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Mark Martin Poem
2017 - year zero
They loaned to the poor, who cannot repay.
They stole from the old, who cannot recover.
They sold our future, for better or worse
and made our children pay.
They schooled arithmetic to be feared.
They tutored trust in suited men.
They taught the poor were lazy
and spawned the idle rich from their toil.
They took our precious things
and sold them cheap to fake friends.
They made money by printing money
and delayed the reckoning.
They funded phoney wars to turn our attention
whilst they picked our pockets
and allowed millions of strangers to die.
They brainwashed faith in impotent leaders
and privately castrated them.
No more!
Protests! Uprising!
Revolution!
Injustice washed away in blood.
Ours and theirs and the innocent.
Paradise from sacrifice.
A promised land from a land of empty promises.
2020 - tech
Tablet touchscreen tele-screens.
Cameras watching.
Knowing your location and when.
Centillion search engine
recording preferences and thoughts.
Predictive text correcting thought crime.
Denouncing.
Data mining.
Trending counter revolutionary memes.
Finding patterns for state cauterisation.
2025 - ghost of O'Brian
When the oppressed grow numb to the pain
and are blind from where it comes
they no longer care.
Stale bread and brassy circuses are all they need
to ignore the strings and pulleys
and levers and trap doors
that control their free will.
Tyranny behind a closed curtain.
An illusion of prosperity and happiness.
Plastic utopia.
If you want a vision of the present
imagine a boot stamping on a smiling face.
Forever.
2037 - preface to the 20th year newspeak dictionary - inner party edition
Unlisting of ungood words complete ahead of the five year plan.
Archaic terms useful for thought correction:
"Overseas contingency operations"
"Targeted killings"
"Regime change"
"Collateral damage"
"Enhanced interrogation techniques"
"Extraordinary rendition"
"Black sites"
remain in the dictionary.
Their definitions unprinted.
Their meanings self evident
as defined by the party.
Doublethink fluidity.
Doubleplus good.
2054 - ministry of truth haikus
Freedom's slavery.
Eternal warfare's peacetime.
Strengthened ignorance.
Eurasia hatred.
Control past, control future.
Eastasia hatred.
Doublethink dogma.
Contradictory beliefs.
Two plus two is five.
2071 - nirvana
Forbidden lovers
knowing their love is doomed.
They are the dead.
Sitting under curfewed stars.
Miniluv satellites twinkling as they fly past,
metallic eyes seeing everything.
They look up at the face of their leader
immortally blasted into the moon's surface
by atomics and thought criminals.
Reprogrammed to serve
then scattered in a vacuum graveyard,
buried in moon dust
The inner party's heavenly fortress
impregnable, unreachable, eternal.
Its chill moonlight casting shadows
against steel and concrete.
They hold hands for the last time.
Big Brother watching from on high.
Watching them.
And watching you.
Notes:
"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever" is the original quote from 1984
"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength" is the original quote from 1984
The book 1984 was so called because George Orwell wrote it in 1948 and simply switched the last two digits. In this poem I switched the last two digits of 2017 to make 2071
Tele-screens were the televisions in 1984 that were watching you
"They are the dead" is a twist of the original quote "we are the dead" said by both Winston and Julia just before they were arrested
"Doublethink" is the ability to hold contradictory beliefs
"Miniluv" is newspeak for ministry of love, where the thought police work
"Centillion" is 1 followed by 303 zeros. The centillion search engine is the party's replacement for google. Google was likewise named after a googol which is 1 followed by 100 zeros
"2 + 2 = 5" is an example of dogma that the party might state as fact in 1984
"Big Brother is watching you" is the slogan on propaganda posters in 1984
Written 3rd March 2017 - or year zero
Entry to "1984 or 2017" contest
Copyright © Mark Martin | Year Posted 2017
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Mark Martin Poem
Based on BBC news article "Maths zeroes in on perfect cup of coffee"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37989169
Two billion cups a day we drink
To stay awake so we can think
Tireless workers - every nation
Need a caffeine drink equation
Lattes, mochas, cappuccinos
Our calculator super heroes
Measured, reasoned, wrote a theorem
Clockwork system - mighty fearsome
Divide the beans and add hot water
Multiplies the bean aroma
Takes away the taste chaotic
Get this right - it's sums and logic
China cups the theory goes
Helps the smell go up you nose
Cardboard mug with plastic roof
Not as good, but where's the proof?
