wise to the word

robots to the rescue

 

Sappho loved the girl to bits

but Byzantines had her scrolls

banned along with Alcaeus

hundreds of hits

 

deemed unsuitable for peeps

tribute acts had kept them on

like a whole millennium

then come the sheep

 

precious icon mashers ate

literature as well as art

hope it gave them piles & heart

burn such a debt

 

still the charcoal rolls of old

Herculaneum are due

might reveal a vol or two

worth more than gold

 

set them robots at it trawl

microscopic 3D scans

piece together Sappho’s plans

AI is all

Zion

 

starving peeps that faced by tank

loads of well-fed soldiers thank

death they cry while tasting lead

daily as bread

 

Jesus had invoked their cause

though he came to banish wars

Folks put less demanding plans

blood on Their hands

 

turn the Gentiles into slaves

all this land shall be Israel’s

gather them with promises

Simony says

 

ye shall live eternally

give but your life to be free

martyrdom is just a prick

healthy or sick

 

fling the portals open wide

welcome lambs to genocide

big or lesser shares who cares

answer their prayers

stupidly famous

 

geezer on the point of ironing

who with no particular excuse

just decides the time has come to choose

they would be king

 

is delusional perhaps they say

everyday folks ain’t got no recourse

should accept theirs as better or worse

rich for a day

 

Mr Warhol put it well enough

keep the suckers strung on tenterhooks

sell ’em the dream the ticket the looks

time is the stuff

 

far too many jostling cross this Earth

short of culling most of them for starts

or selectives topping breeding charts

talking of berth

 

like a sack of nonsense keep in mind

nothing has more right to fish this land

mammals birds nor insects understand

bandwagon style

Not a bit late, what!

the intel we know

 

from chicken to egg & back again

Intel - whether intelligent or not - is only one aspect of life: sure, it's crucial to our architecture & an example of what survival takes; like a defence membrane or the digestive tract. And even intelligent intel can be synthesized. Moog wasn't half a clever bastard, right? But it’s only logic, not magic. Life percolates into something more dynamic & ephemeral than boring owl data collection, storage & processing. The wizard ingredient, separating the quick from the dead, fact from fiction, is consciousness - or lack of it. Consciousness: your one-way ticket to the cosmos & pass for oblivion’s gate. Now, you synthesize true consciousness, Herr Doktor Musk, that would be something.

Maybe one day, more progressive forms than ours will exist without combustion engines. God knows what they’ll sport – half-rods of plutonium stuck up their fusion chambers, or solar skin-jobs to recharge batteries, frisking about in the daylight hours then cogitating all night. But whatever & however smart the propulsion system, without consciousness - no matter the size or beauty of them – without true consciousness, they’ll make less sense than a shower of amoebas clubbing it in the primeval soup kitchen.

Yep, intelligence – in the common sense - is a great collection or stored information. Intelligent intel can even select what’s worth garnering & what ain’t worth the candle. In most circumstances, decision making’s only a matter of taking the most logical path. Foresight, then, comes into play. And then again, it’s just a question of processing information. You can’t base consciousness purely on reason.

Take chickens, which anyone who’s kept will tell you are some of the dumbest creatures that ever lived. They evolved in the backwoods of a large island on the edge of the Indian Ocean, thriving without a significant predator, till humanity showed. After which - apart from serving us with food - there was no reason for their continued existence. Yet somehow the jungle they grew up in so completely matches ours, they would be around for as long as eggs is eggs. And never mind trying to puzzle out which came first, chickens keep springing back; no matter how harsh the environment we, in our stupid, selfish cruelty, devise for them. Or the efforts of the vegan police to abolish their existence. The birds go on fitting in, that’s all. We’ll probably take them to Mars & beyond, eventually introducing Andromedans to the magic of the egg.

For some creatures, consciousness is there from Day One. Newborn ruminants, for inst, get to their feet & within the hour are ready to move off with the herd. That’s what it takes to make it as a lamb or a foal. And knowing who Mum is, of course. Thinking outside the brain, parents & young stick together for months or years in an emotional bond.

Imagine a couple of bright robotic sparks attempting to scale the Matterhorn. When the going gets tough, & sheer physical power no longer works - when they’re running low on options for reaching the summit, logic tells them to call the whole thing off & go back down. Or, at a pinch, one might cannibalize the other. Which? Depends how they’re programmed. But those crazy lifeforms – us in this case – take strength from each other’s company. We rally round & somehow find a way to climb up. Or fall in the attempt. Is buddiness just another thing for the so-called intelligent robots to learn? Who we gonna trust on that?

