Topological

 

Topological

 

Wait—you mean topical, don’t you?

There’s nothing topical about the M50,

an under-engineered relic connecting

nowhere to nothing much,

targets Wales, misses by miles

and barely offers a hard shoulder to cry on—

 

but look - on account of her—you’re forced

to use it using you or be damned -

I battled their logic for so long,

cursed when I was forced to buy one,

screamed 'turn round, go back, you're wrong',

but was shot for a flushed grouse's song.

 

So, pull from your pocket. Check. Enough.

Mine’s got fluff

that, God willing, might choke the bastard.

 

There are tributaries of messages

feeding estuaries of conrotatory seas—

a confusion of contradictions

you’re made to answer,

each and every one for everyone.

 

Don’t think to block, leave groups,

or invoke the fifth—

that only stirs a hornet’s nest

beneath her beehive:

sent on impulse, on every whim,

on every ill-formed

spark across synapses, thumb-fired,

six or seven already today to every soul.

 

All around her it grows. Forms

from a flick of the wrist, a stab at glass,

an eternal fluid rictus-stream

so thick she’s landscaping it now—

hod-carrying brick by brick,

each post rammed and replies laid in place,

a landscape littered with dour faces,

mutinous whispers, daggered smiles

and putting out a thousand miles.

We’re getting seasick of it,

queasy mariners gripping the gunwales,

sucked off into lost tunnels

as it slowly reshapes itself—imperceptible

cracks become caves, stacks, stumps,

remolding whatever was as once it was.

All around her hat, the debris

of her mind’s eye from her mind flies.

And they—

cartographers of the surveyed—

issue grim diktats, dire warnings,

grey apocalypses from breast-pocket laptops,

scarring terrains, carving their names

into twisted metal, blasted concrete

trod under dust and rubble.

 

Clawed earth while she screamed violated rage,

warned you—but it’s already too late -

all that's left is a psychoscape.