But their reason's most disjoint
Like whole numbers - has no point
You just need a rule of thumb
QED for us dumb-dumbs
(Entry for "wake up with coffee or tea" contest - shortened to meet rules)
Copyright © Mark Martin | Year Posted 2016
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Mark Martin Poem
(based on Aldous Huxley's book "Brave New World")
Human hatchery
Clink clink clink clink...
Test tubes prattling past
along the chrome plated production line.
Glistening under fake fluorescence
humming in harmony
with the magnetic motors
of conveyors, centrifuges and camshafts.
Biological blobs of gamete goo,
vials of vile biology,
a tempest of sperm and ova,
neatly confined to a pyrex womb.
Organised, sanitised, harmonised.
Fordist fertilisation.
All equal under Ford.
Or at least until your fate and fortune
are forced and fixed at forty metres.
Not nature (abhorrent),
not nurture (disgusting),
not what you know,
not who you know,
but the viability of your cell.
Destiny by DNA.
What will you be?
An Alpha Aryan?
A Gamma gopher?
A mass produced Epsilon?
Will you be genetically enhanced?
Or poisoned and asphyxiated?
Perhaps you'll be discarded
as excess bio-matter
by the second trimester
at ninety metres?
Or survive to be hatched
at one fifty metres?
Neatly sown along furrows
of sterile steel cots.
Rows and columns,
ranks and files,
levels and floors
of battery babies.
Chemically conditioned,
weaned on sleep whispering,
embracing their place in a perfect society.
United by soma!
(a gram is better than a damn)
Disease designed away!
All praise Ford!
Everyone is happy!
But nothing is perfect.
Bernard is cursed.
Excess embryonic alcohol
injected at one twenty metres.
Someone wasn't paying attention.
Industrial accident.
Disruptive misfit.
Unhappiness.
Beta's hypnopedic haikus
Alphas lead the way
Grey matter, grey uniform
Alphas rule wisely
Betas work less hard
Mulberry clad skilled workers
Glad I'm a Beta
Gammas are stupid
Wearing green! Ugly as trees!
Ignore the Gammas
Deltas are dummies
Khaki clones, oxygen starved
Bokanovsky batch
Epsilon primates
Brutish, black robed underclass
Disposable drones
John's suicide soliloquy
To be or not to be?
I cannot be.
So I decide not to be.
How can I be noble and suffer
the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
when the arrows have been broken
and the slings put aside
by this ugly utopia?
Should I shuffle off this mortal coil
and enter the eternal sleep
perchance to dream without soma?
Will I enter paradise
paid for many fold
with barb wire and thorns,
with torments and trials,
with utter utter heartbreaking longing?
What sense does this make
when paradise lies at my feet
that I've not suffered enough to deserve?
How can I earn the love
of the woman I love
when she gives her love so freely
to myself and others who scantly earn
the meerest slither of her golden fruit?
Love so sweet to the lips
but diluted by banality and promiscuity
to the tasteless sterility of boiled water.
Yet I still yearn.
And when I attain my unimagined dream
I reject her with anger
and sow the seeds of confusion
in her innocent eyes
and watch the weeds of fear
choke her very essence.
What demons have hatched from my soul?
What has this world manufactured in my heart?
And so I seek solace in solitude.
A lonely lighthouse keeper
in a stormless sea of soma civilisation.
Absolution with abject poverty,
the stings of self flagellation
barely noticed against my rented heart.
The madness of mixed up mantras.
Yet retribution comes from a hornet's nest
of helicopters carrying the inane.
Spectators of the spectacle.
Curious about the curiosity.
Fascination with the forbidden.
Cultures sparking across electrodes.
Moths drawn to taboo's acetylene flame.
I curse them! I curse them all!
I was born savage, then made savage.
Marooned on Prospero's isle
by insanity's tempest.
I can brew and boil
and billow and burn
and cast down purifying bolts against the outside world.
One asylum to another.
Never knowing peace.
O brave new world, that has such people in it.
But this world is not for me.
