BLAKE’S WAKE

 

Steve McAuliffe 

Corridors and doors; strip-lighting; more corridors; fast-walking, important walking. Blake was escorted at top-speed. Blake was on his way to see God.
They led him into a bullet-shaped capsule then followed him in… Whoosh of doors. The windows were tinted thus Blake could not see out. He knew they were travelling at great speed however, although there was no movement or sound to indicate that fact.
Then things went a little trippy. He felt drugged, although pleasantly so.
Somehow he knew he wasn’t in danger, so he closed his eyes.
The last thing he saw was an angel escort smiling back at him, the golden crossbow resting against her shining breast-plate … and then ….
When he awoke he found himself walking: down another corridor, flanked by the same angel-security. The way their heads darted from left to right reminded Blake of Secret Service Agents – like in the movies. These corridors were wider, taller than the previous ones. There was piped muzak -Elton John, he thought, though the title eluded him (something about a horny-backed toad?)
Blake suddenly felt lighter, full of humour, good cheer you might say.
You won’t put me in your penthouse … I’m going back to my plough…
He smiled to himself … and then …. A voice
‘God will see you now’
Blake awoke with a start. He was slumped on a leather sofa. An angel with a striped tie was stood over him.
‘So he really wants to see me?’ He croaked, somewhat groggily.
The man nodded, adjusted his collar and glanced at the place where his watch used to be. Blake stood, and allowed the angel to lead him to the doors.
The doors were huge, wooden; heavy wood, dark wood.
These were important doors.
Blake’s legs went weak, his mouth dried.
Supposing God didn’t like me?
I mean, the man with thin lips at the Great Library took an instant dislike to me, even though I’d gone out of my way to be polite to him.
The mighty doors opened silently, of their own accord.
Blake gulped.
Bright light emitted from the widening gap in glorious sunbeam-like rays. Blake expected harps and heavenly choirs, and thus they sounded in his head. He was frozen to the spot, and somehow the doors were now behind him. He was in the room.
He was in God’s room.
Bloody hell.
The light slowly dimmed, the heavenly chorus subsided in his head. And then, God spoke unto Blake:
‘Welcome Blake!’
Blake looked around, he could see no one. The angel with the tie nudged him and nodded toward a small door off to the side. God was behind that door.
‘How do I address him?’ he whispered to the angel
“You may call me … Lord” thundered a reply.
The suited angel leaned in and whispered ‘the Lord is all seeing and all-hearing’
‘Then why do I work in surveillance?’
The tie gasped, Blake froze.
Oh shit.
“Because I choose that you should work in surveillance!” thundered the voice behind the door.
‘I’m sorry’
‘-MY LORD!’ corrected God.
Blake had not got off to a good start. The tie was shaking his head at him.
‘What can I do?’ thought Blake
“You can start by telling me the truth about yourself” replied God.
‘Did he just read my mind?’ thought Blake
“Yes” replied God.
All of a sudden Blake regretted his ambition.
And he regretted his imagination.
But most of all he regretted his Catholic upbringing.

 

 

Vampire Limousine

Steve McAuliffe 

 

We are people of the world you and I

Literally we are of this world

Though the makers of this world despise us

-We eat unremarkable food and agonise from time to time over the price of a piece of fillet steak

Or some of us learn to content ourselves with non-nutritious chemical substitutes

Whilst others among us scrabble around for scraps to eat

Or simply starve

In alley-ways not yet designated prime real-estate by they who hate us all

See, this is this common thread that links us all

We are all

All of us, despite our perceived statuses

Despised by people who never have to choose, who never have to surrender indulgence, who hate the sight of those who starve, yet are conversely reassured by their ongoing existence

Economic vampires

Deathly white, sat in the back of black limousines tour the slums and hellish corners

Of our hijacked cities after dark

Hissing at the remaining ever-dwindling social housing

Hungrily clawing at the leather seats

Barely containing their blood-lust for the scattered remnants of the working-classes

Social cleansing is the sucking dry of the lifeblood of this city

And the corporate vampire shall not be sated

Not till the uninhibited sound of childhood laughter

Is driven once and for all from these few remaining streets

And as for us, during this calm before the scheduled storm

Our lives are barely tolerated

Providing we do not sit atop some precious minerals

Or our meagre dwellings do not interrupt the path of so-called progress

Tolerated, for now, at least until the next engineered clearance is okayed by a compliant government – or a corrupt council

Or a judiciary hired to legitimise the perpetuation of wealthy expansionism

Until then

They look upon us with hungry scorn

Unaware that many among us long ago prepared our pointed wooden stakes

Ready for their inevitable descent from out of a dark sky dimly lit by a blood-red moon

And on the date and time of their inevitable appearances

We shall be waiting outside our meagre homes

To conduct long-awaited and way-overdue clearances of our very own

A battle-cry goes up to match their werewolf call

And the corporate vampire who aimed to blind us

To eternally bind us

shall find us

Powerful stake-holders after all

GE2017: Kick Out The Tories

 

Available FREE on iTunes and Podbean

On this Pre-Election special, we’ll have Derek Stewart Macpherson with the first part of his Spin Cycle series, John McHarg talking about voter choice, Richie Venton on the choices socialists are facing in this election, and we’ll be hearing from Nick Durie about how this election proves the YES parties have failed to integrate movementism into their political practice.

