The Red Pill

Something that fell out of my head today.

Madeleine Howard

and I have been sharing our working and offering each other some helpful critique. As writers this is invaluable. Too often I am faced with well meaning, but fairly limp feedback to work. I have performed and written and created for my whole life, so I am pretty thick skinned these days. I always say you learn nothing from a good gig. We need success and it should be 80% of what we achieve. However, it is the critical that fuels the fire.

Fucking up is good for you.

Today Maddie sent me the beginnings of a new piece of work that must have spoken to me significantly because I was inspired to write the following. It is an idea I have been kicking around inside my head for a couple of weeks now, so it is great to get it out there and make some room for more stuff.

There is an audio recording of this poem further down this post.

The Red Pill

The pods are out in droves

Drone pods in the road

Making love to their synapses in rows

At bus stops

I am utterly alone in the world

Streets populated by

pod zombies

iChildren, silent and benign

The revolution has been sanitized

Insanity has been revolutionized

Popularized, nothing going on

Behind the eyes

Just the tick tock

Time bomb of social mediocrity

Another pod zombie falls

Downloaded to the pavement

Where canine excretia

Is packaged in green bags

We package our animal shit now

For easy disposal so as not to upset

The applecart

Remember them

Tuppence ha’penny

Rag and bone

And we too are consigned to history

Bathwater and babies come hurtling out of

Tenth story windows

The mother of invention is screaming

Father Time is late for his own funeral

But the pod zombies keep on going

Lycra clad sports tagged

Digitally seduced by pixels

I stop and feel the delicate spotting of May rain falling on my face.

There is a bird singing in the boughs of a beech tree

A pigeon hoots its rhythmic melody

Grass pollen and compost, the mulch of existence

Breezes blow on petals frequented by bees

Bobbing on thin air toward - where?

I am alone in reality

Everyone has left the planet

The people shells remain in transit

Powered by pods

Here is the Audio.

I will be recording more poetry as audio textures for premium content. Keep an eye out for more content and offers from Driftwood Studio. The birdsong on this audio was recorded in Redisher Woods, Bury, UK at 4.30am local time.

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