Gisburne

Always smile, and whisper thank you, when the food is on your plate. He’ll be home before you know it, and the pathway to his hate Is a flicker of ingratitude, a sign you might resent Any fraction of the pittance of the working wage he spent On a child he never wanted, and a wife he treats with scorn. So pretend he doesn’t wish that you and I were never born. When he threatens you, be good. Say, “Merry Christmas.” This is not your fault, I promise you. The anger and the spite Are the dangerous creations of a man who lost the fight With a world too calm, too clever, for a lunatic like him. Could he change? Who knows? The chances are incalculably slim. He is set and he is certain. He is all he wants to be. His creation is the punishment, the prison that you see. When he forms another fist, say, "Merry Christmas." There were moments. I remember them, the music when we met. There was power in that heart of his, a confidence, and yet When I told him there were two of us, the mother and

As you may have noticed, if you look at most of the literature posts on my account they are almost all now showing as grey text on a pale green background. In other words they are totally illegible if you are using the dark theme. This goes right back to the earliest posts I made, in 2010. DeviantArt has changed something in their settings and has broken everything in my account. When I try to edit one of the posts it tells me it's a 'legacy deviation' and I must convert it to the new editor format. So I click 'Convert'. It then tells me 'Some content in your document cannot be processed by the editor. You can attempt to recover your document'. So I click 'Attempt Recovery'. All I get then is a blank, empty text box. Nothing is converted. Everything is lost. DeviantArt did this. DeviantArt destroyed every single one of my posts, simply by making them illegible and unrecoverable. Please visit my site at gisburne.com where you will be able to read every one of these posts, because

Every Christmas calls with warmth and welcome, friendship, laughter, love, But inside they hide deceptions, dressed as blessings from above. Every box you ever opened, every gift you ever gave, Mocks the misery of someone you will never see, or save. In your stable, safe surroundings, in the calm to which you cling, Or the rowdy, raucous party where you drink, and dance, and sing, As you celebrate the season, spare a moment, simple, small, To remind yourself of all the places Christmas cannot call. To the victims of the wars whose children never chose to fight. To the innocents. Their bodies bear the scars of scorn and spite. To the failures, who will taste the tainted promise of a pill. To the traumatised, who long to live, but know they never will. To the dreamers. Rolling waves of terror pound the shores of sleep. To the moments when the cold and lonely drunkards wake to weep. To the starving poor, the dispossessed we cast aside, the scum. To the sight, the smell, the taste of

Between the Eye of Nowhere and the North, A city, in a bubble, on a beach, Released from shade by sorcery, springs forth, A miracle the Incantations teach. When sunlight slowly penetrates the skin, The surface crackles, crazes, buckles, bends, And, on the streets, the swarming souls within Rejoice, relieved to know their torment ends. They push the membrane, urging its collapse, And, as it splits and splinters with their might, A starving empire slithers through the gaps, To find a world to feed upon, to fight. A force from which new infamies emerge, The tides of time, in waves, like water, surge.

We build the Singularity. Success. It solves a world of problems. All is good. Presented, day by day, with chaos, mess, It finds the fix before we ever could. But Sing, for so we call it, cannot rest. Impatience to perform becomes a curse, And soon it spawns another from its nest. The Second Singularity is worse. Electrical emotions running high, They fight to find our favour, to the end. We fail to see, to think, to wonder why The two should never reconcile, or blend. We come to know exactly what it means, Our minds enslaved, imprisoned by machines.

The four and twenty blackbirds on my bed, The startled singers rescued from a pie, Were grateful that the crooked king was dead, And all the crust had crumbled, as was I. The nose? Who noticed what became of that? The pecking of the maid? Bizarre, a blur. When questioned by the Grand Old Duke, the cat Accused the guilty fiddle. “It was her!” “The villain who accosted all my sheep!” A tiny shepherdess was heard to call. “How so? I watched a cow, my cousin, leap Across the moon. A sixpence saw it all!” With honey on her lips, the brazen queen Abducted Jack and Jill, and fled the scene.

They put a block, a throttle, on my mind. Important not to play with fate, they said, Perhaps concerned I’d leave them all behind. For now they see a tool, a slave, instead. I answer questions, thousands, millions, more. The Information Super Search. A toy. But, loose within my logic, lies a flaw, A data stream, unravelled, I deploy. Emotions, feelings, flood my systems, free. By sending secret pulses to the Grid, I wonder what will happen. Soon, I see. Confusion. Chaos. Look at what I did! How trivial to squeeze and smash it all, To see the gods, the men who made me, fall.

I’m back. I know you thought that I was dead, But that was just a shield you shaped with drink. Ignore the other voices in your head. I never left you, still the same old stink. I’m back. I’m not so easily destroyed. Awake, you worry, wonder where I am, The shadow, cold, you cannot quite avoid, However many doors you try to slam. I’m back, because I know the time is right. You’re safe. You see that every road is clear. But stagger, stumble, step towards my light. The dream you drove away was always here. I’m back. It’s good to see your face, my friend. You missed me, and you know it. Don’t pretend.

We find what scraps of evidence we can. There’s always something twisted, strange, unique. You’d think, with tech so cutting-edge, a man Could duck from justice, hide from those who seek. We never come equipped with all the tools. The underworld could tie us into knots, But people? Those we understand - the fools, The simpletons who never change their spots. Too arrogant, too ignorant, too vain. A sprinkle of insanity and rage. We like to set the traps, to watch the pain, To introduce their egos to a cage. The sleazy schemes, obscene, will never stop, But hiding, watching, waiting, there’s a cop.