Victoria Pearson will be reading her poem Another Revolting Peasant, Amber Heathers will be talking about an election in an age of uncertainty, and Chuck Hamilton will be giving us an American perspective on the UK election.

We’ll have a magical poem called Invocation from Steve McAuliffe, Debra Torrance will be talking politics and football, Fuad Alakbarov will be talking about the election and ex Derry British Army Commander Eric Joyce will be talking about Corbyn, the IRA, Martin Mcguiness, Trident and Iraq.

Red Raiph will be talking GE2017, Teresa Durran will be on newswatch, and we’ll have  Sandra Webster discussing dystopian sci-fi and the elections.

With music from Mark Little, Joe Bone & The Dark Vibes, Captain Ska, Robb Johnson, Joe Solo, Deux Furieuses, Derek Stewart Macpherson and Zoe Macpherson, Husky Tones, Argonaut, Kes’s Conscience, Madame So, Dream Nails, and The Wakes.

 

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On Liberty and Dissent

Steve McAuliffe 

No one talks of liberty anymore. No one seems to even think that the notion of liberty is important or even relevant to their daily lives, just mention the word and observe their eyes glass over. It has become an abstract too tiresome to decode, let alone interact with, and the libertarian writings of John Stuart Mill and Thomas Paine are not studied at schools and colleges, nor the poetry and essays of Blake and Defoe, let alone Shelley’s Masque of Anarchy. The latter understandably perhaps, for what education minister in his or her right mind would permit the line ‘Rise like Lions after slumber/ In unvanquishable number/ Shake your chains to earth like dew/ Which in sleep had fallen on you/ -Ye are many – they are few.” No, far better to fill those lamb-like brains with tales of noble kings and queens and generals and heads of state as opposed to the geniuses and visionaries who spoke of liberty and autonomy, and the shaking off of mental chains.
And so it is that the most draconian of government surveillance bills is passed in Parliament and no one notices, no one bats an eyelid. For this is how the State likes it. Distractions and misdirection’s are passed down via Diktakts from an increasingly oppressive State, and are duly filtered through the propaganda arm of the mass-media for our consumption. Back in 1644, the poet John Milton complained of a populace who preferred ‘bondage with ease’ to ‘strenuous liberty’, what I described in my poem ‘Rejecting Soma’ as ‘drip-fed Soma and incremental soft-dogma’ – in short, cakes and circuses for the masses.
And as our systems break down, our infrastructures crumble, prices rise, wages freeze and our pensions are raided – other victims are assigned the blame for the nation’s demise, anger and blame is redirected away from traitorous ministers and thieving fat-cats and financial hucksters toward the voiceless: the benefit claimants, the single mothers, the immigrants – and great swathes of the populace buy the lie hook, line, and sinker.
Despite the media’s tried-and tested distraction-techniques we are actually now entering potentially momentous times, times that threaten liberties gained not just over the last few decades, but over the past few hundred years. For today I read that Theresa May is proposing a repeal Bill (described by none other than the Financial Times as a reinstating of ‘Henry VIII Powers’), a bill which, should it pass, will give her government unprecedented powers to repeal or amend any former EU law, many of which have been described as being central to ‘individual liberty’. So, I guess we can expect the Principal Secretary of State for exiting the European Union – that self-avowed Conservative-libertarian, David Davis MP to be tending his resignation soon on a matter of principle, and once again find himself fighting the government as an independent (OK, don’t hold your breath on that one).
It would seem then that when certain Government talked keenly and passionately about a restoration of Parliamentary democracy, they actually meant a return to 1539 and Henry VIII’s own particular brand of Parliamentary sovereignty.
We must now accept that the neo-liberal/free-market philosophy has failed us, disastrously, and recognise that the state for all its power-grabs and assaults upon our liberties, no longer controls the means of indoctrination. We are entering a world in which new narratives are forever evolving, and beneath the narratives new themes take hold. We are becoming the editors of our own realities, and this is anathema to those who would hold control over our imaginations. Via social media kinships are born and solidarity is cemented, new philosophies may take root and flourish, and the greatest philosophy we must share is that of liberty. And until we achieve the liberty that we must once again believe to be our birth-right, then dissent is the only option open to us.
From the soon-to-close it’s-doors bell foundry in Whitechapel the ghost of the Liberty Bell is sounding, resounding within the hearts and minds of man and woman once again, for as Czeslaw Miloz once said, “In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.”

Let the shots ring out, and let the liberty bell ring once again.