the action of opposing, withstanding or striving against  
Resistance is a physical thing (even if unseen or unobserved): 
– The impeding, slowing or stopping effect exerted by one material thing on another 
– The degree to which a substance or device hinders or prevents the flow of electricity through it 
Resistance may be either of those types:
– The ability not to be affected by something, especially adversely

Resistance is friction. Friction cannot be peace. 
Resistance is struggle. My struggle, your struggle, and also theirs. 
Resistance is reaction, defined against an Other. 
Resistance is a noun, imbued with verbs.  

Resistance would connive in thought-crime; it would not enjoy its own enslavement.

Resistance does not unfurl like an untethered kite in the breeze. 
Resistance increases with pressure; until overcome. Or perhaps balanced; cancelled out… 
If overcome, was it invalid?  Does it require success, to be entitled to the name Resistance?
Or does the pressure validate it, as if that called it into life? 
Resistance is durability; possibly undone by the spark of its creation…
Resistance is not an outcome 

In a world of stasis, resistance would have become anachronistic. Or pervasive. 

Resistance holds steady. 
Resistance may trigger mutation. 
Resistenz ist der Widerstand und auch die Beständigkeit. 

Language is irrelevant. 

Resistance sang. Resistance growled.
Resistance scraped and scratched. 
Resistance hovered in memory, shifting shape. 

Resistance exists as opposition, a process: 
– perhaps stubbornly, loyally opposing change (which increases with age)…
/ change is more certain than taxes, albeit unpredictable, and precedes death /
– or subverting an establishment, conferring a certain louche glamour / or a pleasing radical liberalism / or a feisty activist populism…

Could you choose between these views? 
If so, which would you prefer? 
Could you imagine why? 
Would you understand the Other? 

Q 6/11

by AL Franklin

The other day

We just dipped in, into the darkest quarter. 
Not the worst for us, just yet:  only a test, 
a trial and a foretaste of what is going to come 

In which we watch, implicated, while they choke 
on faded promises of more, the clogging fallen leaves 
leftover from an ineffective, disconnected year 

As we remain afloat, our launch buoyed up 
by hope that this time will be different 
from every bloody grey-scale dreary time before 

Agadir

by AL Franklin

(2.0)

When I first saw the misted strand 
(not quite a desert, nor even yet at peace), 
I gasped: 

At the endless ocean breaking from beyond,
embayed within a continent-long shore 
in curving crashing sweeping rolling chords
descending into echoes, undertows 
of thunder in its susurrating roar – 
heedless of the withered valley’s cries for rain – 
pounding deep below the reddened craggy spine 
which buried thousands in a night; 

Remembering:  How small we are, 
however many there may be.