FROM FERLINGHETTI'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS 2001

1.INAUGURAL ADDRESS

poets !

cried ferlinghetti

artists !

why not paint something important ?
write poetry as news ?

consider this

he said

is death male or female ?

and
why is it dark at night ?



2.THEY FIST ME LARRY

well im trying larry
im trying

but
artists are expats everywhere
as we ALL are
having ALL just arrived here
from we know not where

to spend our lives
in gentrified customs lanes 
dodging fistings 
by 
the border controls
ungiven authority



3. PAINTERS BERET

clarity is hard to pin
in the buzzword blizzard
of
the
tramless
autogedden
airstrip one
courtroom
uk

must i 
dig it out the motherboard
out the fatherboard
and sisterboard ?

must we
smash it out the brotherhood
with a crowbar
with a wrecking ball
wearing a 
handmedown
painters
beret ? 



4.OLD HATS, ALL CHANNELS, ALL NETS

im trying larry
im trying
in the trip hop mornings
wi fi in my lungs

autumn calling
its bronze bugle
to its copper lips

and the earth is dried out larry
cured badly
in the rush-job parade

is that news larry ?
or old hats ?

and we all clock out
in a lottery daydream
our
guts heads and motorcars
wired
with 
optic fibre

to have autotune to listen to
on 
all devices
all channels
all nets



5. TWIGLETS

those are good questions larry

very good questions
very god questions

and they got me

all
the
coffee table morning

and
in
my
afternoons mad dreams

where i am out in the snow
working with lumber
but all the lumber
is twiglets
and still we stack it
like fire wood
against log cabins
and snowdrift sidings

dreaming of payday
just one more
hewn twiglet log away



6. THIS JUST IN

we plunder like a wolf pack

but rabid and deranged

natures food and love program
replaced with 
click bait tinsel
and built-in wine coolers

its black friday
its black friday
every black day

in this golden age
of pretend plenty

well heres a news flash larry
this just in - 

all that glitters is not gold
its mostly just polished yellow

shined for 5p in a sweatshop stink

mostly



7. ZODS PRISON

in this epoch of illusion
we stampede on £200 rubber hooves 
in kfc and on tv
in hiv and ptsd

all our hopes in a glass square

like zods prison . . .
tho who wants to hear that ? 

we dance a slow waltz
in the last living ballroom
sewing
the
enormous obvious
somehow acceptable

guilt-edged disco seeds

of slow-mo destruction
by prosciutto slices



8. HERES THE LATEST

and our reporter on the scene says

theres
a 
petroleum bubble
in the 
exocet glass

reflecting in microcosm
our almost

almost

collective unprotest



9. BUST TO SILICONE BUST

in
our
strange and welcomed
plastic
chains

we deny our neighbour is death

is
high street business

is
universal as trousers

its 
sexless disappearance
is
surely misunderstood

spacedust to spacedust
blue blue electric blue
ashes to lashes 
to financial crashes

bust to silicone bust



10. AWOMAN

and
we can predict it all
amen

and
yet change nothing
awoman



11. BEES !

next up is the weather
with phelony crabhandle

the diminishing bee count

and the latest
corporate sport assassinations

from youtube