New Book Launch 6/10/26
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.
Anti Tech Extremist Government Label
It’s not a fear of the coming of machines
That they will take our jobs
That they will rebel and wipe us out
That technology is inherently bad
It’s that the those with all the money
And all the power
Who have punished us with copyright law for decades
Who propagandize us with their machine learning future
They have stolen our art
Stolen our writing
Stolen our work
Stolen our knowledge
Stolen our culture
Stolen our water
Stolen our electricity
Stolen our attention
And have weaponized technology against us
All so they can sell it back to us as AI
All so they can get more money
All so they can get more power
All so they can replace us with something more compliant
And they wonder why we push back
“All they had to do was pay us enough to live.”
Image published in May 1812 by Messrs. Walker and Knight, Sweetings Alley, Royal Exchange – Artist Unknown
Unknown
His name is Ismail Hussein
You probably have not heard his name before
He is an unworthy victim
A Muslim
A person of color
An inconvenient truth to dispute a narrative
Stabbed on the same day, and by the same attacker, as two Jewish men in Golders Green
The day after the attacker was released from a secure mental health facility
Allegedly
His name is Ismail Hussein
He is an unworthy victim
In 2024 / 2025 there were 3,199 hate crimes against Muslims in England and Wales
In 2024 / 2025 there were 1,715 hate crimes against Jews in England and Wales
In 2024 / 2025 there were 3,809 hate crimes against Transgender individuals in England and Wales
All hate crimes are abhorrent
Just like Antisemitism and Genocide
Just like shadowy terrorist groups that at best are subcontracting out chaos to idiots
And at worst are a false flag attempt to manipulate public opinion
His name is Ismail Hussein
He is an unworthy victim
No Prime Ministers threatening to ban protests for him
No Chiefs of the Met attacking the only Jewish leader of a major political party
because they question kicking a man in the face while he lies prone on the ground having just been tazed
His name is Ismail Hussein
He is an unworthy victim
Intifada: uprising or rebellion
from the Arabic “to shake off”
From the river to the sea: A Palestinian phrase to describe a single state with Jews, Christians, and Palestinians living side by side
Also used by Netanyahu and the far right to describe a “Greater Israel”
Antizionist phrases
Not antisemitic
His name is Ismail Hussein
He is an unworthy victim
The far right marches through our streets
Spreading hate and fear for Muslims and anyone they consider the “other”
But let’s ban the marches against genocide
Let’s attack the only Jewish political party leader
All while we dismantle the government department that tracks war crimes in Israel and Lebanon
His name is Ismail Hussein
He is worthy
And we say his name to remind us that we are being manipulated
Losing our democracy to fear
The failures of our mental health system
And the oversimplification of geopolitics
His name is Ismail Hussein.
Poetic Political T-Shirts
T-shirts are now available from the online store.
One design features the full text of Mike Falconer’s poem “No Kings.” The layout is specifical designed to be readable when the T-shirt is worn under an open jacket or sports coat.
The other new design features a quote from Mike Falconer’s anti-AI poem “Discussions Hidden from the Face of God.”
Both designs are available in black or white text and multiple T-shirt colors.
More designs and items to come – check out the store here: mikefalconerstore.com
Hear Your Poems as Songs
Dear Poet,
Who’s written hundreds of poems
Who is TikTok famous
Who is good-looking as only the young can be
Who wants us to turn our poems into songs
Who wants us to just download this app…
Dear Poet,
Did you consider talking to musicians?
Did you wonder about collaboration?
The push and pull,
ebb and flow,
of the collaborative creative process
Dear Poet,
I don’t discourage you from trying to monetize what you do
But I object to you replacing musicians with machines
I object to you selling fellow poets into bondage
(It’s not even the good kind)
A serf in technofeudalism
Is still a serf
Dear Poet,
Did you even read the terms and conditions before you sold your soul?
“By using the Service or otherwise transmitting Submissions to us, you grant to evil corporate overlord and our affiliates, successors, assigns, and designees a worldwide, non-exclusive, fully paid-up, sublicensable (directly and indirectly through multiple tiers), assignable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to use, reproduce, store, modify, distribute, create derivative works based on, perform, display, communicate, transmit and otherwise make available any and all Content (in whole or in part) and any rights you may have in your Voice Model, in each case, in any media now known or hereafter developed, in connection with the provision, use, monetization, promotion, marketing, and improvement of our products and services, including the Service and the artificial intelligence and machine learning models related to the Service. This license to your Content and Voice Model includes a license to your likeness, voice rights and other indicia of your persona that may be embodied in your Content or Voice Model. For the avoidance of doubt, this license authorizes us to make your Content (including Output that incorporates your Voice Model, but, for clarity, not your Voice Model itself) available to and sublicense such Content to other users of the Service as necessary to provide the Service, and you further grant to evil corporate overlord the worldwide, fully paid-up, sublicensable, assignable, perpetual and irrevocable right to identify to the public (both on and off the Service) that Output (or any of it) was generated via the Service.”
Dear Poet,
I think you are real
but I had to double check
And at first glance I was ready to dismiss you
Because that is the world we live in
That you are helping to create
One where art is easy yet mundane
And all it cost us was all our power, water, and artists
Dear Poet,
Who peddles AI slop
Is that where the poems come from?
At the rate of one a day
Because why should I trust you?
Or anything you say
Dear Poet,
You are weak and a fool.
Image “The Enraged Musician” (1741) by William Hogarth
Online Store
I’m pleased to announce my own online store!
All of my books are available for purchase directly from myself with local shipping to both the UK and the US. In person appearances can also be purchased and more merchandise is currently in the works.
Switch
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
Switch
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
Switch
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
Switch
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
Switch
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
Switch
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
Switch
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
Switch
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
Switch
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
Switch
I love you
Said but do I mean it?
To the woman in the movie theatre
Who never thought I would
Switch
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.
Word Outlet 