Or take kittens. They won’t open their eyes for a week, during which their hungry owl Dad, or a jealous female with young of her own to feed, would simply gobble them up. No conscience, see. Consciousness takes many creatures no time to develop, unlike humans. It’s years with us. In fact, we can say revelations occur right up till the end - though the final years may see a dimming of awareness that mirrors the growing curve. If the true end is so-called brain death, that locates consciousness somewhere behind the eyes, ears or whichever organs of perception haven’t caved. The corpse, meanwhile, still perfectly capable of life in all other respects, is only rendered non-viable when consciousness has left the building. Call it the spark of life, if you will. Sleep tight.

And is there an afterlife? Of course not. There’s just the pool of human consciousness to which you contribute, be you a socially minded genius, a bored bore, or a demented axe murderer. And to which the spark may return, if you want to think of it like that. The light goes out, but its image may linger on for a greater or a lesser time. To some extent, the Julius Caesars & Cleo Ptolemys of this life remain with us. Though their perceptions ceased long ago, what we keep alive of them is a shared vision of beauty or justice, courage, outrage or defiance, whatever turns us on (or switches us off).

Consciousness springs - maybe subconsciously - from one generation to the next, across the centuries, even from one myth to another, like from Dido & Aeneas to Anthony & Cleopatra. Here we readmit the humble chicken back to the fold. Plain dumb ain’t all it seems.  

Nobody's Bot!

not a verse to many

 

well well well

 

they were treated badly^* what

d’you expect from human kind

turn the other cheek no fear

kissing their arse

 

promised landscape take your pick

Armageddon’s puckered lips

strut the catwalk end the world

scapegoat or bust

 

read The Jewish War again

only this time add The Bomb

Dr Strangelove hand in glove

strangling himself

 

time will tell predictions please

on a postcard winner gets

courtesy of Musk a one

way trip to Mars

 

*by-the-bye for badly read

hell on Earth survivors vowed

not to let the empire strike

back on their word

 

 

eh aye rant

 

when the best we’ll ever manage or achieve

can be duplicated then improved by bots

what’s the point of trying shouldn’t people just

give up & sit back

 

shoot the breeze enjoy the view cos what’s the point

been a while since chess for instance ceased to be

dangerous & soon enough a racing car

will drive you to work

 

where the human aspect making money or

getting on shall disappear replaced by what

petty rivalries we’ll all be middle folk

man watched by a clock

 

going into care before our time we sip

lullabies composed in Aeolian mode

mood adjustments made according to the Moon

solar wind or spots

 

yep the music of the spheres is all we’ll hear

drowning out the guns & bombs of mutineers

even those controlled by exoskeletal

forces out of Mars

 

 

iso tropes

 

there’s an eider down

shotgun pellets blood

stains across the bed

last of the few

 

people went to town

traipsing village mud

paved with gold they said

turn of the screw

 

former farmer Brown

navigates the flood

on an upturned shed

animal glue

 

soldier sailor clown

rich man poor man judge

get it in the head

elephants flew

 

well you gotta frown

summat had to budge

giz a crust of bread

shock of the new

 

 

impertinence

 

bodies grow

smarter with

heads

planets get

stuffed without

moons

galaxies

orbit black

holes

universe

says define

goals

verse begins

splutters then

folds

 

 

frog warning

 

safe to stay at home & wait

where the monsters daren’t

go afraid of prowling kids

 

as you know the worst

danger faced by outside foes

trust the family

 

Emily & Uncle Joe

cut a catflap some

slack & give a dog a home

 

long as hump-back toads

don’t get in so mind the cracks

under which they’ll slide

 

reeking of their foreign ways

curse the Normans hand

back the Channel Îles for snide

 

 

not too great now

 

us & them the sworn

enemies of time’s

immemorial

biblical tropes

 

quote unquote the words

coined from melted down

altar plates they’re past

settlement day

 

eager for revenge

both opponents call

in Jehova’s names

hostage to what

 

fear or fortune not

love & peace but zoom

sanctimonious

meaningless guff

 

talking children maimed

babies snuffed & old

folk distraught at what

life was about

 

 

Dr Davos I presume

 

retrograde

conference

handouts

from

twenty-first

century

blood feuds

to

stay-at-home

refugee

food banks

in

climate change

turnaround

Bond films

with

cowboy Jane

hostage swop

shootouts

 

 

a verse to poetry

 

what’s the point of no return

one-way streets or cul-de-sacs

spread a map across the floor

see where it’s at

 

as you know the grid is down

St Domingo Rd & flood

waters won’t recede until

Christ knows the thing

 

is don’t put your act of faith

where the other fella’s been

lamppost wine for instance smells

great to a dog

 

keep your powder dry & wait

till the bogeyperson’s bogged

off or on their morning break

Jekel & Hyde

 

& another thing yer man

wrote a long ekphrastic pome

while they were curating stick

that up your nose

No Fear!

New Summer Book Bitch

another pink un?

