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Author Archives: Mike Falconer
After a career in the entertainment lighting business encompassing, sales, technical support, marketing, photography, and writing, I now manage and market veterinary hospitals.
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Las Vegas, sitting outside watching my car being cleaned
Vaguely worried about sunburn in February
Realizing I love this place and can’t imagine not living here
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Birmingham UK, fresh off the plane
Walking my dog Miles around a hotel car park
In the rain and cold
Worried about what I have done to my life and if I can live here
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Leaving Aberdeen Scotland not long after my 18th birthday
Desperate for the bright lights of London and beyond
Knowing I’ll never be back to this backward town
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Living back in Aberdeen
No longer seen through the adolescent sunshine gloss of American Television
Still flawed, but resonating with the historic and working-class architecture
Life balancing with a softer and more empathetic society
Granite and health care to sooth my middle age
My first mail, my new doctor wanting a poop sample to test for cancer
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Los Angeles, newly arrived in a paradise of sunshine, amenities, and a new American life
My first mail, a flyer for savings on all the things I can buy
An adolescent television life complete with convertible and swimming pool
DVD players and randomly weird furniture
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Living with my Mum after 36 years away
Michael! Your dinner’s ready!
Mum, your dinner’s ready
Echoes and offsets
I used to moisturize to protect against the sun
Now I moisturize to protect against the cold and wind
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Learning to navigate London
Tube trains and free papers
A to Zs and the fear of the unknown
Place names that I only know from the riots on the news
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Alone in a Los Angeles apartment realizing I’m in a different world
Nothing works how I imagined or saw on TV
This is not Knight Rider or CHiPs or The A-Team
I know how to find bad guys
But I have no idea how to buy furniture or groceries
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Mum did you brush your teeth?
Mum, go to your bed
Mum, let me cut that up for you
Mum, I love you – scratch that
We don’t say that, but mean it every day
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I love you
Said but do I mean it?
To the woman in the movie theatre
Who never thought I would
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I Love you…
Collage Image made by with
An Image by Kay-Co from Pixabay
An Image by Gilbert Cruz from Pixabay
An Image by Janno Nivergall from Pixabay
And images by the author
Park, Dusk, Almost Spring
The sun has gone
But the sky refuses to let go of the day
This overly warm tail end of winter
A perfect evening for a walk through the park
An interlude from the business of work
and then food
before the couch
and television
The slothic consumption and consummation of the day
The tree branches are bare
But the bone chilling North Sea wind
channeled across river water and valley
is still for once
This is not spring
yet spring is foreseeable
in the flowers with the social skills of weeds
Not the explosions of color
like cluster munitions
that are the other side of Easter
Just the IEDs of early bulbs
poking through muddy ground
The runners are out in packs 30 deep
Their gaggle announces them before their head lamps
A cheerful yet insular cult
with the dreary distinction of no good collective nouns
Those that are excluded
the aloof and the novice
recognizable by style, form,
and levels of accessorization
Romantic couples of coffee table photography collections
Hand in hand comfort of being at ease
of not taking the familiar for granted
or worse, making do, because breakups are hard
The awkward interchange of dating teenagers
Enclouded in a swarm of perfume cologne mixed molecules
The smell of future hopes and sticky fumblings
The parked cars seeking the secluded dark
The doggers, those without a room, and the cars that are empty
Sometimes a parked car is just a parked car
The electric bicycles are like cauldrons of bats
fading in and out of the night
with swiftness and stealth
The oxymoronic lack of lighting
explainable as youthful action movie fantasies
This is the land of the dog walker
All else are tourists
But willing to share because after all
it is a beautiful night
And what of me?
I walk through Victorian historic splendor
celebrating not a mobile cell phone in sight
The wider embrace of the real
An element of time travel given away
by the LED dog collars
and air-podded ears
As I leave the park behind
chasing the sun and losing
I’m mocked by the green LEDs
of emergency lighting batteries
visible through the glass walls of hot houses
A shrink-wrapped serving of the Mojave,
and the Amazon,
on the Scottish coast
I am reminded that moments are special
because they are moments
Momentous, in their ordinary joy.
