Cryogenics

In the least morbid possible way, let's assume You went missing. On the flipside, in the most optimistic cloud-silver-lining kind of way, let's assume Your disappearance is nationally newsworthy. If You were newsworthy, the newspeople would have a picture of You so they had a face to the name. Also, people watching the news would know who they were looking for when they went looking for You, in Tesco Metro where You were seen buying spinach and ricotta ravioli, or at Natwest where You were seen withdrawing an undisclosed amount of money, all stuffed into one of their DL-sized envelopes or at the local outdoor swimming pool where You were seen doing backstroke for what seemed like an eternity.

Have You ever thought what picture they'd use of You? It's an important picture. That picture will be sat like a pride-of-place painting, at two o'clock to George Alagiah's head every six o'clock until something more terrible than Your disappearance happens somewhere else in the world. Your face in that picture will etch itself into the minds of millions, reinforced when they go online to read the newspapers, where Your Face will once again crop up.

How important is that picture?

In the most morbid way possible, let's assume You're never found. That picture is what You will look like forever. Sure, if You're really newsworthy, The Sun will do a computer-generated mock-up of how You might look today. And You might think your close friends and family will retain a proper likeness of you in their minds. Your lover will remember the concentration in Your face when You cooked a Hangover Cure Full English the afternoon after the night before for the pair of you; friends will remember your air-guitar face on nights out whenever The Chain by Fleetwood Mac would come on; the parentals will remember when you ran in the house after passing your driving test at the first attempt, which was remarkable given that You'd only had ten lessons.

I asked you how important that picture was.

The answer is, that picture has a bouncebackability that even Your Mother can't fight and she too will eventually be brainwashed by this immortal image of You - your age, your self-image, your emotions on the day that picture was taken, all frozen in time.

The question is then, how do you want to be remembered?

Adventuring

Where have you been my little friend?

Have you been hiding in a cupboard?
Maybe you were truffling in the shrubbery?
Possibly it could be that you been sniffing dogs bums?
...Or perhaps you have been to the bermuda triangle and back?
Can you have been taken hostige by pipe smoking parrots (of the kakapo variety)?
Or were you swimming with cephalopods?
Somehow you may have been dancing with Babushka dolls?
Or hunting the rare Mr L. David?
Have you been fighting with albino wasps?
Or maybe travelled to the Vatican to frolick with the pope?
Playing sudoku against your leg?

Off the radar is where you are.

(Written by J.J.Hartley)

Fly Season

You know, Sometimes
at the end of the summer
You figure you've just had Fly Season.
You've been
swatting,
potshotting
flies all summer season long and it's taken you to the end of the season to realize that you've just had The Summer Season of Flies.
Fly Season.

Screensaver

Philips,
Philips,
Philips,
Philips
Bounces from corner to corner
Rebound within borders
Taking orders from the rules
of his universe.
Every action, every kinetic action
taken by Philips
is returned with equal and opposing kinetical
force
'Til Philips lands on Samsung.
Pythagoras proud and
Toke took;
It's time to watch the film.

The Ballad of Bard and Roses

A soporific street on a soporific night
is dragged from REM to daylight.
A SWAT team bust in, survey the scene
of decadent squalor and elegant licentiousness.

"Who are you and what's your game?" he says. I says

We are

Graffers,
Taggers,
Authors,
Paupers,
The sons and daughters of
Mixed martial artists,
arsonists,
artisans and the partisan.

We are

Concoctors,
Conductors,
Concoctionists,
Brawlers,
Maulers,
Filthy kerb crawlers,
Ballers,
Shot callers,
High rollers,
Bank rollers
Rocknrollas and trequartistas.

We are

Anarchists,
Self-publicists,
Public house frequenters,
Deviants,
Miscreants
And anti-war protesters,
Tree-huggers,
Chuggers,
Illegal ingesters.

We are

Boys on choppers,
Girls with whoppers,
And girls with itty-bitty titties too.
Leisure pirates,
Lager louts,
Ticket touts,
Them with pumped-up Botox pouts.

We are

Buskers,
Beggars,
The unemployed,
Drunks,
Punks and Buddhist monks.

We are

B-boys
And Fly Girls
That dance On The Road,
Light-fingered bastards
Fuck the barcode!

We are

The good that die young
And the good that survived.
The frigid,
Asexual,
And the massive sex drives.

We are

Rude boys,
Ragamuffins,
Ravers,
Rave-savers,
Organ grinders,
Winder-uppers.

We are

Nit-pickers
Knicker-sniffers
Strippers and tabbed-up daytrippers,
Hustlers
Con artists that did youse like kippers.


We are

Plotters,
Schemers,
Utopian dreamers.

We are

Workers,
Strikers,
Heathens and vegans.

We are

Vagrants,
Vagabonds,
and James Bonds.

We are

Martini drinkers,
Shaken or stirred.

We are

Pint sinkers,
Words get slurrrrrrrrred.

We are

Boy racers,
skirt chasers,
shirt lifters and grifters.

We are

Stags and Hens
And Lads on Tour.

We are

David Nutt
Sir Ian Gilmore.

We are

The Wired sat down to a Naked Lunch.

We are

Ladies what lunch sat down for brunch.

We are

The Mods
We are the Mods

We are the,
We are the,
We are the Mods.

We are a splendid lot,
My gang and me, (I says to the heaving, sweaty SWAT)
And if we're guilty,
Lock us up and throw away the key.

C'est la Grève!

I prognosticate a dystopia
Lines of the Listless
Reams of the Restless
Spun out, wrung out, hung out to dry
In the cold
Where they don't feel the benefit of social engineering
An ethnic cleanse that contends
With the measures of Slobodan Milosevic
I'm sick of this sweetening with molasses kiss
Spare me the bullshit.
"We're in this together."
We're antithetical!
A compassionate con;
This time was supposed to be heretical!
Instead,
Fat Cats on the back bench titter and snigger
While the trigger on the Magnum pop-pops with vigour
The rounds aimed at the ligger
Who's pot for getting the Stella's in gets bigger and bigger
But it's the taxpayer who's got the hangover
Said yesterday's chip shop wrapping paper.
So rank, (apparently)
They single file
For fifteen minutes of fame on Jeremy Kyle.
Braggadocio of the braggarts that get them all roused
Of eight mothers for eight kids and a free council house,
Four teeth of which three of them are gold
Family silver and values are sold
Then good old Jezza gets them told.
"Go out, get a job and work like the rest of us have to!"
Of course, it's Trident tested years ago
Jobs for the boys, we look on amazed
At new improved ceilings, double-glazed.
Everyone's sat about thinking,
Pick your victim accordingly,
Don't slash the system remorselessly
If wielding the axe is a necessity
Then for the love of God,
Let's do this progressively.

Million Pound Drop

If you think it's too obvious, it's probably the right answer.