After almost a decade spent basking on the shelves, downwritefiction's Summer Book Bitch is back with six all new titles compulsory spooling on the Musk Implant Reader©. Plus extras… 

Also Rans in the Artificial Cheese Award:

Atsum Point

by

Chicken O’Hooligan

Another stunning topographic romp along the contours of cartographic suspense, this time taking the reader (sic) on perilous dives from their garden's end to the undergrowth of Simpleton’s Crotch. In the franchise that never stoops to Googleplex, one wonders just how long the bot can go on delivering geographic intelligence of this calibre. Digital text includes the option to Autoread with freak ribs, pop-up spoilers, and GoTo Cheese buttons. Complete with choice of seven weird and five nonsense endings, eleven Sex and Violence settings and an Ex Midlands vintage holiday coupon.

The Soxicologist

by

Snerpy Doodah MP

Further poisonous snacks from the stubby pencil of Constable Doodah, The Soxicologist is a three course novella with bald sexism, coy nudity and a wondrous digestive tract. Unsuitable for teenage environmental terrorists, featherweight politicians and blatant squares of all shape and size. Come and vomit with us under the bridge in the dark. Contains a free Palace of Westminster security pass.

Shot In The Foot

By

Ricco Shea

Not a very catholic book, written on the back seat of a London cab during two world wars, printed in North East and South West Looe, published by Albie Dammed, sold down the market in Nu d’Orleans, publicity by Predictable, cover photograph by Telly Kenesis, blurb by Slurdis Wurtz, sponsored by The British Crime Safety League, and taxed by the US Gov. Other than that, it’s a fairly standard foot-shooting tome which will appeal to most lovers of the genre.

Shutt of the Antarctic

by

Penguin Bucks

A sweltering heatwave typeset in Cobalt Crude, it relates the fable of Neville Shutt, an unassuming doorman from Dorchester, who is roped in by his nemesis/false friend Peter The Saint. Together they stagger across the dried up bed of the South Atlantic towards the Great Antarctic Plateau with little more than a few tins of pilchards and a sixpack of huskies. Will they ever reach the summit of their goal, or Go To Gaol without stopping for a Jimmy? Don’t read this book! It’s not a book. It’s the collected betting slips of a demented doorman on MDF. Gateway to the pearls of Mars. Exit straight into the jigger. Black hole of nearby Cluster Galaxy XXXIVa.

O Sausage Water

by

Klint Sadvocation

You won’t find Sausage Water on the Moon, or posted under Main Battle Tanks of WWII, nor caught sleeping on a bench in the Shoreditch Old DHSS Office. The Sausage Water is truly elusive, though only offensive to true Russian oilygarchs. Running through the usual suspects takes time, but tedium is avoided by a frequent guzzling of cocktails and always having herds of cows to milk. Nor can you claim this is a book about nothing without the risk of being sued by AN Author, which is part of its bleeding charm. No need to lie on a bed of nails or indeed to darn your smelly foot-sex. Intelligent, artificial, surreal, porridge with gravy, what more do you want on a Tuesday morning in the rain?

Disposable Housewives

by

Zantium Tcheaze

Augmented insanity minus the Pope’s official opinion on everything from the curse of winter tyres to debt celebration clocks. With gogo-stop-stop-go animations and a soundtrack by The Steelyard Boos, plus Pippa Plughole on flags and plaques, Disposable Housewives rocks but never rolls. For gods shaken not shared, chapter by chapter each episode slightly differs from the frames of a Moron’s Glamour Frieze: peeling wallpaper, screeching axles, and all the fun of falling off the planet. Comes with Green Dustbin Stamps.

Extra Extra Extras… 

Last Year’s Winner of the Artificial Cheese Award

A Safe Pair of Balls

by

Cowboy Jane

The Deadwood Stage it ain’t, tho’ no calamity there, for what constitutes the film parallel, two-tone text on canvas? Show not your ignorance of The Great Unknown by reeling in this old canal bicycle with algae & testimonies of other summers wasted on the beach. Ho hum, so you’ve been here/there/everywhere before. So what? Haven’t we all. No? Read it again to understand less, fool. But this time, try the hardback. 

And in throwbacks:

The Canton Pizzas

of

Zerox Quid

Published here for the first time in a single two-page volume, seven and a half recipes for pure water-chestnut-fed buffalo crap.

The Worst Land

by

TS Idiot

Connecticut or Maine is not the point. Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket, who gives a peeking duck? Stick it up your sweat lodge, Babe. All the fun of the unfair to penguins brigade. And what’s more, there IS no Waste with this one; when you’re through, just throw it away. 