Notes:
BNW society is divided into five major classes. From highest to lowest: alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon
Original BNW quote - sleep conditioning for Betas - "Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I'm so glad I'm a Beta."
Bokanovsky is a fictional process of human cloning - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokanovsky%27s_Process
Hypnopedia is the process of sleep learning - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep-learning
Gametes are cells used in reproduction (sperm and ova) - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamete
Soma is a drug mass produced by the BNW government - citizens are sleep conditioned to become addicted
"a gram is better than a damn" is a BNW mantra used by its citizens to encourage non-conformists (i.e. are unhappy) to take soma
John was a savage rescued from a reservation by Bernard Marx for his own political agenda.
Bernard Marx was a physically and mentally imperfect Alpha misfit reportedly caused by excess alcohol injected into his embryo during his hatching.
John's soliloquy is a parody of Shakespeare's "to be or not to be" soliloquy from Hamlet. Since John learnt to read from an old copy of Shakespeare's works, this seemed appropriate.
In BNW, Henry Ford is revered as a god - the Christian cross is replaced with a T (as in the model T Ford, an early affordable mass produced car).
Written 10th April 2017
Entry to "brave new world" contest
Copyright © Mark Martin | Year Posted 2017
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Mark Martin Poem
Formal forms feel nice and safe
But meter makes me sweat
Sometimes rhymes will grind and chafe
And stresses makes me fret
Perhaps there is another way?
I need to be diverse
Panzer stanzas made of clay?
Or flirt with loose free verse
...
To write without rules? Freedom!
The shackles of rhyme snap open
And clatter to the floor
The ball and chain of meter and rhythm
Slip off and roll away
Through the septic puddle of conformity
Clunks against the cell wall
The solid steel door unbolts - one - two - three
And squeals open
Rust flakes bursting then falling
Metallic leaves onto a metallic forest floor
A breeze washes in - washes away the stale air
A poster of Dr Seuss lifts, then flaps, then rips
Then blows away
Daylight streams in - bright - white - blinding - searing
As fragile eyes adjust, the outside free-i-verse reveals itself
Freedom? Yes. But what chaos!
Repetition, imagery, metaphors and repetition - still there
And rhyme and meter!
Where should they go?
What if I get it wrong?
How will I know?
I can't take it in!
...
The door swings and closes - safe and secure
The chill draft now whispers - certain and sure
The shackles await me - to hold and embrace
The ball and chain staring - a well meaning face
Perhaps structure and form aren't really so bad
Free verse is trendy, or maybe a fad
From now on I'll stick to what I surely know
Rhythm and meter and rhyme true to flow
Or maybe I'll try again tomorrow...
(Entry for the "flirt" contest)
Copyright © Mark Martin | Year Posted 2016
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Mark Martin Poem
Logic failing, recall
lacking, tip of the tongue
linguistic challenge. Now
lost for words, what's that word?
Litoration failure!
Laughter forbidden! Wait!
Lethologica! Phew!
Written 16th April 2017
Entry to "pleiades L" contest
Notes:
Lethologica is a condition we all have suffered from where a word is on the tip of your tongue - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_of_the_tongue. It's the word that the poor reader was trying to remember and also suffering from.
Litoration - representing sounds by letters. Not much use when dealing with lethologica!
Copyright © Mark Martin | Year Posted 2017
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Mark Martin Poem
A nickname for night soil, that's surely no lie
Pair upwards to double, a straight multiply
For music we're singing a simple duet
Use binary coding for computers, no sweat
We're even the first that's not at all odd
With religious duality, Satan and God
The turtle doves given by Christmas day love
To walk without hopping, our legs total of
Twin oxygen atoms in water or ice
Line's second word - there's no need to say twice
Entry for "message in an acrostic" contest
Note: take first letter from second word in each line - and time is ticking
14th January 2017
Copyright © Mark Martin | Year Posted 2017
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Mark Martin Poem
What is naked? Without clothes?
Sky clad nightmare feeling shame?
Or deepest secrets all exposed?
Wretched, woeful, just the same
Stripped and helpless to them all
Friends and foes just point and laugh
Curled up in a foetal ball
Fragile façade epitaph
So do I yield? Give up? Withdraw?
Cower from the searing light
Let my guilt just ache and gnaw
Shrivel up without a fight
Or do I stand both strong and proud
Exhibit all! Here's what I've got!