Masters of the Terrors of the Crimes of the Universe
Whatever we can think
Whatever we can fear
It will be worse
Snorting Adderall off the body of pubescent teen
Bombing schools as distraction
The eating of children – metaphorical or literal
It seems to make no difference
Noam Chomsky, what the fuck are you doing on that plane
Geopolitics is a libertarian fantasy
Rogue nations are the ones with nuclear weapons
The ones who bomb other nations in the name of peace
The ones who ignore international law, the U.N., and their own people
When the powerless kill people we call it terrorism
When the powerful kill we call it a police action
Strangely appropriate, except to the victims
Please let it be a Mossed operation
Because otherwise
The powerful and uber rich want what they want
And therefore, they get what they get
We’d welcome the lizard people at this point
We are here to serve them…
With a uniform and a gun fighting their wars
With our water and our electricity for their A.I. Slop
With our taxes and their tax breaks paying for enshitification
With a credit card and a smile at predatory capitalism
With our lower standard of living and poverty waiting in the wings
…and to be served to them
On a private plane and on a private island
Meanwhile our political classes are summed up by nature documentaries
A penguin walks across the frozen tundra to the mountains, probably beyond its reach
An idol to the right
Exploring a new frontier
With a head of full of visions and lofty goals
A rugged individual who does not want to wait around in the shit of others
To the left
A social animal losing its mind
Wandering from the society of the group to die alone
An outcast of its own rejectionist insanity
But the penguin still dies irrespective of who is holding its hand
And so it is that I get on my knees
Supplication, like so many before me
The allied leaders, the billionaires, and the political sycophants
And I open my mouth
It’s like a mushroom – wider than it is longer
Fitting it all in my mouth
A hand on my head…
And then biting down with all my strength
The flood of the taste of iron and justice in my mouth
The tearing of flesh,
As the fat fuck bleeds out and shits his pants one last time
It’s not a guillotine,
But it will do
Who’s next?
Image: “Death Intoxicated” Percy John Delf Smith, 1919
Partly inspired by a video essay by the Feral Historian on YouTube
Children of the Line
The Deeside Way
Formally the Deeside Railway
A Victorian example of local infrastructure
Terminating in one of Britain’s best parks
Now a foot path
A beautiful example of modern reinvention
But one can’t help morn the days of hyper local public transportation
And what could have been
But then what of my childhood?
When it was just a sandy path with missing bridges
Accessible from my back garden
But to me…
A battlefield in central Europe During World War II
A battlefield on some intergalactic alien scape date unknown
A battlefield for the petty rivalries of childhood gangs of middleclass boys
With bushes that became tanks, spaceships, and hiding places
And on the odd occasion, the location of the holy grail:
The dumped porno collection exiled from some teenager’s bedroom before they left home
The collection they did not want Mum to find but couldn’t take with them
In an age before porn was infinite and in everyone’s pocket
This place where I now walk my dog and admire the infrastructure upgrades
Along with the patios and extensions on semidetached back gardens
Where I recognize the different generations of house building
In a landscape familiar, yet moved and molded by 40 years of absence
The every square inch that was once space or wasteland
Now features a house unless expressly protected
And even then, one wonders how long that can last
Like the long-gone corner shops
The British penchant for home and castle
This refuge throughfare
With the detritus of storms lining the path
Broken trees yearning for chainsaws
Storms that I have either forgotten
Or not experienced in this climate of change
And the ever-grinding punishment of Scottish weather
A tamed wilderness
That the city uses for dog walks, cycle rides, and running
(although those people are fucking crazy)
Where I take a perverse pleasure in not carrying a cell phone
In this semi-retirement exile
This was where my friends and I were gamers before gaming
Pushing the limits and boundaries of our world
Looking for easter egg secrets
The walls to scramble over
Hidden paths to weave through the adult world
An open world sandbox to take us far away from here
This place that looked nothing like the places on TV
As real as our affected American accents, enacted heroics, and plastic guns
Now this is home again
And I value it for what it is
Not what if could be in my mind
Like I value the trappings of an age gone
Like a just missed train leaving the station.
Quiet Piggy
Quiet Piggy
Yes, I’m talking to you
The one who won’t shut up
With the bile and the lies
Quiet Piggy
Seditious behavior?
