Cogitation

 

Cogitation

 

She’s off sick again - irritating

and Alex says he’d seen her wandering

Barwa’s parks. Puts wheels in motion

doesn’t it? Cogitations.

 

Like - consider the machine,

not the lilies, not the fields, not again

because it’s what she’d expect -

offer flowers to an untouched sick bed

of cool, crisp, unvisited sheets

along with chocolates, Lucozade, other treats

like a side of overripe ham

because she was that girl from Birmingham

walking the clap-boards

with a bit of pity poor Tom,

do us some charity.

 

Let’s send out for clarity –

What system insists that it only exists

to lodge components into housings -

machines built for the comfort of the cog?

 

These bits have teeth,

we’ve seen them bite,

they settle into second gears,

draw other fittings and fixtures near

to them – almost form a unit, hermetic

self-contained, and prophetic

spooling loops of doom

spinning counterclockwise to the room.

 

Almost. Because all that energy spent

means inner workings are found absent

more often than not –

have spiraled in uncontrolled control

to light up consoles to console.

 

And to be fair, it’s more than machine ghosts

that threaten sleek running -

a stream of smooth operators, always coming

with drained batteries of malfunctioning

promise – to work better than the last –

but expelled all oily unctuous effacement

to search for another displacement.