It's theatre on a dead planet

a candidacy lost in space

the life lessons you need

from a black girl's reading list

there's not a cloud in the sky

so I'm going to give you what I want

a quarry in the steeper side of a peak

abandoned unworked unloved

except by us in our hole in the wall

with raven flight feather we don't fly

as our legs and loads are heavy

and anyway we're enjoying the view

and the fact that no one comes here

on the more challenging side of the eminence

where paths are of sheep

and water oozes from the skin of height

a week of resignations

an ambassador

a footballer

my sister

good for them

there's life after a life

especially when bullies are broken

and exit in wheelbarrows

and no one any longer knows

where the bodies are

I have collected two birds that crashed 

into windows and died 

a finch and a sparrow I think

one was still warm when I first picked it up

its eyes closed its beak and claws small 

unthreatening and alluring

don't know what to do with them 

and they're starting to smell in the heat

the fragrance of decomposition

moving again in temporary maggot propulsion

but I have begun to gather stray feathers 

and took a fancy to theirs too

receiving my treasure as it happens

and not after the fact

someone painted a large erect penis 

on tarmac near a cattle grid in the hills

on the day I come up with the idea of a wealth cap 

the revenge of the benefit cap

the revenge of the underpaid

the oppressed and the short-changed

it's all connected

I don't like the modern world

but it's the only one they've got

having to pay to view redundant antique war planes

that our grandparents surely helped to purchase

through taxation and maybe through blood spilled

in operating them in campaigns they did not subscribe to

a bit like the money they charge us to visit castles

after they succeeded in subduing us

the massive watchtowers of the conquerors

still invading our pockets so give me what I want