Well you would know
Quiet Piggy
Hanging your political opponents?
Be careful what you wish for
Quiet Piggy
Nixon only survived because he resigned in disgrace
I see little grace in your façade
Louis the 16th, Charles the 1st, and Tsar Nicolas the 2nd will be waiting for you
Quiet Piggy
Your affairs with those who seek power for sex
You and your friends who use sex on the powerless
Dom Mistress Melania will not be pleased if she gives a shit – or some piss
Quiet Piggy
Blowing Bubba with photos from Uncle Putin
Not quite the Russian interference we were thinking of
Maybe we’ll get that golden shower video after all – if we can stomach it
Quiet Piggy
You can dish it out, but like all tacos
You always crumple like a cheap suited con man
Quiet Piggy
A national secret police force to terrorize a nation
Just remember who stood in the dock at Nuremberg
And who couldn’t
Quiet Piggy
Your words will become the bludgeons of oppressed peoples
Not to be forgiven, not to be forgotten, but to be used as weapons of resistance
Quiet Piggy
The grownups are deciding your fate.
Image: “The Martydom of Louis XVI, King of France — I forgive my enemies, I die innocent!!!”, etching by Isaac Cruikshank, February 1, 1793
Discussions Hidden from the Face of God
“And we are so fucked”
Said the beautiful girl across from me
Postface to our discussion of politics, artificial intelligence, books, and the state of the world
But who had not yet mentioned a boyfriend
With both of us away from home
remaining unsaid
We live in the future
and the future sucks
A future none of us asked for
The evidence is all around
This backwater town
We find ourselves in
As exhibit A
The dead businesses and dying streets
The remains of chain stores that just can’t make it work
A place where there is no future
But the people still believe in the dream
Spoon-fed illusions of flags and evermore meaningless phrases
used to sell things we don’t need
In the name of being a good citizen, a good consumer
But it is the same nightmare that traps and eviscerates them
That traps and eviscerates us
Not quite such a stranger in this stranger land
A view of the world through glasses of red, white, and blue
And of being the best because that’s all we’ve ever been told
A freedom that imprisons its adherents
Who have a vision of how things should be
and yet weald tools of abhorrence
Unless you are the other
The lies have a seductive sweetness
Like overt flattery to get you into bed
But I’m a big city liberal, even if those labels don’t work for my brand of social
deconstruction
These are not villains
Not even victims
They are the ones who believe
The ones who’s attention is stolen
Like land
Labor
And capital before it
Those who put their trust in oligarchs and plutocrats
Who are we
to judge them
for finding the face of God
In the rapture of evangelical nonsense
Not selling souls
But giving them away to make lives a little easier
Like liquidating possessions with blind faith
To open heavens gates a little wider
While those same oligarchs and plutocrats
Are searching for the face of God
In machine learning snake oil
The new gods of Super Artificial Intelligence
With trillions for those first past the post
God code in their pocket
The only price
The enshitification of the world
One water and power guzzling data center
At a time
What does the future of the future hold
As serfs of technofudalism
Sharecropping in a dopamine fueled A.I. slop hellscape?
A world of abundant productivity
Yet without labor to sell
We become congregants in the cult of abundance
Without income
Therefore, no tax
No representation
without taxation
It works both ways everyone
Just ask the Saudis
Thou shall not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind
As they say on the plains of Arrakis
We have forgotten the lessons of John Henry
A man famous through song
for dying battling a machine
Although more likely
A man exploited
A man of color
A man in prison
A man who became the model for Superman and Captain America
The models for modern American Gods
We are unable to make peace with God
Never mind the devil
The continued anthropomorphizing of technology
Without sympathy or empathy for people
Blame determinism and move on
As adults die in mass shootings in churches
While their children survive
Because they’ve been trained since kindergarten to run, hide, or fight
What happened to the world?
It’s like I’m on normal speed and
Everyone else is skipping the beat
Listening to a different song
“Goodnight,” she said with a hug
“We are all fucked”
And I went to my hotel room alone.