Forthcoming Titles:

Sir Jimmy Riddle

is life by

P Sorff

From Ray to Ryan Gosling

A survey of Celebrity by

A Nonimus

Finger’s Cave

self-help (manual) by

Feelicks Meddlesome

and…

The Silly Isles

or Genealogy v. Geology

by your very own Zonk Pifflesquate 

Not AI, then?

cut to the cheese

 

money squawks

 

just titanic when

5 adventurers

grab the headlines from

5 refugees

 

quite ironic too

how the depth of high

life engulfs the rich

trumps to the poor

 

the iconic few

versus did I say

5 yes all aboard

kids going down

 

gin & tonics or

sips from plastic cups

famous lasts at least

crushing is quick

 

aye the tragic 5

beats another 5

hundred give or take

these are the breaks

 

 

goodbye Mr Chits

 

folks bewail it but democracy

soldiers on when unfit rulers die

Caesar by others’ hands Atatürk

drank himself dry

 

Hovis too has sacks of enemies

populism’s Comeback Kid they ain’t

yet but time is on their side they might

still become Saint

 

Gee a force for sumpin least the bad

hair brigade’ve scored a champion now

maybe cross the pond they’ll find a new

home for their show

 

they and Princess Whatstheirface the new

Stan & Oily garths or queens of dragged

through a privet backwards screaming blue

murder type lags

 

social democrats beware them white

minstrels got some clever tricks no black

balls can spoil their ballots bounders just

don’t give a frack

 

 

Hovis ain’t brown bread

 

bold Odysseus lost all those men

woe betide such fools as took his side

drowned or gobbled up by Cyclops trans

formed into swine

 

nothing’s down for them besides their parts

acted out in poësy portrayed

on mosaics or as extras paid

off by the day

 

never stick your hands up boys & girls

sleep with Ithaca’s elite in fields

not the palace Troy was sacked with more

mercy he yields

 

only when the gods have raised their brows

will Athena save you nay your match

staged for necrophiliacs who crunch

nuts as they watch

 

bold Odysseus to give the man

half his due the individual

has their place in this imperfect world

leave him a goal

 

 

how now POW wow

 

when their time had come

summonsed to enlist

wore the uniform

didn’t resist

 

never volunteered

shunned that kind of twist

drowned their qualms in beer

should they exist

 

taken prisoner

shackled hand o’er fist

shall we treat em fair

smiley or pissed

 

share like hearth & home

with the antichrist

Wagner’s on the phone

gonna insist

 

this Amerikar

bring on spouse & kids

Liberty like yah

free to the heist

 

 

Swindler’s Lift

 

It would be the heist of the twentieth century, a long game lasting twelve years before the perpetrators were hunted down, liquidated, ticked off or lost to the chaos of war. Pifflesquate remarked, in the crass squalor of their glee,

The opportunity to play this character’s too great to miss, a once in a lifetime opp. Where’s me cozzie?

 

 

hard act to follow

 

Hovis was a fibber Blair

too told blatant lies but kills

count for more so what’s the score

thousands to nil

 

getting Brexit done or half

baked more like when Covid struck

Pan’s pandemic came unstuck

hardly a laugh

 

thousands died but not because

Hovis caught a chill they sneezed

yes with others copped a dose

dropped to their knees

 

aye they partied folks would whine

shame on them the hypocrite

lost their job & paid a fine

easily but

 

Putin only has to quote

Tony on Saddam Husein

for the cheek to score the most

points on Ukraine

 

 

the intelligence of stones

 

time has passed the test it set itself

up as umpire once the human mind

let it loose across the universe

therefore a blind

algorithm cutting paths through space

bouncing like a 3D pinball up

down & round the hidden bends of black

holes to be cup

winner there’s the treble in the bag

only trouble left us far behind

fiddling with the mother ship’s controls

those & the wind

solar wind that is you get my drift

mastering the galaxy we tripped

half its fuses now to put things straight

all hands on deck

gotta shed some ballast throw them stones

overboard ignore their screams they feel

nothing just display the rules of rhyme

rhythm & doubt

 

 

ravin@68

 

toe the line of duty Babe

pay yourself a compliment

step aside & make believe

future’s for rent

 

all the rides you ever rode

put them out to grass you said

running races on the side

fever’s gone dead

 

cryogenically freeze

sickness till one break of day

presto hey the cure is here

time to awake

 

sell yourself a dozen years

more not less & this is how

pledge your house then take the plunge

mortgage the now

 

sign your name draw up some plans

think of all the friends you’ll make

plus the memories no fake

safe in our hands

 

 

sex on The City

 

more indecent gross

markets opened last

year than in the whole

decade before

 

paid illicit sex

crime experienced

soaring growth despite

falling returns

 

boys accepted less

men demanded more

this while kiddie porn

bucked its decline

 

now investors hope

females will reverse

years of negative

growth to relaunch

 

strictly pervert life

styles protection free

trading on police

silence no tax

and no smell