Cry out, berate, exclaim out loud
I'm starking naked! Well? So what?
Copyright © Mark Martin | Year Posted 2016
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Mark Martin Poem
God sculpts man from clay
Theist debates atheist
Man sculpts God from fear
Copyright © Mark Martin | Year Posted 2017
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Mark Martin Poem
The car must become a freethinker
Case someone it might greatly injure
It clearly must steer
And brake and change gear
And give other bad drivers the finger
Copyright © Mark Martin | Year Posted 2016
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Mark Martin Poem
Godot has arrived
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Alive and well thanks!
...said the haiku poster
Crudely pasted to the fence
Who was too busy selling stolen goods
To notice he was a notice
Announcing a brand new play
A fusion of two classics
Waiting for Godot
A play about a man who never arrives
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead
A play within a Shakespeare play
Both "theatre of the absurd"
Both inverted
And slammed together
It showed a lot of promise
Or at least it promised a lot
Like two sweat stained t-shirts
Turned inside out
Wearable for a few more months
Eye watering
Nostril clenching
Before finally accepting the inevitability of the launderette
Shoved into the metal drum
Spin, churn, reverse, spin, repeat
With eager expectation of fresh attire!
But ending in a grey streaked mush
(Never mix darks and lights in the same wash)
This analogy was lost
On the burgeoning crowd
Gathering around the theatre
Drawn in by the ephemeral promise
A crescendo of clamour and chatter
Eager to experience this new wonder
Yet they should have known better
They had seen "theatre of the absurd" before
They had shown their appreciation
With a head scratching ovation
And murmurs of huh? And what?
Even a few ums? And uhhs?
Some had purchased programmes
The thickness of encyclopedias
To explain the illogical plots
More words written
Than spoken by the actors
(Who looked equally baffled)
They weren't even that aerodynamic
Obese paper bats thrown in rage
Flapping and crashing on the stage
Was this the absurd bit?
Was this the part that had no meaning?
Where were the heros?
Where were the baddies?
The love interest?
The twist in the tale?
They weren't proper plays
Not really
Not in reality
Existential or not
But this play was something new
Surely it would be better?
Like a glass hammer
Striking rubber nails
Maybe two absurdities would work?
After all, Godot had eventually turned up
And two minor characters had survived
What aspirations! What ambition!
What could go wrong?
The absurd doors
Of the absurd entrance
Swung open (absurdly)
As the absurd crowd poured
Into the absurd stalls
And absurd balconies
And absurd boxes
And became an absurd audience
And watched the absurd theatre...
... the disappointed patrons
Became a disgruntled crowd
And then an angry mob...
Some years ago
An absurd psychologist
Wrote an absurd paper
On the psychology of crowds
Especially angry ones
Some of the pages were mixed up
With another absurd paper
On absurd architecture
On the Pompidou centre
The inside out building
Two absurd papers
Amalgamised
Made one brilliant paper
A fusion of ideas
Worthy of a Nobel prize
Or at least it would be
If they gave prizes for psychology
Or even architecture
The horde
Now incandescent
With pitchforks
And burning torches
And grim determination
Applied the architecture of the angry mob
(Behaving as science predicted)
They deconstructed the theatre
And reconstructed it
Inside out
The boxes, the balconies, now face outward
The stalls surround and stretch into the distance
In all directions
(Were there really that many seats?)
And the rest of the world - an absurd stage
And all the men and women merely absurd players
In (or out) the inside out
Theatre of the absurd
Entry to the "theatre of the absurd" contest
Written 9th February 2017
Notes:
"Theatre of the absurd" refers to a genre of plays described at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_the_Absurd. Two examples are "waiting for Godot" and "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead"
"Waiting for Godot" wasn't always well received by critics and audiences: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot#Production_history
A "fence" is someone who knowingly buys stolen goods for resale https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fence_(criminal)
The Pompidou centre (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_Georges_Pompidou) is a building famous for exposing it's infrastructure elements externally (air conditioning, plumbing etc.) giving the illusion of being inside out
There are no Nobel prizes for either psychology or architecture
"All the world's a stage..." is a quotation from Shakespeare's "as you like it"
Copyright © Mark Martin | Year Posted 2017
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