Ballad of Will Killingsworth

He used to hoard his poems in a plastic bag –

They were heavy but the burglars threw them on their

Backs with the rest of his life – fill the cracks in theirs

With more crack.

 

Later, he came home and found it

Gone and worse, his poems taken, and he knew that

Somewhere, soon, they would decompose in the stink

Of rotting  food.

 

Nothing was left, he had no insurance, he had

No chip that housed anything good he’d ever said

With dread the sink dripped and he thought how stupid

He had been to put his poems in a plastic bag that felt like money.

 

[To be continued]

Working the Earth

Work to produce to

Make the day into

Something full of

Activity to replace

The necessity it used to bring,

When cold was a thing to be

Feared and hunger

Was a real beast

Lurking in the thicket

Keeping sucklings fed.

Work to produce to

Make life out of business

And stuff out of wire to

Whirr full the cables that

Keep operating while the

Forests host hackers and

Frozen screens glacier

Crash faster than we can

Gloss over snaps with cyber

Ice cream to fill the cracks

Where Earth used to be .