trawling old files = rhythmic spam

"Go now, write it on a tablet for them, inscribe it on a scroll, that for the days to come it may be an everlasting witness. These are rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the Lord’s instruction. They say to the Seers, ‘see no more visions!’ and to the prophets, ‘Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions.’" - Isiah 30:8-11

I: Isiah’s Flares

We wander in the dark
in gravest silence
like broken notes we resonate.
We’re holding out our hearts
and in these vessels
Isiah’s oaths will detonate.
We spark like dying light
intent on seeing
our fading flares illuminate
in the day’s remains we fight
our shotgun’s violence
still bold enough to fascinate.

Like signs cut into sand
we basement creatures,
although concealed, are not erased.
We’re a sickness on this land,
a plague of answers
to questions which were never raised.
Our martyr on the pyre
has now been silenced,
cold ashes where his beacon blazed.
We’ve yet to find the fire
which formed our features
(like stone or steel we are engraved)
but soon we will emerge
in sunlight screaming
as one by one we learn our names.

II: No Man’s Light

There’s no romance in meteors,
those starlight suicides on which we swear our love.
They’re second hand celebrities as best,
their lust limited to spyglass specialists
whose huddled elite
repel all newer members.
A façade, an image, a bumbling cliché
which minimises mass appeal:
"The province of old men in fields."

There’s no romance in meteors,
those starlight suicides with which you grace your tongue,
but they’ve found their niche below ground level.
No stargazers with sightlines in the dark,
but a following of basement creatures
whose crooked eyes and crooked minds perceive
none other than a perfect blazon,
a badge of honour for their cause:
a star, which learns its light from no one,
brought low by a dead man’s law.

III: Fireworks

We slither through the leafmould and the cold November grey,
a denim throng that weaves its way
through rubble, corrugated ruins,
bearing putrid market fruit.
(A symbol of life already rotten
strangely fitting on this day,
this day we celebrate destruction).
The Alchemist with his home-made fuses,
his chemical compounds ripped from China,
has found our perfect emblem –
we’ve made ourselves some falling stars.
And in this autumn grey we share our knowledge,
our youthful lust for malattention,
our hunger for some unknown power
to demonstrate we’re of one mind,
that we can penetrate the sunlight,
tear this autumn grey apart.
We light the fuse with pride then cower,
hide behind obscene graffiti
asking for protection from the words we don’t believe.
Burrow down in grim excitement,
smoke and sparks and scattered seeds.
This proves that we can rival nature
make its order disappear;
exploding over many miles,
a raging storm which has no source,
a metaphor for silenced voices
a symphony for our discord.