Hot desk, commandeered,
I’ll man you like a cannon
on a flight deck, folding,
or a guard to take over
as hours itch like busbies overheating.
Hot desk – I make my slow beginning,
dispersing fast food discarded by another
facing down the jaws of a deadline.
Shared PC – you’re sluggish this lunchtime
so I yawn and process background radiation
and hubbub, hubbub, hubbub.
Shared PC – you’re a job’s worth to me
who won’t be jumpstarted
so while you whir I start flicking
through a stray notebook
abandoned like a diary,
white-glove precious, or so I pretend –
the last piece of handwritten
parchment on Earth.
Feel me numb, bored, crunching;
ease me into tedium and torpor,
ease me in as a temporary player
attempting to place faith beyond the binary
on convalescent kit with trust issues.
Hot desk, I know I should chill.
We’ve all weathered
blustery seaside
in the company of people
we no longer talk to
because of loss
or one of our choices.
That’s what the waves
hit the sea wall for.
Roy Moller was born in Edinburgh on 3rd July, 1963. Conceived in Toronto, adopted and raised in Leith, he attended Strathclyde University, where he won a poetry prize. He promptly put writing poems to one side for 25 years to concentrate on songwriting, singing and playing the guitar in singular dyspraxic style. A long, chequered musical apprenticeship paid off with a solo session for Marc Riley on BBC 6Music in 2011 and a session for the same show a year later with Jesus, Baby! (a group put together by Michael Pedersen of Neu! Reekie!). His music has picked up regular airplay in Ontario while Pennyblackmusic has described him as “one of Scotland’s most original songwriters.”
After working in call centres for a plethora of agencies, Roy has muddled through social care, Social Fund and television subtitling. His heroes are Allen Toussaint, Nye Bevan and Clement Attlee. His favourite politicised songwriter is Phil Ochs. He connects with the words of Cardiff’s RS Thomas, Belfast’s Louis MacNeice, Assynt’s Norman MacCaig and Pittsburgh’s Mary Ruefle. He particularly enjoys cooking while listening to the latest Scottish Poetry Library podcast and is a sucker for the utilitarian beauty of classic British Transport Films.
Roy lives in Dunbar, East Lothian with his wife and son. After seven solo albums, poetry is now his medium of choice. Moller’s writing has scattered itself over a selection of literary journals and his first collection, Imports, was published in December, 2014. He is a contributor to the Neu! Reekie! #UntitledTwo, anthology, reading at its launch event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August, 2016.
You can find out more on his website and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter
Is it just me or does the shit seem to flow one way?
Holy Thursday into Black Friday
And who’ll clear out the gutters in your 2.3 million pound terraced house in Peckham Rye?
You know, when push comes to shove.
Maundy Monday and someone let a fart go on the cattle-train transporting us from the suburbs to the processing plants of Old Holborn and Chancery Lane.
The economy took a hit when some geezer hung himself in a tunnel during rush-hour.
He was hoist by his own commuter-belt.
Christ, I must create my own system.
Coz according to the Daily Hate, one in five Muslims now back the caliphate.
And the hate spreads outward,
But the shit still flows one way
-Always one way.
Then the City within a city took a bigger hit.
Seems the bankers dry-humped the market too long without mercy, and now everyone’s pissing their pants:
Is this the trickle-down effect in actual action?
Listen, William Blake never sheltered from the volcanic ash,
He never holed himself up on the banks of Lake Garda,
Imagination was his salvation – and ours too – if we’d only trace the echoes down through time.
And so we return to Peckham Rye,
Where the angel’s perch in the trees
Paying no heed to the
Over-inflated
Ill-fated
Ever-expanding
property bubble.
No, there was no Grand Tour for poor old William,
And how was he to know his Arcadian Jerusalem would be appropriated
By fat-faced Tories in their elite drinking clubs up in Oxford?
Those heirs to the Satanic Mills he so abhorred.
They flipped the mills for a profit before the bubble-burst,
And floated mythical Albion on the market
as Jerusalem PLC.
I must, I really must…
I must create something.
Democracy is just a bunch of hand-picked people asking all the wrong questions of all the wrong people –
We are indeed led by the least amongst us. Lions led by donkeys and all that.
And the Mail is getting bolder.
Arab refugees as Mufti’s: rats dropping from their foreign robes, scuttling between their smelly sandaled feet.
Swarms and deluges, threatening our identities…
Whilst the heirs to the dark mills sell the power-stations
to the Communist Chinese.
And I tell you what, I’ll tell you this –
If that fucking Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t prostrate himself next year at the Cenotaph, I’ll… I’ll fucking…
Ah!
The shit still flows one way and I seriously, I seriously need to create my own system and divert the flow, or I will, I will be enslaved by another man’s; I will be engulfed by another man’s shite.
And when the IRA bombed London, no one blamed the Catholics:
No blacks, no dogs, no Catholics.
They bombed the barracks and the bandstands,
The pubs and the shopping arcades and we stood firm, year upon year: folded our arms, resolute.
We will not talk to terrorists.
And we didn’t. One decade turned into another
We will not sit down with terrorists.
Sure enough, we didn’t: bomb after bomb = resolute, steadfast.
