“Fighting a fire that cannot be seen.”

Louis MacNiece
Rural news
Begin a new life with the pledge never

To fly again. Knee-deep in the debts

Of heavy machinery—reign of irrigation

—the only choice left to tour the velvet

Leaf’s black grass until your yoga retreat

On a climate denying farm comes to focus

On maximising carcase value. I’m using

My heartbeat to count a breathing

Exercise that has the effect of slowing

My heartrate—as if it were cool

Irony to breathe myself out of existence

Just like everyone else. Even tailwinds

Feel ahead of me. Dragging culvert

Pipe like a cross I see antibiotics

In the eyes of livestock and bank vaults

In bottles of milk—monoculture former

Weapons manufacturer trademarks

The science of pouring money on forest

Fires. Phoenix or bust. My new boots

Advertised as last rites wading into

Quantum cereal fields both antistate and

State subsidised—the Perseids as my

Herbicide for sheer abundance of gilded

Plants more dead than alive.
 

Industrial formations
We’ve taken metaphors to heart stream

-ing assets wedded to soul-searching

The statusquo. Everyone is a nature story

In lucrative environments even the moon

Bestowed upon us by healthy competition.

If only mindfulness meant remembering

Survival of the fittest was never Blitzkrieg

And not to get all instructional video in a

Poem but we owe the modern alpha male

Meme to a 1947 study of eight caged wolves

And when you observe functional packs

In the wild you see none of those dynamics

That are great tools for class warfare.

Causality was backwards: cooperation isn’t

A byproduct of harsh environments it’s

The engine—yet some razor-thin plateaus

Hold the ideal temperature range for loners.

Evolution is no arms race—what’re rockets

To penicillin for the clinically president—

What’s market for trying to escape your

Footprints. Look inwards and glimpse that

Early model capital and the spirit level of

Excess in your very own chemistry they say

—foreign investment like losing your house

Is just a state of mind. My goal is to never see

Another lawn again in the state wasteland

As privatised stress. The difference between

A peak and a valley is the brink of extinction.
 

Gravel highways
Here comes the wellness juggernaut boom

-ing intentions on sage water—gold cobalt

Sapphires quartz all part of the same old

Story. When did the rose of time get so

Complex from windup clocks to universally

Coordinated zones and confronting our

Death cult. The road only gets built when

There’s something they want to get out

—crystal concrete for the crystal coloniser

—bricks of angeline and labradorite mortar

Heaping these stones into my salt pyramids.

There is no budget even for child labour

Backs strained against the darkness polished

Dust in the weave of lungs like forgotten

Clothes. I suppose most people would take

Cheap healing power over clean fusion energy

And I want to mine lithium for FMRI machines

In hospitals just not laptop batteries. Number

One priority is to be surrounded by crystals

So why not try mineral uranium as an anti-

depressant: if it would mean the last sale ever

The final astrological lawsuit for there is no

Healing power in middlemen. Grass glitters

Like sharp knives through cracked earth as sun

-light bends out of sight through earth’s prism.
 

Loose wall
Drowning in powdered milk swept up

On the tide of facial recognition—

Rose quartz on wooden shelves ringing

Like an overture the bells of erosion.

Drill once for industry and twice for

Evolution’s random walk falling down

For you for the forever’th time.

Questions at all costs where forward is

Westward the very idea of “flaw” my

Closest allegory—a broad spectrum

Prophylactic doing thinking feeling.

It’s important to walk home in the cold

From the funeral even if you have other

Options. Headphones on your commute

Are the enemy and evolution is a terrible

Metaphor for technology. For all its supposed

Networking evolution doesn’t spend billions

Provoking love and care of social surveillance

Nets. Imagine one day analysing the surname

Manager just as you would Fletcher. Getting

Comfortable with guilt as it usually means

I have something I shouldn’t—so much so

Innocence feels like lack. More quality time

—handmade—where no loop is inevitable.

Opting out of natural selection. Walking

Away from even the idea of opting out.