Image “The Idol of Monopoly” by Paul Krafft
The Age of Cruelty
Don’t get involved in politics
Say the recipients of unrealized privilege
Don’t argue and have a good life
The world is a joke and learn how to laugh
say those who look and behave towards the mean
1 + 1 = 5
47 did something I approved of for once
Calling the Department of Defense
The Department of War
Because that is what it is
We defend jack shit
But boy,
We sure do like invading places
And involving ourselves in the wars of other peoples
Since 1945, too numerous to mention
I know this because I was going to list them all
But lists make for a poor excuse for poetry
But maybe we can be just as honest about all our institutions
The Department of Corporate Corruption
The Central Insurgency Agency
The Federal Bureau of Imprisonment
The Department of Hypocrisy and Human Suffering
The National Spying Agency
The Bought and Paid for Court
Will this be known as The Age of Cruelty?
If there is anyone left to think and feel
To see through the copaganda
And to rage against the regime
In the same week as more mass shootings, bomb threats,
Legal backing for racial profiling,
And a political podcaster reaping what they sowed
There is the horror of a movie about 50 young men
Volunteering to walk or be shot
In an America without hope
Based on a book that horrified me
when I was 13
Yet it Is tame compared to being a school kid in America today
Or watching the political violence
On the bleeding edge of tipping us into war
Hey, now we have a department for that
I always dismissed most dystopian fiction
I believed the line
“So this is how democracy dies – with thunderous applause”
Never believed that it would be like watching a slow-motion car crash
The majority feeling impotent to affect change
A piece of flotsam on troubled waters
It is not enough to call it unacceptable
It is not enough to say that it is a distraction
And protesting…
If congress and the courts can’t protect us
Then what are they for
Why do we pay for them,
Their health insurance
Their pensions
We are not a rogue state
We are a failed state
A police state
A disunited state
Police and governments who can’t tell the difference between anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist, and people protesting genocide
I will never forgive the Democrats for making me agree
with Marjorie Taylor Fucking Greene
I saw a post with a soldier saying we should have faith and trust our troops
As they patrol our streets with guns
Ready to backup a secret police force as it disappears people
One underclass at a time
Every Military Junta says to trust them at the start
To a people without hope
In an age of cruelty.
Image by James Ensor, Death Chasing the Flock of Mortals, 1896
(Fold)
Change
It starts with a change
An aberration straying from the norm
Unexpected, yet foreseeable
Once one removes the patriotic blinders
The exceptionalism myth
Taught in school to glaze over the slavery, genocide , and empire building
It can happen here
It can happen to us
(Fold)
And then the question becomes
What if we want to undo that change?
It’s simple right?
Reclaim our rose tinted view of the world?
Putting renewed faith in the institutions that failed us
The definition of madness
Doing the same nonsense again
And again
(Unfold)
But the marks are still there
The history of abusing the things we are supposed to hold most dear
The betrayal of shared values
A fracturing of belonging
And these things can now happen again
Because the taboos have been broken
(Refold)
And now there is a road map of fault lines
Well traveled and now a playbook
Much easier for one more step
One more outrage
That is ignored
Or accepted
(Fold)
And to slide
(Fold)
An inexorable slippage into what we have always said we despised
(Fold)
And the realization
(Fold)
That this is what we are
Smaller, less important
To ourselves
And to others
Fallible
And not in a position to lecture anyone
(Unfold)
Because the scars of what we have done to ourselves are not going away
It will never be the same again
And maybe we should just…
(Crumple)
Start again.
Adrift
I just don’t understand where I’m from any more
I don’t recognize the place I used to call home
Even looking through the lens of an adopted home
Dissent and all
All the way to dissident
But I’m now adrift
From what is a different kind of authoritarian nightmare
One that removed the right to silence in the name crime and punishment
One that broke from Europe in the name of an empire of old
One that watches every street corner in the name of public safety
One that suppresses free speech in the name of genocide
One that legalized cruelty to trans people in the name of protecting women
One that broke the internet in name of the safety of children
One that waves the flag of little England and pickets the hotels of refugees
One that sends people to jail for a tweet or a Facebook post
What have you become
How dare you
It’s an authoritarian world
It would seem
We just have to live in it.
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