Then they bombed the City within a City and suddenly everyone’s round a fucking table.
Lesson being:
You can drown us in a sea of blood, but don’t interrupt the flow of dirty money son.
Ah.
Ash Wednesday as the volcanic clouds that block the sun dissipate.
Trust me now, one more war son, that’s all.
And then we’ll privatise the fucking lot – one last hurrah.
Chilcot’s climbed into his spider-hole for the duration and Blair’s on Andrew Marr again – the longest courtship in human history.
Intervention, air-strikes, boots on the ground.
Meanwhile Turkey buys the oil
The oil that funds the bombs that buy the bullets that load the guns that launder the uniforms of the men who drive their Toyota courtesy cars across an air-brushed desert –
Ah fuck this!
-Enough.
Let the lions take down the donkeys.
And let us venerate the Lamb.
Let us re-nationalise Jerusalem,
Here and now, in England’s green and pleasant land.
This poem, among others appears in Steve’s book, Thamesmead.
to all those whose idea of patriotism
is sending out young people to die
trying to kill other young people
trying to kill them:
FUCK YOU.
to all those more concerned
with the profits and interests of corporations
than the cost of permanent war
on individual humans and societies
including our own:
FUCK YOU.
to all those who sow strife and dissension
to divide humans from each other
within artificial invisible boundaries
created for the sole purpose of dividing turf
between wealthy and powerful elites
who then turn those same humans against other humans
on the “other side” of those artificial boundaries
humans who are likewise at the mercy
of wealthy and powerful elites
more similar to the elites on their side
than to humans on either side
including how they manipulate their humans
FUCK YOU.
to all who believe corporations are people
whose money is speech
whose rights to religious freedom trump
that of actual humans
FUCK YOU.
to all whose ideology trumps
concern for human welfare
for liberty, equality, and social justice
FUCK YOU.
Roy Møller was born in Edinburgh in 1963 and started writing poetry in his teens. He moved into songwriting and performing in his twenties, eventually releasing seven solo albums, playing a session for Marc Riley on BBC 6Music and one as a member of Jesus, Baby!, a group put together by Neu! Reekie’s Michael Pedersen and fronted by Davy Henderson.
Roy’s first collection, Imports, was published in December, 2014 and he is a contributor to Neu! Reekie! #UntitledTwo, appearing at the anthology’s launch event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August, 2016.
Roy’s poetry has appeared in Allegro, Ink, Sweat and Tears, And Other Poems, Outsider Poetry, In Between Hangovers, Your One Phone Call, Pod, The Starving Artist, Lights Out Listening Group, Lies, Dreaming, Northern Renewal, Nutshells and Nuggets, RAUM, Severine, Hot Tub Astronaut, The Eildon Tree, Paper and Ink, Don’t Do It, ZestLit and the Rebel Poetry/RNLI anthology The Sea.
This is an unscheduled broadcast for Ungagged, in reaction to the news that Donald Trump has won the American elections and will be the next POTUS.
We didn’t expect to put out a podcast today, so it is a little shorter than usual, and maybe a little more emotional. These are our live reactions, as the news was breaking.
This is for all of those among us who knew the world was strangely out of synch
And despite that fact still tried to find a way to love, to live, to think
It’s for those who sought to see beyond and were dismissed and made unsure
Yet still identified the sickness and gifted us the cure
This is for those who tried to tell the world of the wonders that they found
And it’s for the wretched and the wasted who were beaten to the ground
It’s for the lovers and the lonely
And the dreamers and the damned
And for the children who in class
Refused to raise their tiny hands
It is for those who laughed with gusto
At the obscenity of the machine
And for those who struggled to find the words
To communicate their dreams
This is for the angry and confused
For the hopelessly abused
For the eyes that sparkle in the dark
Full of drugs and tears and booze
It’s for every single poet who tried to lift our souls
And for artists opening windows into strange confusing worlds
It’s for the voice that soared like angels
In the ears of the succumbed
And cut through mind-pollution
In the shanty towns and slums
It’s for those of you who flew above
Yet reached down to those of us who fell
For those who sent dispatches back
From the fiery pits of hell
For those who found nirvana
Then promptly lost the map
For victims crucified each day
For not submitting to the crap
It’s for those who challenged tyranny
In all its media-friendly guises
And fought the urge to be subsumed
By the glittery golden prizes
It’s for those who showed us Shangri-las
The joys of laughter, sharing, giving
Vast oceans of possibilities
Or simply better ways of living
They do not raise you up on pedestals or place you up on plaques
Coz your heroism doesn’t fit the script and undercuts official acts
Yet you are the gods who lit the flame
In the hearts of the downtrodden
I salute you now and always
So your gifts won’t be forgotten
In this episode Debra Torrance talks about what emancipation means to her, Matt Geraghty asks if democracy in the UK and USA is a punch in the face or a kick in the shins, and Ruth McAteer speaks about independence for disabled people.
With Victoria Pearson talking about remembrance, Red Raiph on Halloween, and Matt Carr from One Day Without Us talking about the planned day of action on February 20th in protest of the dangerous rhetoric surrounding the migration debate.
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